The Song of Troy

Colleen McCullough's novel ' The Song of Troy' was a chance find at a book fair. The author is better known for her best-selling work ' The Thorn Birds'. For anyone who has given up reading Greek mythology having got mired in difficult to remember names and complicated genealogies here's a wonderful re-working that is hard to put down as told from the point of view of some of the protagonists themselves in Homer's Illiad and Odyssey.
The author has meticulously researched the characters and the time they lived in to create a rivetting, realistic account that makes it live up to the claim of the sub title of the book as 'A story that will outlast History.'
The abduction of Helen, the legendary beauty of Greece and wife of Greek king Menelaus, by Paris, son of King Priam of Troy is 

the widely believed reason for the decade-long war between the two countries that resulted in the loss of countless lives and some of the finest warriors on both sides. Recall the famous opening lines of Homer's epic - The face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium...Though this is made out to be the immediate cause of the war, the lesser known fact is the ambition of Menelaus'  brother, King Agamemnon  who had designs to enrich himself from the sack of Troy and carve an empire for himself in Asia Minor.
Hector remembered Menelaos' description of his wife Helen in superlative terms. But he always had his reservations when men called queens or princesses beautiful because too many of them inherited that epithet along with their titles! Yet, even Hector had to succumb to Helen's charms when she made her first appearance in Priam's court. This is how he describes her:
'...As I remember her on that day, she was just...beautiful. Masses of pale gold hair, dark brows and lashes, eyes the colour of springtime grass rimmed with kohl drawn outward in the manner of Cretans and Egyptians.
But how much of it was actual, how much of it a spell? That I will never know. Helen  is the greatest work of art the Gods have ever put upon Mother Earth.
For my father she was fate. Not so far gone in old age that he had forgotten the pleasures to be had in the arms of a woman, he looked at her and fell in love with her. Or in lust. But because he was too old to steal her from his son, he chose instead to take it as a compliment to himself that a son of his could lure her from her husband, her children, her own lands. Swelling with pride, he turned his wondering eyes upon Paris.
They were certainly a striking pair: he as dark as Ganymede, she as fair as Artemis of the forest. Without doing more than take a stroll, Helen won the silent room completely over. No man there could continue to blame Paris for his foolishness.'
The ancients believed in a sacred code of conduct even though their battles were brutal and steeped in blood. Any violation of this code spelt doom. Achilles was driven to fury when he was mocked at during a duel with Kyknos as duels between members of the Royal Kindred were as sacred as rituals  till one was killed and the ritual continued till the body was stripped, the head speared and exhibited and the carcass fed to the dogs. At nightfall all hostilities came to an end. An oath taken was  equally sacred and broken at peril to oneself.
When Priam finally gives the go ahead to his pride and joy to attack the Greeks, Hector cannot wait for the dawn. McCullough describes in detail the armour as Hector accoutres himself:
'...My armour lay ready. Andromache (his wife who tried in vain to dissuade him) forgotten as my excitement rose. I clapped my hands. The slaves came, put me into my padded shift, laced on my boots, fitted the greaves over them and buckled them on. I swallowed down the desperate eagerness I always felt before combat as the slaves went on to dress me in the reinforced leather kilt, the cuirass, the arm guards, the forearm braces and the sweat leathers for wrists and brow. My helmet was put into my hand, my baldric looped over my left shoulder to hold my swords on my right hip; finally they slung my huge, wasp-waisted shield over my right shoulder by its sliding cord and settled it along my right side. One servant gave me my club, another assisted me to tuck my helmet beneath my right forearm. I was ready.'
The biggest blow for the Greeks was the fall of the mighty Achilles as a result of Paris' cowardly treachery. Very poignant is the fate of old Nestor who already lost two sons in the course of the war and now with a heavy heart has to bury his youngest son who wouldn't be left behind at home and sneaked into Troy without his father's permission. Achilles had a premonition and had already entrusted his mistress Brise, a Trojan princess who fell to his lot, to the safe keeping of Agamemnon and others to be handed over to his son Neoptolemus.
The mighty giant Ajax, turns violently mad after the death of Achilles and kills himself upon his sword. In the words of Automedon, 'In eight days they were both gone: Achilles and Ajax, the spirit and the heart of our army.'
Read on to find out how the suspense-filled scheming of Odysseus finally brings to an end the ten-year long war and the fates of Helen and the survivors.

Sandpiper

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster. Her debut novel, In the Eye of the Sun (1993), set in Egypt and England, recounts the maturing of Asya, a beautiful Egyptian who, by her own admission, "feels more comfortable with art than with life." Her second novel The Map of Love (1999) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has been translated into 21 languages and sold over a million copies.  She has also published two works of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper(1996) - a selection from which was combined in the collection I Think Of You in 2007, and Stories Of Ourselves in 2010.

Soueif writes primarily in English,  but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English. 

 She was married to Ian Hamilton, a famous English literary critic.

She lives in London and Cairo.

The short story Sandpiper by Ahdaf Soueif reads more like a poem than a short story. The basic elements air, water, fire and earth interplay with one another in this story highlighting the events that happen in the life of the main character. There are very few specifics; even the names of the main character are not mentioned. The place names are mentioned very rarely which gives this story a certain universality and timelessness.The story is told from the first person point of view of the central character, Lucy's mother and Um Sabir's daughter-in-law. This is a typical example of feminist writing.
There is no intriguing plot in the story and the conflicts are mainly internal. Marital discord due to cultural differences can be cited as the theme of the story.
The narrator, Lucy's mother, herself a writer, takes us into her first short utterance itself. It is a simple sentence which sounds like part of a private casual conversation and it sets the mood of the story.

                                      Outside, there is a path.

The rest of the story is about how she is unable to find her own path to happiness. She had met her husband, an Egyptian, in her own country. After a long courtship of four years, they got married and every year she has been six months in her husband's place at Alexandria near Cairo, Egypt.

