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Unravelling themes, symbolism and other such literary stuff

I had trouble posting to this 20 minutes ago

Let's see if I can post now...

Well, now it works... but I lost all that typing... oh well..

I am frequently "reading between the lines" and must exert myself to simple read and enjoy without analyzing.

(now I shall be clever, and save/edit/update every few sentences so as not to lose work if it "hangs")

I want to read Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" simply because the first line is "Call me Jonah", and for me that obviously connotes the beginning of Moby Dick, together with all that Melville entails, as well as the Old Testament account of Ninevah.

As Baudelaire said in his poem, Correspondences, "We walk in a forest of symbols. They give us familiar glances."


(I keep trying to paste a quote here, and my computer hangs ... Saturday 7:30am 9/3/05)

(It happened twice, just now, while trying to paste... so I shall attempt to key in a sentence at a time, and avoid pasting)

Nature is a temple where pilars, alive
Sometimes emit indistinguishable words
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which observe him with familiar looks

Like lingering echoes that are mingled afar off
In a one-ness tenebrous and profound
Vast as the night and as the light of day,
Fragrances, colors and sounds correspond.

There are fragrances fresh, as the flesh of children
 
Why do I have repeated difficulty, I wonder, posting to this thread. It hangs the machine, even though I rebooted.

Let's see if I can edit this successfully...

That worked... now,... lets see if it hangs again on an edit to the prior post...
 
direstraits said:
My contention is that some of the tougher works of fiction has layers upon layers of meanings and subtleties that only those who have been trained to wean them out would be able to enjoy them. Mere mortals can only hope to get what scraps of double meaning that gets flicked off the table by the author, intentionally or not.

How then, can the mere mortal readers among us pick up the nuances of literary fiction?


ds
Dire, Sitaram,
I am also interested in the answer to the question, because I am not a lit major. So I just plow ahead and do as well as i can. Which mostly leads to a very enjoyable book anyway. What I miss, I miss. I figure that is the author's problem.

And I'll leave it at that for the moment because i'm not even sure this is going to post instead of hanging up the computer.

Fingers crossed,
Peder
 
When I was fourteen, I read Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith (of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn fame). I read it in a Reader's Digest collection. I feel confident that it has no intentional levels of symbolism or literary or biblical allusion woven into it (of course I could be mistaken). I am certain that Betty Smith just wanted to tell a good story to entertain, and perhaps cause a few tears to trickle down some sentimental cheeks. My use of the word just makes my statement sound pejorative, as if I am dismissing such authors and readers and works, but this is not my intent. There is nothing wrong with pure entertainment from a great story, well told, free of all philosophical and theological entanglements.

Aristotle said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Psychiatrist David Viscott retorts, "The unlived life is not worth examining."

One Summer, when I was 13 and bored, I went into a drugstore, and found in the paperback bookracks a copy of Out of a Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. I had never been brought to church or Sunday school even once, so I had no real ideas about the Bible or religion. I enjoyed the story, the fantasy. I realized on some level that the author was implying something about God towards the end of the book. I was very proud of myself for this insight. I sincerely wondered if others were so clever as to read the book and think about such things.

Those were the halcyon days when I could just enjoy a book or even a comic book as a great story. I was not searching for meanings and symbols.

It seems very obvious to me that certain authors have consciously attempted to weave symbolism and allusion into their works; authors like Herman Melville or Yann Martel, to mention someone from the past and someone from the present.

Milan Kundera, for another, is obviously trying to do something subtle, and speaks at great length, openly, about such subtleties in his essays, The Art of the Novel.

Wallace Stevens is another one who is being subtle, and who discusses it in his essays, The Necessary Angel.

I think it would be possible to make a list of all authors who pratice symbolism, subtlety and innuendo, and a second list of authors who are straight storytellers and entertainers.

Another term I have seen for such subtle writing is multivalent, something with two or more levels of meaning, as opposed to a very explicit univalent text. Of course, we may also see the same root word in ambivalent , possibly, the same root in the word value.

