Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Mansfield and Her Influences

After reading Katherine Mansfield’s stories, I am extremely impressed. Unlike Virginia Woolf’s stories, there seems to be more dialogue, which for me, makes her stories much more available. Mansfield’s characters possess distinct qualities that allow them to be factors within the story. They themselves are more of the story, rather than the actual plot itself in most cases. Each of Mansfield’s stories, while often incorporating the same characters, address a wide variety of ideas. It is also interesting to notice the different influences that Mansfield may have had on her writing, as well as her significant influence on Virginia Woolf’s work.

In “Prelude”, immediately I loved seeing the use of the vernacular language. It made me think of Mark Twain and his use of the American vernacular language in his fiction. This different dialogue provides the reader with another significant dimension to the characters, providing age, class, and even ethnicity without stating it outright. This helps the characters to come to life, which especially occurred for me with Lottie and Kezia. Their dialogue made me feel as though these small girls were running around me as I took in their story. “Prelude” also addresses class distinctions as we have seen in many of the other modern works. The interactions between the servants and the family establish Mansfield’s take on society. Mansfield is also concerned with “escape” in “Prelude”. Each of the characters possess a desire to run away from their respective realities. Linda Burnell wants to drive away in a carriage and not even wave goodbye to everyone. She loves her husband, but often does not see the man who she fell in love with; instead, she sees a man who is constantly trying to impregnate her, something which she does not want to happen. Beryl Fairfield is stuck living with her sister’s family instead of having a life of her own. She wants to escape from their life, as well as this fake self that she has developed in order to cope with the realities that exist. The children often play different role-playing games, allowing them to get away from their small, young reality and deposits them within grown-up or even animal life. Alice gets lost in her dreams. Stanley really seems to be the only person who no longer feels the need to escape, now that they have moved from the city to the country. Perhaps this is why the women are always happy when Stanley leaves, as seen in “At the Bay”, so they no longer need to be exposed to his contentment.

As I read “Prelude”, I wondered if all these women represented Mansfield as a whole in some way. Each of the women struggles with their different problems – be it sensuality, fakeness, or death. According to Lee and Meyers, Mansfield encountered similar problems within her own life.

In “At the Bay”, I could not help but see nuances of Kate Chopin’s writing. Chopin’s “The Awakening” was released in 1899, so it is possible that Mansfield may have read it, but was it really an influence? I searched some academic journal databases looking for any connection, but it was to no avail. Could a modern British woman writer be influenced by a modern American woman writer? Each of their stories has women characters who are influenced by other women. These women who influence have characteristics outside the realm of normalcy. They are often disliked or unaccepted within the society, as is the case with Mademoiselle Reisz in The Awakening and Mrs. Harry Kember in “At the Bay”. The story is set on a beach, as much of The Awakening is, and ultimately results in an affair as well. The similarities are striking, I am just not sure if Katherine would stoop to the level of American literature.

While I am on the topic of influences, it is quite clear that Woolf influenced “The Garden-Party” and vice versa. Woolf’s “Kew Gardens” does seem to have had an impact on Mansfield’s “The Garden-Party”, however I think Mansfield’s story had an even greater effect on Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. “The Garden-Party” follows Mrs. Dalloway’s plot almost to a tee – opens with flowers, a party is being thrown, some talk of class distinctions, a man dies, upset at the possible ruin of the party, and a simple statement to close the story. I am almost a little upset with Woolf, as I can not help but almost feel as though Mansfield was robbed. While I understand the idea of tradition and the use of the canon in art, the overall similarities are overwhelming. Especially after reading Lee’s essay on the relationship between Woolf and Mansfield, I feel that Woolf was quite devilish in the relationship, more so than Katherine. Perhaps I am being too sentimental about the whole thing, because as it is, each of these two women produced extraordinary works and it is quite possible that their relationship was the necessary catalyst to provide the competition and the drive that made these women what they have become today. Don’t worry Virginia, you are forgiven…

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

To Hear Vivaldi...