"...:twelve years ago, I met him. Eight years ago, I married him. Six years ago, I gave birth to his child."
This cold objectivity is also heard when she talks about her motherhood.

As the story opens we see her at the beach near her husband's home in Alexandria. She is describing how she used to spend her time at the beach. Her description tells us a lot about how she loves to see the basic elements interacting with one another. They are very gentle to each other. They chase, cajole, fondle, unite, get into each other's being. This even forms a cycle. She is very passionate about everything in her life. She takes an interest in everything around her. The stranger the subject of her interest, the stronger her involvement. She is hungry for more and more varied experiences.

On the other hand her in-laws are very protective of her like they are generally of the women folk. It has been spelled out to her at the Cairo airport that women are considered second sex in Egypt. Coming from a more liberal land like Europe, it mattered much to her though she managed to adapt herself  to that.
After her first child was born, he husband became less passionate about her. He would have tried to harmonize her with his culture for long and then gave it up when he got really frustrated. She would have lavished all his love and time on her child, ignoring him. From the way she talks about how expectant she was when she was expecting this sound only natural. The part where she talks about how she played with her child even when it was still inside tells us that certain things are universal and do not pertain to any single culture.




  

Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins: an analysis

Gerald Manley Hopkins brought into the world of poetry some new methods and theories of his own. A few of them are used in his poem Pied Beauty too.
The poem is in praise of God who crated this world with unimaginable variety. Hopkins uses his own phrases, words, rhythm and ideas to express his awe and wonder at the greatness of the Creator.
He begins the poem with a clear and straight forward statement.

             Glory be to God for dappled things-

Then he goes on to list and describe some of the things in his own way. He believed that, just like the landscapes which refer to the beauty of nature out in the open, everything had its own inner beauty also. He referred to this as the inscape, or the inner world of things. He also believed that through several methods which he referred to as instress, the poet brings out the inscape in everything they write about. So though the poet is writing eulogies and eulogies on God, this is done through bringing to light the real beauty in things.
Hopkins uses some traditional methods like figures of speech and comparisons and well chosen words and sound to show things in a clear light. He also uses rhythm, stress and alliteration to make his lines beautiful. He also invents new words when he finds the old ones inadequate.
For example, he compares the sky which has more than one colour to a cow which has more than one colour. The patterns on the body of a cow are very similar to cloud formations. Hopkins uses the word 'brinded' to refer to the way the cow is coloured. This is a word he coined for the purpose of shedding  new light on the pattern of colours on a cow and in the sky. The new and strange words make the readers look more deeply into the objects of comparison. We do so to get a better meaning of the word but we are actually getting a clearer idea of the objects of comparison.
Hopkins also juxtaposes things of different nature. Just after he describes the sky he talks about the patterns of the body of trouts. After referring to God's greatness as seen in two basic elements, air and water, Hopkins refers to fire indirectly when he says,

 fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls...

In the next line he makes a direct remark about the fourth element, the earth when he says,
Landscape plotted and pierced - fold, fallow and plough;
We can also see that the poet breaks the conventions of language use to keep us alert about his utterances. Since words and phrases easily become cliches, the novelty in expression and the shocking way in which the poet has dared to move away from the conventional usage, help the poet hold our attention while he shares his thoughts with us.
Hopkins uses sprung rhythm as his meter. In this meter the first syllables are stressed and it gives each line its energy and power when we read it out loud. Another device used by the poet is the use of special sounds like sibilance and alliteration as in lines like,

                   Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings

which shows alliteration and

                   with swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim'

which shows sibilance

After showing us a list of things which are examples of pied beauty, the poet goes back to his original intention of praising the glory of God who created all this. He admits that he doesn't know how God makes all things beautiful. He states that God's own beauty remains eternal and unchanged.
Thus the poem raised from mere eulogy or a simple prayer to the level of a work of art since the poet has managed to shed new light on our experiences of life. The thought content remains simple but the way the poet describes the world around makes us see the world as we have never seen it before.

Preludes by T S Eliot: an introduction

        Most of us understand, appreciate and enjoy some poems though not all kinds of poems. When we are taught poetry, we learn it as if it is yet another page in the physics text book. The teacher knows the answer and we don’t.

       We learn poetry by analyzing it before we enjoy it. But to write a critical appreciation one needs to enjoy and appreciate a poem. When we do so we should be open and not compare. We should deal with poems the way we (should) deal with kids. Each one is great in its own way.

Poets are great because of their honesty. A dishonest poet is in no way great even if he agrees with great people and their thoughts. So, when we discuss a poem we only have to look at how well the poet has brought it all out on paper and conveyed to us even though he is far away and long ago from us.

         T S Eliot's great work is The Waste Land. It changed overnight the way poets wrote poems or discussed about the old ones. Echoes of this wonderful work of art can be heard in The Preludes too. One may disagree with Eliot’s view of life and literature. He was a great scholar and spoke several languages including Latin and Greek. Later in his life he changed his sect of religion from Protestantism to Catholicism. We may wonder how such a great poet could insist on changing from one sect of a religion to another and that too officially and ceremoniously. We may even wonder how a great person could have several spoiled and spoiling relationships. But we have to remind ourselves that we are judging the poetry of a poet and not the propaganda of a citizen.

             During the time when Eliot was writing his main poems, the First World War was on the anvil. The quick gun leaders of Industrialization had gone in for legal looting. Religion no more held sway. People didn’t know what to look forward to or where to go to find peace of mind. They all waited.

            We do like some poems because the thoughts expressed agree with our own. But at times we like them even though we dislike what they tell us. The reason is their beauty. Sometimes this beauty is the result of the images in the poem. When we say beauty of the images we don’t mean that they are all pretty to look at. We mean that they are effective in reaching out to our mind, without bothering our brain much. In fact, poems taste better when they go around our brains and enter our mind directly.