Kant speaks of the antinomies, opposing concusions which different people may arrive at regarding the same issue, and yet it is utterly impossible to prove the truth of one and refute the other side of the argument. What is one to do who lives in an antinimous reality, which ever offers some solution, just out of reach, yet never arrives at a conclusion with finality?

Writers, for the most part, are rather stuck with writing about what they know, whether it is cowboys and indians, or alcoholics and prostitutes, or preachers and parishes.

Faulkner stated that all he knew was the South, and life was too short for him to learn something other than the South and also write. Yet Faulkner wanted to take all that is humanity, and inscribe it on the head of a pin; capture it in a cameo.

Have a look at these essay I wrote in college, in the 1960's, on the matter of analysis and deconstruction:


http://toosmallforsupernova.org/method.htm

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/prolegommena.htm

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/historyofphilosophy.htm


Vergil tells us that there are two gates which lead out from Hades; the gate of true dreams, and the gate of false dreams. We are explicitly told that Aeneas leaves Hades through the gate of false dreams. Why? What did Vergil have in mind when he wrote that scene. More importantly, what did Vergil want the reader to have in mind when reading this.



It is my theory that present day literary analysis, metonymy, allegory,
metaphor, at. al, has its roots in the early Church's attempts at
exegisis, at least in part. There are some very good reasons why the early Christian church was highly motivated to do a deconstruction of the Old Testament, and demonstrate the multivalent latent implications that the virgin birth, and the cross, and the ressurection were concealed symbolically and metaphorically throughout the Old Testament. As centuries passed, the process reversed and it was artists who were, not deconstruction, but constructing their own "apples of gold in fittings of silver."


It was Augustine who said : "The New Testament is in the Old Testament
concealed, and the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed."
Jesus, who spoke in parables, confides to his disciples that there is an outer carnal meaning for the masses and an inner, concealed, spiritual meaning
for the elite.

Jesus even invites us to join in the "easter egg hunt" of literary
analysis when he says, "Search the scriptures for therein shall ye find
eternal life."

Consider the example of Jesus profound literary insight, when he points out that, in the Old Testament, God DID NOT say "I WAS the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob" (which would imply that those three patriarchs were dead at the time) but rather "I AM the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob" (implying that the three patriarch live and worship even through they no longer walk the earth in the flesh).


Of course, someone shall surely object and say that what Jesus did was not literary analysis but rather, grammatical analysis, or possibly just plain common sense.

So, we must attempt to define what we mean by "literary analysis."

I was so enormously impressed by Nabokov's essay on Kafka's "Metamorphosis" where he says (paraphrasing from my poor old memory) "I shall now share with you something for which you shall be grateful to me for the rest of your lives. All beetles have wings, (concealed under their carapace). The great tragedy of "Metamorphosis" is that the protagonist NEVER found his wings. And there are many of us in life who never find their wings." Nabokov and Jesus are so clever, each in their own way of course.


Now, as far as we know from the scriptures, Jesus never wrote anything EXCEPT for one time, when he wrote in the sand with his finger, after he told the crowd that "he who is without sin" may cast the first stone at the adultress. We read that one by one, slowly, each person walked away until there was no one left but Jesus and the condemned woman. Now, early Church theologians, being literary analysts of the calibre of Nabokov, speculated about WHAT Jesus might have been writing in the sand, as people slowly left, one by one. They speculated that Jesus was writing obscure things in the sand, known ONLY to each individual in the crowd, which would convict them in their hearts of the fact they each was INDEED with sin, and not qualified to caste the first stone. Now, in these modern times, if someone were to write "Holiday Inn, Rm. 512, July 2" and YOU remembered that this is the exact date and room where you committed adultry.... well you get my point.