I had technical difficulty getting the audio clip on this blog page itself, but if you go to my profile page, click on Audio URL and it gives you a great MP3 of the concerto...ENJOY!

"Kew Gardens" as "La Primavera"

From last week's discussion, I have been preoccupied with the idea of modern works of art influencing one another. This week's readings of the stories from Virginia Woolf's Monday or Tuesday exacerbated my preoccupation (to a fault). Through the readings, I recognized Woolf's experimentation with stream of consciousness and her use of being versus non-being, which she loves to use as well. I enjoyed the way that Woolf painted a picture in each of her stories, using bright colors to create an environment for her characters and her ideas. It brought me back to the Goldman essay and Woolf’s relationship with her sister, Vanessa. In fact, I was so moved by Woolf’s story, “Kew Gardens”, I developed an intense relationship with it – however, it was musical in nature.

From the start of my journey into “Kew Gardens”, I initially thought that I was just going to get another vivid piece of work by Woolf. The first paragraph sucked me into the gardens. I became a part of the flower-bed that day in the gardens. I felt the colors of the flowers. I was the raindrop. Every descriptive aspect of the flower-bed, I enveloped. I was now thoroughly invested in her story, there was no way out.

Next, the first couple entered the gardens -- a married couple, with children, each contemplating their past lives without their spouse. The man thinks about his first love, Lily (ironically the name of a flower; certainly a plan by Woolf), while the woman thinks of painting water-lilies and a kiss which she received, not from a lover, but from an elderly woman, “the mother of all [her] kisses all [her] life”. Odd, slightly askew from what one would intend this woman to be thinking, but nevertheless Woolf does not want to be typical. The family walks by the flower-bed and they gradually dissipate into nature and again, we are returned to the flower-bed itself.

Here, it is the snail that becomes the object of our attention. Now, I am him. I see his goal amidst the brown cliffs of earth. During my deliberation of how to cross the bed, yet another couple walks past – this time, two men.

One old and one young, I am not sure who is leading who through the gardens. Initially, I believed it was the older man who was a bit of kilter, but at further reading, I am not sure if it is not the younger who is the eccentric one. The elder man is relaying stories about the spirits of the dead to the younger man, but then loses himself to a woman in black and then to a flower, which brings him to Uruguay – Woolf’s stream of consciousness at work again. This leads us to another couple, now two elderly women, who are entertained by the two men, but enter themselves into an odd dialogue of words. Woolf makes these words literally fall from the sky and one of the women experiences it, along with the reader. And then I returned to the flower-bed as the snail.

As I am deciding which way I will traverse the bed, another couple appears – a young man and a young woman. As Woolf describes the two, they seem to emerge from a chrysalis. Their interaction is “toneless and monotonous”, as if still trying to get a grasp of their newness. They are in constant question of each other and of their surroundings, just as a newborn animal would be. However, the man wants to go one way and the woman another.

Finally, I am returned to the flower-bed. This time, I am not the snail, but again a presence within the bed itself.

At the end of the story, I could not help but feel that I had somehow experienced this all before – a déjà vu of sorts. I was sure, however, that I had not read this story before. My experience with this work was purely musical. I am by no means a classical music connoisseur, in fact my only exposure to classical music came by means of a humanities requirement for my undergraduate degree at Emory. Alas, despite my amateur knowledge and after serious struggle, I was able to come up with two pieces – Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “The Rite of Spring” and Antonio Vivaldi’s concerto “Four Seasons – La Primavera”. Ultimately, I decided that it was not Stravinsky’s ballet that I thought coincided with “Kew Gardens” but instead Vivaldi’s work. Although there could be arguments in favor of Stravinsky, “The Rite of Spring” was too wild and dissonant for Woolf’s story, which had a clear rhythm.