So when we read Eliot, we should not see his images or lines as codified statements. Poets don’t do that.

            If you need a method, imagine that you have failed in an exam which was very crucial to you. You want to see some people who are as hopeless as you are. Now read the poem. Without thinking about the images, see them in your mind. You will find the poem highly communicative.

           The poem talks about everything disgusting. Before Eliot’s time the poets were disgusted with what they saw around them and wrote about things which were far away and long ago. People took it up and they too began to feel disgusted of what was around them. However, this is like running away from reality. Eliot is only expressing how the squalor, depression, loneliness and other feelings of desolation have worked their way into people too. Those are seen in people’s manners and ways of life as well as in their thoughts and thoughtlessness. 

The Cockroach : An Analysis

The Cockroach
Kevin Halligan

       The poem The Cockroach provides an interesting view of human life as compared to that of a cockroach . It is about a cockroach which is a dirty and repulsive little insect foreshadows the author’s projection of himself. At first glance it may appear to be boring and seems like he’s just talking about a cockroach pacing around the room, but there is more to it. At the very end of the poem, the last line works as a mirror which reflects the rest of the poem in a new light. From a mere observation of a cockroach, the poem rises to the level of a true reflection on life in a highly philosophical way.

The poet observes every movement of a cockroach. Each of the movements matches with our own stages of life. We get stuck at some point in our lives in which we want better things or we rush into things not knowing what we really want.  

“At first he seemed quite satisfied to trace

        A path between the wainscot and the door.”

These lines tell us about how the cockroach is satisfied with his current situation, but then it quickly gets bored of it and begins to crave for something more, something new and fresh.

“But soon he turned to jog in crooked rings.”

This tells us, he was moving around with bigger ambitions. After he reaches this ambition he comes up in life and doesn't know what to do from there.

“After a while, he climbed an open shelf

                   And stopped. He looked uncertain where to go.”

He becomes restless and then finally finds something exciting new in the “open shelf”. His actions match with those of humans at a late stage in life, when we suddenly get greedy and want more, instead of realising to be happy with what we’ve got.  

“A former life had led to? I don’t know.”

These are moments of hesitation and uncertainty.  Is the risk worth it? And finally the poet ends is by saying

“Except I thought I recognised myself.”

This line acts as a interpreter for the whole poem.  The poet sees all the similarities between the cockroach and himself as he rushes through life frantically, not wanting to experience life as it is, but by rushing into things without no true goal or purpose. We are constantly looking for choices but then we realise we don’t even know what we truly want.

         

                                                        

Ode to a Grecian Urn

O my dear Urn,
Lemme see how I can greet you properly.
You, the unspoiled bride of Quietness, the adopted child of Silence and slow-moving Time, history written as beautiful paintings (and so can express a beautiful story more beautifully than my poems).
I know I’ve already messed up. Hate talking about me and my poems.
I wonder what stories found in old dog-eared, torn and tattered books, can be found on your surface. Are these stories of goddesses, of men and women, or of all? Are these stories from old cities or from remote valleys? Who are these men or gods painted on your surface? Who are these women who are ever so reluctant to compromise? What are they chasing and why? What are they struggling to escape from and why? Why are they beating their timbrels and blowing their pipes? Why is their happiness so intense and wild?
The songs we have heard are all so sweet, but surely there must be better ones which we can imagine. The unheard ones ought to be sweeter since they exist only in our imagination and imagination can make anything cho chweet. So, I imagine the pipes I see on this urn as playing on. I can’t hear their music but I imagine it to be sweeter than what I have ever heard. When they play, they are not playing to my real ears, for sure, but more to my soul (love it!) and the songs have no particular tone.
Hey, I see a young man under this tree. Painted figures, they all are. See, this young man can’t stop singing. The trees around him will never shed their leaves. In this picture it is always spring. Nothing changes and everything stays fresh. Simply awesome.
I also see a bold lover, trying to kiss his beautiful girl. Bold and beautiful. But he can only try. And she can only be expecting (no pun intended). They will never kiss. They are painted in that position on the surface of this urn. They are close to winning their goal or reaching their aim. But the real act of kissing won’t happen. This should not worry them. She is not going to run away. Though the young man cannot enjoy the bliss of a kiss, his girl is going to be there for him anytime and he can love her eternally. Moreover, she will always be this fair and lovable forever and ever.
I see some trees that can bring happiness to the scene. They can never shed their leaves and look ugly. It will be always spring for them. Caught and arrested as images, they cannot change like the rest of the world. There is a man playing on a flute. He is happy and so are his songs. He will never get tired. He will be playing on that pipe beautiful music forever and ever. The songs will never get old and stale (unlike last year’s chart-busters). His songs aren’t heard and so will never be too familiar or old.
I see a lot of love pictured on this urn. Such love will be warm forever and enjoyed eternally. It is far above the love of human beings like us. It is above any passion that we all have. Our passions often leave us sad. Either he loses interest or she loses interest or they both get fed up. Our passions always end in frustration and leave us with a fever or a headache, and a bitter taste in the mouth. The pain gives us a parching tongue as if we are really sick. But this love pictured here is above all that. It is totally unlike ordinary love since it is ever lasting. Never changes or fades. Never loses its colour.
I wonder who these people pictured here are. They seem to be going to attend an animal sacrifice in some unknown forest under the guidance of some mysterious priest. Where is he leading the young calf to? It is lowing at the skies. Its sides, silver in colour, are decorated with garlands. These people have left some little town by a river or a sea shore. Or even a hillside with a small fort. They have left that place deserted on this pious morning. Pious, because, obviously, it is some kind of a holy ceremonious day for these people. The streets of that town they have left are not pictured on this urn. But I can imagine that there is such a street in some town. It will remain silent till these people have gone back and (OMG!) they won’t and can’t go back. Not even a single man can return to that place and tell us why all the people have left the town. It will always remain a mystery even in our imagination!
My dear Urn, what wonderful shape you have and what ambiance you spread around! You are covered all over with decorations and images of men and women in marble; with branches of trees found in forests and weeds that have been stepped on by wayfarers.
By being silently enigmatic and parrying our questions, you sting us out of our commonplace worries (thoughts). This is exactly what eternity does for us. We are taken out of our daily worries and left to awe and wonder at the bigger picture, something far beyond us, bigger than all of us.
You are a piece of frozen countryside. Decades and centuries later, when this generation grows old and becomes insignificant (wasted) you shall remain as you are. Being a work of art, you will remain as such in the midst of the sorrows, (of course, different sorrows of a different generation) but still a friend to man. That is what a piece of art does. It pleases us generation after generation. (Just like this poem.) You will keep preaching to us the importance of beauty, the only good thing we need to know on this earth. Beauty is the truth about things or the truth about things is what beauty is all about. This is all we know and all that we need to know and remember.
Beauty takes us beyond our petty concerns. It exhilarates us and stills our thoughts. This is why we are speechless when we encounter something beautiful. It is in that moment that we stop worrying. It is the only moment that we fully live in. At all other times we are dying or waiting to die.