When Jesus meets Nathaniel (my memory may be faulty on this), Jesus exclaims, "Behold and Israelite in whom there is no guile." Nathaniel is perplexed and says "How is it that you know me?" Jesus answers, "I saw you beneath the fig tree." Now, we shall never know what that meant to Nathaniel, but he was utterly THUNDERSTRUCK and exclaimed something to the effect that surely Jesus must be the Messiah, the promised one. Perhaps Nathaniel was sorely tempted to steal a fig, but wrestled with the temptation and overcame it. Perhaps he was under the fig tree with a woman, and refrained from doing something improper. Who knows what Nathaniel did, but he sure as heck remembers that old fig tree.

The Proverbs of King Solomon mention "the wisdom of the wise and their DARK sayings." Now, for me, a DARK saying is one which is MULTI-VALENT and implicit, and lends itself or rather invites us, to literary interpretation and analysis. The proverb, "A word of wisdom, fitly spoken is like unto an apple of gold in silver filagree (fittings)" has been taken as a paradigmatic metaphor for how we analyze literature which, on the surface, appears to be one thing, but beneath the surface, is altogether something else.

If the reader cares to dig more deeply into such matters, then see:

the Kundera thread;

http://thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7493

the Baudelaire thread;

http://thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7489

the Leo Strauss thread;

http://thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7672

the Wallace Stevens, Necessary Angel thread;

http://thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7491

Gems from Gravity's Rainbow

http://thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7594
 
It is now Saturday morning, almost 5am, and I woke up thinking about this topic. I have thought about it and discussed it, on and off, for so many years now. It is like an old friend. So, I am making my daily ration of strong, caffeinated brew, and I shall spend a while longer with my friend.

(... I shall be adding to this via edit for the next several hours... so... dont touch that dial...)


Last year, I found a wonderful website which showcases award winning essays on Kafka. Kafka is definitely one of those writers who does you know what when he writes. One essay, on Metamorphosis discussed what it might be like to wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and see within yourself a certain truth which makes you hated and despised by society. There are many different things, I suppose, which might be perceived as such a stigma. Obviously, for so many years, homosexuality was just such a thing. Times, they are a-changing. The DSMIII-R, a catalog of psychiatric maladies, declassified and removed homosexuality as a disorder in the 1970s. Anyway, getting back to the essay on Kafka's metamorphosis, when you began to view the story from the essayist's eyes, why, BINGO everything begins to appear in a strange new light and makes a different sort of sense.

from Lecture on "The Metamorphosis" by Vladimir Nabokov

http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=191,209,0,0,1,0

TAKING ART SERIOUSLY


Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. "To take upon us the mystery of things"—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick"); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Metamorphosis)—so what?

...

Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.


The number three plays a considerable role in the story. The story is divided into three parts. There are three doors to Gregor’s room. His family consists of three people. Three servants appear in the course of the story. Three lodgers have three beards. Three Samsas write three letters. I am very careful not to overwork the significance of symbols, for once you detach a symbol from the artistic core of the book, you lose all sense of enjoyment. The reason is that there are artistic symbols and there are trite, artificial. or even imbecile symbols. You will find a number of such inept symbols in the psychoanalytic and mythological approach to Kafka's work, in the fashionable mixture of sex and myth that is so appealing to mediocre minds. In other words, symbols may be original and symbols may be stupid and trite. And the abstract symbolic value of an artistic achievement should never prevail over its beautiful burning life.
- V. Nabokov

When we say reality, we are really thinking of all this—in one drop—an average sample of a mixture of a million individual realities.

- V. Nabokov

When a certain clear-thinking but somewhat superficial French philosopher asked the profound but obscure German philosopher Hegel to state his views in a concise form, Hegel answered him harshly, "These things can be discussed neither concisely nor in French."
- V. Nabokov

A multivalent text is a one which becomes more than one before our very eyes. It shimmers and glistens, like some hope diamond in a glass case, in a museum, as we slowly circumambulate, gazing, trying to see it from every angle. I tried to describe this phenomenon in a poem called The Day Swift Came to Call upon Pascal

http://thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7832

"A creature which might otherwise elude us
Should we confront it full-faced and focus our attention,
May linger near us if we sit in profile
And at the limits of our vision study it a while."


