From Art, With Love
(A Rough Sketch To Be Refined Soon)

You frustrate me.

You frustrate me because your work is binary and your perception is globally desperate. You have grand ideas of how you would fix things -

Strange verb, that. To fix: to fix dinner is to make, to fix furniture is to mend, to affix is to attach.
And you are fixed.
Still, immovable, impenetrable. Fixed in your ways.

- if only you were granted such power. There it is. If only you were granted. What internal fear prevents you from grasping that power? And what good comes of merely observing and critiquing? And why do you dismiss my offers of help? Why do you deny my entire existence and in doing so negate your own power?

You do not believe that the “feminine form” may be used with an flexible masculine force to achieve your means. Instead, you isolate the masculine force, try to make it unbeatable and fixed, as yourself.

Give it up. Stop compensating. I could be your firearm. Your sword. Your cannon. I could be diplomacy and I could be war. And yet you deny me this.

Use me as your catalyst.

This remains purposely unfinished. The writer finds herself too frustrated with this character to remain kind and so plans to resume in a few days once she has worked through her personal issues with this unfortunate indoctrinated bast — man.

The writer reminds herself to remember the representation of history in Marlatt’s Ana Historic when she decides to continue this note.
]]> http://bookstalk.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/from-art-with-love/feed/ 0 Kate http://bookstalk.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/paper-pages/ http://bookstalk.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/paper-pages/#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:25:57 +0000 Kate Marlow http://bookstalk.wordpress.com/?p=22 ]]> I’ve been reading Plath, writing tons, inspired by other creative minds. Typing long-winded versions of small thoughts seems, at the moment, pointless. I’m sure I’ll come back to it eventually. Hopefully more picture-thoughts soon…

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It was then Hazard knew he was in deep trouble. He told me that much, reticent as he was in discussing the hallucination that had afflicted him, and to assure him I burst out with an account of my own reassuring experience at the circus. I was supremely happy, nestled now against my father’s arm, now against my mother’s breast. The trumpet blared and the trapeze artists climbed their rope ladders into what seemed the very clouds. In my sweetest fear I pulled both my parents to me; and then for a wild moment the splendid figure of a man was floating free from his flying trapeze, somersaulting in the air – and as I started to scream his arms reached gently out, and swinging down from the sky came a girl so faithful and brave that all the crowd roared, and the man was caught and saved.

I would love to take half an hour to meditate on the beauty of this passage, particularly the second half, but I haven’t the time today. Instead I shall leave it to you, dear readers.

The common themes of Morley Callaghan’s novel Such Is My Beloved have been explored in the decades since its first publication: religious intertext, the nature of love and the nature of desire in the novel have been extensively researched and written on by numerous scholars. However these scholars have, for an inexplicable reason, failed to take note of the role and representation of family and the familial structure within the novel. Although this topic is not one of Callaghan’s most attention-seeking themes it is nonetheless prevalent throughout the book, apparent in Callaghan’s comparison of the Canzano family and the Robinson family (both are families of the clergy but incredibly different in every other way) and the dichotomy between this familial representation and the lack of family provided for his most central characters: Father Dowling, Ronnie and Midge. This underlying theme in the novel is yet harder to ignore when we consider the religious nature of the overall text and the obvious correlations that may be drawn between the structure of The Church and the structure of the Family. My aim is to bring light to this topic by emphasizing the role of family in Such Is My Beloved and illustrating the parallels between the spiritual journey and familial journey that Callaghan’s three central characters undergo.

Today I woke up to find two, squabbling with each other over the proper  way to play connect four. They’re both rather tragic – and as such, endearing – characters, both sad antiheroes who fear challenges. The man has laugh lines from a life past, a receding hairline and the beginnings of a paunch that he will constantly battle but never defeat. The woman cannot be characterized as anything other than mouse-like in appearance. She lets herself be taken advantage of because it’s easier than causing a fight. When backed against a wall the woman – Tina, I think her name is – tends to throw seething, passive-aggressive remarks at her opponent. Her partner (as if such a term could be used to describe the relationship between the two) throws biting, straightforward insults that seem to land somewhere past his opponent’s left shoulder. Unless his opponent is Tina; she has a tendency to take everything personally.

Although I am itching to write their story (although their story has been written before, I’m sure), I simply don’t have the time. I am instead conquering a research paper which has proven to be incredibly difficult, as my topic has not yet been researched. Or if it has, the final result has not been published. I feel privileged to be blazing new trails, etc., but at the same time have only four evenings before this project is due. I have been gathering information all month but nothing seems enough – I don’t yet have that one key phrase or argument or clue that will tie my paper together. It seems that I must proceed without one.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass: there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!Eliot looked fondly upon this passage and was thinking of this episode when he wrote the following lines for “Burnt Norton,” the first of his Four Quartets:

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw…

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future.
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

Interested readers should also look in to The Family Reunion, a play by Eliot that also uses the secret garden as a metaphor for things that might have been, had one opened certain doors.

Look carefully at the first few lines of “Burnt Norton.” Can you figure it out? Eliot considers the Four Quartets to be his masterpiece, written after thirty years of study. There are university courses dedicated just to this poem and the Christian and mystical references in the text. If there was any real motivation for me to pick up a bible and give it a read, this is it.

What I love, though, is that the intertextual influences from one writer to another are becoming evermore apparent to me. It’s swell.

Studying the great novels and canonical tales of writers past is wonderful. Studying literary criticism and theory really does spark my interest. Studying the cultural context of the great poets is interesting and challenging. But none of these pique my interest in the way folk- and fairy-tales do. If I were to carry on my English education after my undergrad I have a feeling that I would specialize in these tales in a global perspective. They are little keys to big cultural secrets and what better way to learn about societies and their histories than through the pastoral and idyllic stories of old?

Interesting, too, is to see how interpretations of folk- and fairy-tales change as the cultures around them do. I suspect that when the Renaissance of the Renaissance occurs (it is inevitable, as we can only cycle through so many periods before making our way back to the beginning) scholars will look at 20-and 21-century children’s tales and scoff at the softness we lend them.

On a related note, I love how the names and terms of the literary world aren’t as foreign as they once were. While my literary education was top-notch in high school much of it was focused on the conventions of modern fiction and global storytelling; very little mention was made of the European Greats. In my first few years of school if someone made mention of Baudelaire or Hegel or Peacock or Hume I would have been quite lost, but I’ve been making great strides this year. Rather than doing the minimal required reading I have made an effort to truly learn about the subject matter, which is something I didn’t take the time to do in High School. Why would I, when I could get away with doing minimal work for great results?

Jo’s breath gave out here, and wrapping her head in the paper, she bedewed her little story with a few natural tears; for to be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.

I was thinking about success today and concluded that if my efforts as a teacher are never recognized by those I love I should be okay: I am content to quietly succeed in that sphere of being for it is my duty to family and self to do so. But any headway that I make into the literary or musical community would be made sweeter with the praise of those I love.

How backwards it is that I suffer from such an excess of hubris that I will not seek endearment from my father and my professors (and anyone representing them) upon the event of personal success, yet spend most days working as a mule in order to make proud my two dear triads, Alex-Amy-Olga and Mother-Grandmother-Brother? The more I read her the more I realize: how very much like Jo.