Yours

John Keats 

The City Planners: an Analysis

The City Planners by Margaret Atwood is a poem about the changing cityscapes. It conveys the poet’s thoughts feelings and ideas as she passes through a suburban residential area. She takes the reader along with her on the ride with a very common word- ‘these’. This word is followed by the strange phrase ‘residential Sundays’ which suggests routine and boredom. It talks of a group of people who live in their houses and stay away from work only on Sundays which were actually days of mirth and merriment in olden times. When we read ‘dry August sunlight’ the picture is fairly clear. The poet’s sensitivity has been offended by something she saw. She says it is the sanities.

                                      ‘the houses in pedantic rows, the planted

                                        sanitary trees…’

The urban landscapes keep expanding into the suburbs and changes take place overnight. Instead of the wild and chaotic growth of wilderness, the city grows in artificial rows. In the name of security and sanity at the expense of wild beauty, an uncanny order is brought into the cityscapes. She is amused and saddened in a way at the area’s orderliness, perfection and uniformity.  

The trees which were not planted for the sake of beauty but for sanitary purposes assert the mindset of the people. It is all pragmatic and unaesthetic. We hear echoes of Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’ and Robert Frost’s Mending Wall when Margaret Atwood talks about the invisible power against which human aggression seems to have no chance.

The poet is almost feeling intimidated by the perfection of the place. She thinks the levelness of the surfaces is sneering at a dent on her car door, an aberration which she thinks may not be accepted in a place like this. She describes the deafening silence there.

‘No shouting here, or

shattering of glass’

The only sound welcomed here is the mechanical whirring of the motor of a lawn mower which is cutting off the already ‘discouraged grass’ which suggests the insensitive nature of the place. The fact that the place is very quiet adds to its already ‘boring’ atmosphere. Words like rational ’, ‘straight swath and ‘levelness of surface’ suggest an eternally boring place. The silence of the area almost seems to kill the poet. It is too overpowering and unnerving. Shouting is not welcome nor is the sound of a sheet of glass breaking into pieces, however musical that sound may be. Glass is an artificial object but people don’t want to hear it being broken or destroyed while they are happy about a power lawn insensitively mowing down the tender leaves of grass. Even this is done for the sake of leveling and uniformity. This imagery, along with the earlier one of ‘the planted sanitary trees,’ shows man’s futile but dogged attempt to control nature.

The drive ways avoid the wild hysteria of nature by being even and the roofs are all slanted in the same way as if they are unwilling to face the sky directly. However, there are certain things which still keep the wildness of life: the smell of spilt oil, a faint sickness lingering in the garages, a splash of paint on bricks which looks like a bleeding bruise, a plastic hose coiled like the viciousness of a venomous snake.

even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows

give momentary access to

the landscape behind or under

the future cracks in the plaster

Mortar and cement have been thrown lavishly over nature and its beauty and the poet foresees that the past will come out one day in future. Through the cracks in the plaster, the poet sees what has been submerged and is waiting to show its head. She foresees that all these houses which are against chaos which is the golden rule of nature will one day collapse and like a ship sinking tilt to its side and disappear into the earth. 

Like the movement of glaciers, the change is slow and steady and hard to see. This idea is something that sprouted from the annoyance and frustration that is lingering in her mind. She predicts the destruction of perfection in the streets at the hands of the powerful forces of nature such as the earth, seas and glaciers. This destruction will come as a consequence of having dared to control nature and not allowing nature to grow wild. Restricted and controlled, nature strikes back. Natures anger brims up and at a certain point will just burst , throwing wildly its unrestrained forces of displeasure and annoyance which is shared by the poet in the first stanza. The image of the ship slanting and sinking obliquely into the clay sea reminds us of Titanic which also was a man made wonder and was famed as the unsinkable.  

The poet says that this is what brings in the City Planners, the urbanizers. They have the insane face of political conspirators.

‘…scattered over unsurveyed

territories, concealed from each other,

each in his own private blizzard;

When one world collapses they barge in to build another one right there. They guess directions and make plans which are rigid and stern. Uncompassionate (as wooden borders) plans (transitory lines) for humanity’s future are envisioned by them. The present vanishes like a cloud into thin air. The insane planners bank on the panic of a suburb which has lost its roots. They ring in (order in) the future as maddening sketches on sheets of white paper.

Thus, the poem extols the power of nature to take care of itself and build anew. It mocks at man’s sense of superiority. This is where the poet rises to the level of the great poets of nature who worshiped nature more as a power than as a sensual experience.