As I listen to Vivaldi, I can see “Kew Gardens” unfold. Every natural aspect of the story has a voice within his concerto. Vivaldi divided his concerts into allegro-largo-allegro, with each of the allegros being fast in tempo and the largo being slow. In “Kew Gardens”, the allegros are the introduction and the conclusion of the story, while the largo is the paragraph about the snail. Vivaldi also wrote sonnets to go with each section of his concerto. They are as follows:

Allegro

Springtime is upon us.
The birds celebrate her return with festive song,
and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes.
Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven,
Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

Largo

On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him.

Allegro

Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes, nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath the brilliant canopy of spring.

I am still struggling to understand if there is any concrete relation between the sonnets and Woolf’s story, but if anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

As I was researching Vivaldi to find these sonnets and a file of his concerto to include with my blog, I discovered that Vivaldi’s work was not wholly discovered until the very early 20th century and apparently, Ezra Pound was instrumental to his revival, according to Wikipedia. Perhaps we can thank him for exposing Woolf to Vivaldi’s works? I have not yet found any other correlation between the two’s work, but I am hoping to get into this further. As you can see, it is a work in progress and perhaps I have bit off more than I can chew…

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

"the light they gave us was not extinguished until it had revealed the way of the future"

This week’s readings have revealed the complimentary relationship between visual arts and literature through the development of Modernism. Both aspects of art experienced similar challenges in trying to gain respect for their works. Just as modern literature moved through different movements, modern art simultaneously did so as well. Visual art also encountered issues in feminism, politics, and morality; at times, being accused of having agendas. Moving away from Impressionism and concern with naturalism, art became Post-Impressionistic and became more concerned with how we relate to objects, rather than simply color and light. Goldman cites Virginia Woolf’s response to Bergson’s criticism in “Romantic to Classic: Post-Impressionist Theories from 1910 to 1912” and Woolf’s concern with consciousness in art. Woolf focuses a great deal on being versus non-being and where, when, how, and why we float between these liminal spaces. This passage reminded me of another quotation by Woolf:

Often when I have been writing one of my so-called novels I have been baffled by this same problem; that is, how to describe what I call in my private shorthand – ‘non-being’. Every day contains more non-being than being. Yesterday for example, Tuesday the 18th of April, was [as] it happened a good day; above the average in ‘being’. It was fine; I enjoyed writing these first pages…These separate moments of being were however embedded in many more moments of non-being. I have already forgotten what Leonard and I talked about at lunch; and at tea; although it was a good day the goodness was embedded in a kind of nondescript cotton wool. This was always so. A great part of every day is not lived consciously… When it is a bad day the proportion of non-being is much larger…The real novelist can somehow convey both sorts of being (“A Sketch of the Past” 70).

Woolf wants experience. For her, art should be a moment of being, whether in visual art or literature, as perhaps Woolf may argue here that her “nondescript wool” is a work of art in itself.

Along with this push for expression and design, form begins to supersede color in visual art. The emotional elements of design that Fry develops (rhythm of line, mass, space, light, shade and color) brought to mind Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. Eliot uses all of these elements within the poem to make it a great piece of literature, so it is possible that Fry may have inadvertently set standards for poetry as well.

Similarities also spawned in the arguments between romanticism and classicism within the visual arts, just as it had within literature. Arguments within Goldman’s essays returned me to Eliot, yet again, but this time with “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in mind. Meier-Grafe said, “the light they gave us was not extinguished until it had revealed the way of the future” (127). I thought this was the perfect quotation to relate to Eliot’s concept of tradition – applied to all artistic works. No work is completely the artist’s. It is built on the canon of artistry and I believe that through this week’s readings, it can safely be said that this is true across mediums as well. Visual art can influence written art and vice versa. Goldman’s essays did, however, bring up the issue of elitism within visual art, as Eliot suggested in “Tradition and the Individual Talent”: “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things” (43).