Continuum: an Analysis

                  Continuum by Allen Curnow is a deeply spiritual poem though it is written in a candid and casual style. Reading between the lines, we find the poet guiding the reader through his abstract thoughts. 
                 'Continuum' means the transition from one to another, or a seamless conjunction of two entities. This is a popular word in modern physics where time and space are considered as two entities which can change into each other and usually exist as a couple, with one flowing into the other. The poet has structured his poem in such a way that the stanzas, except for the introductory one, flow into one another and do not stand as individual, stand aloof pieces. The transition happens in language as well as in the thoughts that the language expresses.

                   In the first stanza the poet calls our attention to a common misconception. The moon looks like,

                  “(it) rolls over the roof and falls behind

                    my house, and the moon does neither of these things,

                    I am talking about myself.

                So, the poet cites a cliché commonly found in poetry, and unmasks it to tell us that when we say things which are not true, we in fact reveal ourselves. We see things the way we are and not the way they are. The poet warns us that everything that he has written is only his own perception.

                These first lines frame the poem and serve as an introduction. When read in this light, the poem is more about creation, the poet’s and God’s. In the second stanza, the poet tells us we are absolutely programmed in our behavior and that we are not blessed with free will. We can’t think thoughts. They are spontaneous. We can’t even change the subject of our thought or go to sleep when we wish to. It is all predestined for us.

                Having nothing better to do the poet goes out on barefoot in the darkness. He leans from the porch across the hedges in his front courtyard over to where it is darker and nothing is distinguishable (washed-out creation). In the dark sky he spies two bright clouds, with moon’s dust on them. He inserts the word query in brackets to ask whether it is not just another beautiful phrase at the expense of reality. He likes one of the clouds for some personal reasons.

                                                                        “one’s mine

                      the other is an adversary,”

                Which is which will depend on how it is shaped by the wind and other things.

                Time moves slowly for him. In a very cryptic expression he quips,

               “A long moment stretches, the next one is not

                on time.”

              This may sound absurd since moments refer to time and time is never fast slow. Time has a set pace. However, we are reminded of the new idea in physics that time is relative, presumably a fact known to poets for long!

               Being barefooted the poet feels the chill of the cold floor not only on his feet but right up to his throat. Suddenly the night sky pours down as rain or fog or even as darkness. The poet has no choice but to go in. He turns on his heel and goes in closing the door behind him. The door is closed on the real author, God, who created all this. God is such a good craftsman who picks up his tools and his litter when he  is done. God urges the poet quietly back to bed.

                Overall, Continuum is a spiritual poem which makes no distinction between fact and fiction. It also shows the seamless merging of perception and observation. Insomnia or sleeplessness is something that happens to most writers. Usually writers write something to get out of it. Here a greater author, God Himself, urges the writer to go back to bed. Ironically, the writer manages to write a poem out of this experience. The artist and God are also seamlessly connected. They are both creative. God keeps his workshop clean, his tools ready and he keeps creating.

                “the author, cringing demiurge, who picks up

                  his litter and his tools…”

 The poet, on the other hand, feels frustration and sleeplessness and they motivate him to write poems.

Telephone Conversation

Wole Soyinka

In Telephone Conversation, Wole Soyinka uses the format of a telephone conversation to express his thoughts and feeling about racial discrimination. The telephone is supposed to overcome distances, but ironically the telephone conversation here brings out the distance between people.

The speaker, an African is having a conversation with a British lady. He wants to take a house on rent and he has found one. He thinks the price is reasonable and the location is indifferent. The two words reasonable and indifferent are significant. Even such an abstract thing as price could be reasonable while some people are not. The location is indifferent. The location is not bothered who lives there but the people are. They could be indifferent to the point of being insensitive.

The land lady says ‘she lived off premises’. Even then she is bothered about who is going to reside in her house. The deal is almost settled when the man says he is an African. He wants to know whether she has a problem with that. She suddenly goes silent thus expressing her lack of good breeding. Her silence covers up her racial feeling. But it doesn’t cover it up for long.  She tries to tone it down and hide it. Her looks and habits become a mockery of her own culture. Her mind is still quite narrow.

                                                            Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette -pipped.

When she resumes her conversation, she does not ask him anything about his education or his job. She asks him how dark he is. She is hoping that he may not be too dark for her to tolerate. She sees people as black men and white men, but she is trying to compromise if he is not ‘too dark’. With all her good breeding she fails to see that it is not just her aversion to black people that she should cure but her basic racial view point and discrimination that she should completely do away with.

Even if she says she is tolerant to dark and not to very dark, she is still a racist. Here, the poet makes a very subtle point that he is not attacking the discrimination against his race but the discrimination shown to any race for that matter, brown, yellow or light black.

‘ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?’ Revelation came.

‘You mean – like plain or milk chocolate?’

When the speaker says black, she sees ‘red’. Red is the colour of danger and wherever she is forced to share a spot with the public, she might be feeling horrified. By ‘Red double-tiered omnibus squelching tar’, the poet means how the black community is run over by the white because they sense danger lurking in them.

Obviously, the speaker scores over the lady in breeding, culture, decency and even in language. She does not even understand what ‘sepia’ means. The speaker now feels more confident and teases her in different ways.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see

The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet…’

He tries to tell her how his body got that colour. He refers to his rear end and she takes offence and is about to hang her phone. After she has cut him off, he still manages to tell her to see it for herself. Thus, in every way he is able to outsmart her and make his message loud and clear. He would have lost his chance to be her tenant but he has succeeded in ‘giving it to her’.

The poet also has succeeded in destroying the myth of culture and breeding associated with the western world. He shows how discrimination rears its ugly head in subtle ways. 

An Old Woman

An Old Woman by Arun Kolatkar depicts a very commonplace scene from and the street. But in the poet’s hands it becomes a question which haunts us forever. It is written in simple English and has a very simple structure.

He describes an old woman who grabs hold of the passers-by and goes along with them begging for such a small amount as fifty paise. In return she offers to guide them to a shrine. But they have seen it already. They miss the point that ‘the help given to the poor is what takes you to God and his shrine’.  

But she has no choice but to push them to give her something.

She hobbles along any way

and tightens her grip on you

            People get irritated and they sternly say ‘no’ to her. She won’t let them go.

                                You know how old women are

                                 They stick you like a burr.

A burr is a prickly seed case of plants. It sticks to clothes. This is an exact description of this old woman. Being a woman, she is able to generate life like a seed. But being old, she is only a seed case. A burr sticks to clothes, and the old woman is so weak that she too is supported by the cloths she wears.

The old woman now tells them how difficult her life is among those wretched hills. The hills her represent the wealthy and the mighty. They don’t yield anything. Then people take a look at her and they find how devoid of hope her life is. Her eyes are sunken deep and through her eyes they ‘look at the sky.’ In her eyes they see no hope, an empty sky, with neither clouds not silver linings. Her misery encompasses them too.

            Suddenly people find how farcical the society and its institutions are. The hills hoard and do not yield, the temples offer and do not deliver, and the sky has turned empty of gods. There is nothing to help her get over her misery. There is nothing that offers hope for the poor. While everything loses their significance, the woman in her misery stands there as the only reality there is. She is able to put up with everything, unlike whatever is around her.

            The passers-by may give her some coins. Whatever she is given is what she considers them worthy of. This is a moment of choice for them. They can give her a handsome amount and be great in her eyes and in theirs. They can give her a petty amount and be petty in their eyes and in hers. Either way she is strong enough to take it (the shatterproof crone). It is the image of those who are around her that shatters ‘with a plate glass clatter’.

            Arun Klatkar successfully drives a point home. The poem opens our eyes not only to the old woman’s pitiable condition but also to how we deserve to be pitied for the poverty in our souls. Moreover, the old woman is able to see it clearly.  

                        And you are reduced

to so much small change

in her hand.

The Shield of Achilles

 The Shield of Achilles

W. H. Auden’s poem The Shield of Achilles is remarkable for its content, structure and beauty. Though the poem is based on Homer’s Iliad, the poet uses allusions only as a springboard for his own thoughts. It is not an interpretation of the myth or a new perspective. Whatever the poet has drawn from the epic is made to undergo a complete change to suit his purpose.

The poet names his characters only in the end, thereby suggesting that they are not as important as the situation. Thetis represents the mother of a modern day soldier. Her son Achilles represents the new generation which has degenerated an insensitive humanity which loves wars. The armor maker Hephaestos is still an artist who tells the truth as he always did.

In the beginning of the poem we see Thetis looking over Hephaestos’ shoulder with the hope of seeing the beautiful metal carving on the shield he is making. It is a shield for his son Achilles. But she fails to see what she is looking for. She expects to see the glories of a city but she sees only the spoils of a war. The armor maker, an artist, has put there only,

 An artificial wilderness

          And a sky like lead

It is just the opposite of what Homer talks about when he describes the shield of Achilles. No vines, no olive trees and no

Marble well-governed cities

And ships upon untamed seas,          

Around her, there reverberates the voice of authority, ‘in tones dry and level as the place’, using such a pure science as statistics to mislead the masses. She sees the soldiers, depressed and thoughtful, motivated by some false beliefs, marching towards the killing fields.

            She searches for images of ceremonies, rituals and customs. But the ones she sees are of a different nature. There are no priests around temples but sentries outside an army camp.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot

                      Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)

Instead of animal sacrifice, it is human sacrifice. Instead of pious rituals, it is a scene of insensitivity. Three people, gone pale with fear, are led out to be shot dead. The world around is ruled by a few. The majority live a shameful life,

And died as men before their bodies died.

            The mirth and merriment that Hephaestos had depicted on the shield of Achilles cannot be spotted on the shield of this modern day Achilles’ shield. All Thetis gets to see is,

                   A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

loitering about in a weed-choked field, pelting stones at birds. His first lessons were about girls getting raped and boys knifing their friends. He has not heard about values or compassion.

               ‘Of any world where promises were kept,

                Or one could weep because another wept.

As the armorer finishes his work and walks away,

Thetis of the shining breasts

                     Cried out in dismay

She is horrified at what is in store for her son. He himself is an iron-hearted killer, whom wars may please and not sadden. His own death is imminent too. 

Thus we can easily see how the poets busts the myths associated with war. He is not only criticizing the modern day war, he is also making us doubt whether the wars in epics could have been different. Using the strands gleaned from the epic Iliad, Auden has managed to weave a magical mirror in which we shamefully witness our own world finding in war a solution not only for political problems but for economic problems too. 

Character Analysis: Macbeth

Character Analysis: Macbeth

Characters in play can be assessed by studying the following aspects

• What do they say, what do they do and what do others say about them
• What are the beliefs, values and motivations
• How much do they succeed in practicing what they preach
• Who are they made to be in conflict with or how do they differ from the other in the play

When attempting a character analysis of Macbeth, bear the following points in mind:

·         His bravery

1.        Report by the sergeant

2.       Macbeth accepts Lady Macbeth’s challenge to act like a man

3.       He faces the witches and goes to confront them again

4.       He responds well to challenges and never shies away

5.       All his words show determination and dynamism

·         His ambition

1.       Obvious from his actions

2.       Lady Macbeth is aware of it.

3.       Banquo is aware of it

4.       The witches exploit it

5.       He goes blind with ambition  and commits horrible murders

6.       The price he pays for his ambition and consequent action does not deter him

·         His imagination

1.       He is able to look his circumstances and the consequences of his actions

2.       His words are highly poetic

3.       He sees a lot of apparitions and hallucination

4.       He is able to daydream about his prospects

·         His affection

1.       He loves his wife and confides in her

2.       He accepts her guidance and advice

3.       He uses terms of endearment in his conversation

4.       He insulated her against more evil news after the first few murders

·         His nobility

1.       It takes a lot of persuasion from the people around him as well as the circumstances to make him commit the crimes

2.       He aborts his plans several times

3.       Other characters comment on his good nature

·         His fear

1.       he gets scared when he sees the witches and seeks clarification from Banquo

2.       He shies away from his own evil plans

3.       He fears Banquo

4.       He is superstitious

Illusion and Reality in Macbeth

                                                                    Illusion and Reality

                   Illusion as a corollary of reality seems to be a favourite theme for Shakespeare. The theater itself is a world of illusion and Shakespeare talks endlessly about it. The news from the new world and the flood of Greek and Roman literature also would have influenced Shakespeare to explore this aspect of life.