Lastly, Goldman’s account of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf’s relationship is extremely interesting. I had not realized how important visual art was to Woolf and the significant reflection of it within her works. She attended art exhibitions to help herself with her own artistry. The artistic works of Bell influenced Woolf positively, I would say, provoking ideas that perhaps would not have flourished without her sister’s physical artistic prowess.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Eliot's Early Poetry

Prior to reading Eliot’s poetry for the first time, I was unsure of what to expect. Eliot’s prose was complicated enough, I could not imagine how obscure his poetry was going to be. Despite whatever hidden themes Eliot may have created, I was surprised at the imagery that he was still capable of provoking for the reader. Due to Eliot’s fierce disdain for Romanticism, I thought I would be walking into an intangible world of feelings, unable to be fully experienced with all of my senses. Eliot, thank you for proving me wrong.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” immediately interested me with the simile, “When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table” (ln 2-3). A creepy analogy to think about – a person sprawled out on a table, about to have surgery performed on them – yet, intriguing; the perfect lead-in to perk my interest. Two stanzas later, Eliot uses personification to manipulate the fog into having cat-like qualities as it “rubs its back”, “rubs its muzzle”, “licked its tongue” and eventually “curled once about the house, and fell asleep” (ln 15-22). As the poem continues, it becomes apparent that the narrator (who I assume is Prufrock) is traveling to visit a woman. However, there is an anxiousness that I cannot exactly pinpoint to one exact place. Prufrock’s concern with his receding hair in lines 40-41 is an example of his own anxiety about the visit, but there seems to be an underlying tense feeling throughout the poem.

After Prufrock’s (secret) visit to the woman, he is concerned about telling her his story. As the epigraph suggests, Dante only told his story because it could not be retold, and therefore judged. Prufrock, in offering up his tale, may be hurt by this woman who really does not have any desire to know him in that sense. Perhaps this can be related to Eliot’s own life and the lack of intimacy that he experienced with his wives. Prufrock does not want to be like Hamlet, with his incessant monologues, droning on and on about his problems, for if he did, he would be more like the Fool of Shakespeare’s plays and it would eventually lead to his “drowning” (ln 111-119, 131).

Unfortunately, I have not yet read Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, so I am not entirely sure of the connections between Eliot’s poem and James’s novel. I am familiar with Eliot’s literary criticism and his praise of bouncing off of other artists’ work, so I imagine he used some of James’s techniques here. Eliot’s poem does compose a portrait of a lady. I use the word “compose” because Eliot uses many musical terms throughout the poem and it even has a song-like form itself. The Preludes of Chopin are juxtaposed to the tom-tom of the narrator’s mind, creating this disinterest in the narrator when he is talking to the woman. Is the woman interested in the narrator and he is not interested in her? I get the sense that she is much older than the narrator in her dialogue. In Part II, the woman says, “And youth is cruel, and has no remorse/And smiles at situations which it cannot see”, then the narrator smiles (ln 48-50). Ultimately, when the narrator goes overseas and he wants to write to the woman, he is concerned that she may have died. This must somehow be incorporated with the “dying fall” that is located within the poem in various places. A “dying fall” are muted or dampened notes, that have rhythm but no pitch. They are comprised of implied notes that cannot be performed or are performed only faintly for effect. How is the woman’s death a “dying fall”?

I do not have much to say about “Preludes” or “Le Figlia Che Piange”. I enjoyed both poems, but I did not find them to be as intriguing as the others. I did think it was interesting that “Preludes” was not in the beginning of the poems (as a prelude would be), however I see the significance of it being after “Portrait of a Lady” with the mention of Preludes in that poem. Perhaps if the lady did die, this is the continuance of the concert after her death. It is a waltz between light and dark, clean and dirty. “Le Figlia Che Piange” or “The Weeping Girl”, again a poem centered around a woman, appears to perfectly end this set. The girl seems upset, though I am not sure at whom exactly. Is she mad at the narrator? Or is she mad at the fact that she is aging? I also had an idea that she might be dead and that this is a dream (or nightmare) of the narrator. Her arms of flowers and the hair over her arms could be the girl in her casket. Attention to the last two lines of the poem have brought me to entertain this idea. Overall, I am excited to discuss more about Eliot’s poetry and was pleasantly surprised with the readability of his poems (if not the understanding of his cognizance).