                When the witches say 'fair is foul and foul is fair', we are told of how the world is seen differently by people depending on what they are. Evil operates through deception. Macbeth’s mind has an inkling of the deeper water he is led to when he says,

                                     So fair and foul a day I have not seen.

                    Duncan refers to Macbeth as a worthy gentleman and pays with his life for his inability to see through Macbeth’s outward appearance. Macbeth is called noble and also a valiant cousin. But in reality Macbeth is a potential traitor. Duncan trusted the earlier Thane of Cawdor. Now he trusts Macbeth and makes him the new Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth is happy when Duncan plans to visit his castle but Duncan fails to see why Macbeth is so happy about the visit. Both Duncan and Banquo find the atmosphere at the castle wholesome and welcoming. They don’t know about the serpents that reside there.

                  Lady Macbeth welcomes Duncan very politely and expresses her desire to serve him very effectively. But we know that she has already made up her mind to kill the king. She herself refers to the occasion as the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. She tells her husband to don a pleasant appearance to hoodwink the others. She says,

                              Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it,

                 She tells him that 'to beguile the time he has to look like the time'. Macbeth more than echoes her words when he says later,

                            False face must hide what the false heart doth know. 

He later gives her a taste of her own medicine when he says,

                             Let your remembrance apply to Banquo:

                             Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue

  

             Macbeth is presented as a great warrior who vanquishes all his enemies.  But his main enemy is within himself. He says the he has given his soul to man’s eternal enemy. He fails to see that the enemy is within himself in the form of ‘vaulting ambition that overleaps itself’. His courage and determination fail when he confronts Lady Macbeth. He is not powerful than his enemies in anyway. But she is able to work on him by fanning his own desires. We hear her counsel Macbeth and persuade him with diabolical cogency.

           Appearance and reality becomes very clear when Banquo’s ghost appears. Hallucinations are used very effectively to reinforce this theme. The witches give Macbeth some false promises which he considers as protection against his downfall. But he fails to see the double meaning in their words. He is killed not by a man born of a woman. He is killed by a man who was brought into this world by ripping open his mother. The foerst which is thought not to move, finally moves toward Macbeth’s castle in the form of branches held by his enemy soldiers. This kind of cheating makes Macbeth call the witches ‘these juggling fiends’.

          When Malcolm meets Macduff in England, he suspects Macduff is a spy. Malcolm pretends to be unfit to be king and fools Macduff. In effect, they both misunderstand each other. Later Macduff is found to be a trustworthy person and Malcolm is found to be a man of integrity. There several instances of life considered as a drama and the world as theater, both examples of reality and illusion. The supernatural also is made use of to reiterate this aspect of the world.

The Lady of Shalott

                The Lady Of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is a beautiful poem in which the poet catches the true spirit of Romanticism. The poem has plenty of exquisite images and presents different tones and moods.

                The poem begins with a beautiful description of the island of Shalott . Water lilies grow around the island and on either side of the river there are fields of barley and rye. Along the river there is a road that runs ‘to the many-towered Camelot'. Here we get a picture that matches the descriptions in King Arthur’s legends. However, the images of flowers and grains as well as the movements around serve as a contrasting back drop for the barren life of a lady who lives on the island.  She is generally known as Lady of Shalott. Nobody knows whether she has any other name. She lives a cloistered life in a castle with ‘four grey walls and four grey towers’. 

                                But who has seen her wave her hand?

                                Or at the casement seen her stand?

                Only the reapers reaping early in the morning or late at night hear her singing a song. Then they whisper to each other that it is the Lady of Shalott. She stays in her bower by day and night and weaves  a magic web in bright colours.

                                She has heard a whisper say,

                                A curse is on her if she stay

                                To look down to Camelot.

                However, she has no idea what the curse is. So weaves on, without thinking of anything else. She sees the world only as the reflection on a mirror hanging in front of her. For years, she has not looked directly down the road to Camelot. Here the poet not only depicts what happened long ago and far away but also sustains the mystery by leaving a few things unsaid. Sadly, all the images that get reflected on her mirror are happy ones unlike her own life. She sees market girls in their bright dress, group of girls who are all happy, abbots passing by, shepherds tending their sheep, and boys on errands. She also sees the reflection of knights but she has no favourites among them.

                She, however, weaves onto her web things that she sees. She weaves the images of a funeral and two loves in the moonlight and laments, ‘I am sick of shadows.’

                One day, a handsome and bold knight comes riding down the road to Camelot. His attire and appearance are remarkable. The bridle with gems glitters like a string of stars; the bridle bells make sweet music, and on his bright dress hangs a silver bugle. The jewel on his saddle shines brightly and the helmet and the plume are as bright as a flame. His whole appearance is like that of a meteor burning bright. His curly hair is coal-black in colour and,

                                His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;

                                On burnished hooves his war-horse trod;

                He sings a merry tune as he rides and the mirror in front of Lady of Shalott reflects him for her. This sight is too much for her to resist. She leaves her web and the loom. She walks up and down in her room three times. She dares to look out at the water lilies and she sees the knight’s helmet and plume. She looks down to Camelot. In that instant her web flies away and her mirror cracks from side to side. She now realizes that ‘the curse is come upon’ her.

                Nature changes immediately to foreshadow her tragedy. Everything merry becomes sad, a storm brews and it starts raining heavily. Lady of Shalott comes down from her tower and finds a boat beneath a willow tree. She writes her name on the prow of the boat. She looks towards Camelot, with no expression on her face, like a seer who looks at his own grim future. At the end of the day she loosens the chain that stays the boat and lie in it. The broad river takes her away down to Camelot. She is wearing a snowy white dress, giving her the appearance of a bride. Leaves fall on her like the nature’s tears. 

                As she drifts towards Camelot, they hear her sing her last song. She sings a carol in a low voice till her blood is completely frozen. She dies even before she reaches the first house in Camelot. Her dark eyes are still turned towards Camelot. She floats like a gleaming shape by the garden and galleries of houses in Camelot. 

              People come to the wharf to see her dead body. There were knights, burghers, lords and dames among them. They all read her name on the prow of the boat. They were all sad and silent and wondered who it was. Nobody spoke a word but crossed themselves out of fear. But Lancelot looked at her dead body and thought for a while. Then he said,

                           She has a lovely face;

                           God in his mercy lend her grace

                           The Lady of Shalott

            The poem ends there but it leaves a long lasting impression on the reader. We still don't know who she is but we empathize with her in her tragedy. The images the poet painted are so clear and awe-inspiring that they haunt every reader. They rhyme scheme and the refrains add to the beauty of the poem. The rhythm makes the poem read like a folk song. This is indeed one of the greatest poems of all time.

The Tintern Abbey

In  The Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth we see a romantic poet at his best. The poet goes beyond the common romantic themes of ‘far away and long ago’ and looks deeper into himself by reflecting on his own relationship with nature and that of his sister’s. He argues that the pleasure derived from being in the presence of nature is more sublime than other everyday pleasures and that such a pleasure goes beyond sensual pleasures. For Wordsworth, poetry was the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. Most of his poems on nature are recordings of his reflections on visits to landscapes he had done much after the actual visit.
Tintern Abbey even more so, since it was written after his second visit to the beautiful landscapes around the river Wye beside which there is an old place of worship called the Tintern Abbey. The abbey is now deserted and it suggests how religion has failed to console the poet during his most disturbed days and how nature took its place and successfully kept him happy and contended.
The poem begins with a graphically rich description of nature. Using beautiful images and melodious expressions the poet conjures up a beautiful image about the river.
These waters rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur

He looks higher up and sees the mountains that set forth the springs.

Once again
I behold these steep and lofty hills
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of a more deep seclusion;

The lines that follow appeal to our senses so much that they could be easily mistaken for those written by John Keats. The poet speaks of orchard-tufts which, with their unripe fruits, are clad in one great hue and lose themselves among other trees. He continues in the same mellifluous tone
These hedge rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild:

and then about movements and silence,

wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees

Having displayed his skills to describe nature, he starts to explore his own being and share his thoughts with us. He had seen that same landscape five years ago and it has changed very little. During all those years, it lingered in his memory and continued to please him.
I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensation sweet

and gave him ‘tranquil restoration’. It also gave him a serene and blessed mood in which his existence and ‘even the motion of his human blood’ were ‘almost suspended’ and he became nothing more than a pure ‘living soul’. His thoughts were settled and by the power of harmony he was able to see into the life of things. He often recalled the memory of this landscape when he was troubled by the fretful stir and the unprofitable fever of the world.
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
How often has my spirit tuned to thee!

The poet recalls and compares how he behaved and felt during his first visit when he was much younger and less insightful and rather inexperienced. Then ‘like a roe’ he ‘bounded over the mountains by the side /Of the deep rivers’ and ‘wherever nature led’ him. Those were the ‘boyish days’ and he derived ‘coarser pleasures’ from his immediate experiences. The physical sensation and pleasure he enjoyed in the lap of nature from the ‘colours and forms’ did not make him think about or look for anything beyond the ‘here and now’.
But ‘that time is past’. During his second visit after five long years he feels ‘a pleasure that disturbs’ him,
with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused

with his being. He is still,

A lover of the meadows and the woods
And the mountains; and of all we behold

But now, nature has risen from that which speaks ‘the language of the senses’ in order to please the human mind to the level of,
a nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being

Paganism or acknowledging and worshipping God in everything around us is not a philosophy favoured in the west. The monotheistic concept of the western religions does not allow the worship of any other God. So, nature poems in English, unlike those in the eastern languages, remained for long as description of nature’s beauty. Wordsworth, along with S. T. Coleridge, risked being called ‘a pagan’ and dared to call himself
A worshipper of nature …
Unwearied in that service…

making a personification of nature leading to its deification by using the word worship along with it.
The poet says that in the recent years when his life has been one of ‘sad perplexity’ and disillusionment he has learned to look on nature,
Not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity
Nor harsh or grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.

He has seen how nature can stay in one’s mind and continue to guide, help and raise one above the common din of life. Here the poet is referring to his disillusionment in his private life as well has the hope and despair that the French revolution gave him.
Now that he is aware of the immediate and long term benefits of being in the presence of nature, the poet wants to initiate into such a life his sister Dorothy who is accompanying him on this second visit. He sees in her, an image of what he used to be long ago. He assures her that no evil shall prevail on them, no rash thoughts shall come to them, no sneer of selfish men shall ever touch them and no unkind men can hurt them if they have faith in the powers of nature. It is her privilege to help men like that.
Knowing that nature never did betray
The heart that loved her
He hopes that his sister will take heed to remember this lesson that he is teaching him now.
If solitude , or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
She asks her whether she will ever forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; ………….
With warmer love – oh! With far deeper zeal
Of holier love.

He tells his sister that this second visit is dearer to him, both because of the beauty of nature and also because of his sister’s companionship. Thus we see how Wordsworth creates an atmosphere of affection, beauty, nostalgia, scenic beauty, and divinity to convey to us the embalming power of nature that raised man to sublime levels.