Let's take poor old Sitaram, sitting here at the kitchen table with his cup of obscenely strong coffee. You look at me and say, "Why you are just one person, sipping and typing away." But, you see, as I sit here and write and muse and reflect, I am all the things I have ever read and experienced and said and done, and all the people I have ever known. It is all tucked away in my brain. When I try to tell anyone about these things, I must perform a kind of mathematical projection, say, of a multidimensional space upon a two-dimensional graph, or even upon a line, a mho's scale of hardness, dipping litmus papers, looking for shades of difference, scratching touchstones, scratching my head.

Now if I can possibly compose a work whose dynamics imitate the subject matter with respect to its protean multivalency, why now I have succeeded in precisely articulating what might otherwise be spoken of only imprecisely, by imitating its elusive complexity. And, does not Aristotle say, in the Poetics that the essence of human nature is mimetic. We like to imitate.

A multivalent work is like a mirror. We gaze in it like Nietzsche's, gazing into the void, until the Void begins to gaze into us. Monkeys will spend hours gazing into a mirror, trying to fight with what it sees, play with what it sees, seduce what it sees, and only the rarest and most brilliant of monkeys will slowly come to the realization that what it sees is itself. This wondrous insight breaks the magic spell. Beyond that moment of enlightenment, the mirror is no longer a wondrous vision but a tool for grooming or squeezing pimples. Such is this monkey-business of literature.


Early in the Republic Socrates suggests that the State be taken as a metaphor for the soul, writ in large letters.

Hobbes does something similar, centuries later, when he portrays the State as a large creature, the Leviathan, with a life and personality all its own.

Microscopes and telescopes are instruments which distort images, and yet allow us to see more clearly by means of that very distortion. Metaphor is also a visual aid which distorts, yet reveals.
 
Cigars in penal-guise

There, now I have your attention, by using the "P" word. What I really wanted to do, to get your attention, was to take of my shirt and make farting sounds with my armpits. But not simple squeaks. Oh no! I was going to actually play one of Bach's inventions. But, for various reasons, I must choose instead to beguile you with this fascinating discussion of literary analysis.


Dear reader, do not make the mistake of thinking that symbolism is only phallic and Freudian in nature! Freud himself (who died of mouth cancer from smoking twenty per day) said, "Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar."

There are so many things we can hide for an easter-egg hunt besides eggs.

Here is a chemist turned professor of literature who finds, of all things, field theory!

The Cosmic Web
- by N. Katherine Hayles

An English professor with a degree in chemistry analyzes the novels Pirsig, DH Lawrence, Nabokov, Borges and Pynchon from the point of view of Quantum, Relativity, and Godel.

from the Introduction:

Introduction said:
Characteristic metaphors are a "cosmic dance," a "network of events," and an "energy field." A dance, a network, a field - the phrases imply a reality that has no detachable parts, indeed no enduring, unchanging parts at all. Composed not of particles but of "events," it is in constant motion, rendered dynamic by ineractions that are simultaneously affecting each other. As the "dance" metaphor implies, its harmonious, rythmic patterns of motion include the observer as an integral participant. Its distinguishing characteristics, then, are its fluid dynamic nature, the inclusion of the observer, the absence of detachable parts, and the mutuality of component interactions.


Hans Eichner said:
If Galileo could be hijacked by a time machine, taught English, and dropped into contemporary Boston, he would feel completely at home at M.I.T. Shelling would have to be brainwashed.

Fritjof Capra said:
The whole universe appears as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns.

Heisenberg said:
Literary style arises out of the interplay between the world and ourselves, or more specifically, between the spirit of the time and the artist. The spirit of a time is probably a fact as objective as any fact in natural science, and this spirit brings out certain features in the world... The artist tries in his work to make these features understandable, and in this attempt he is led to the forms of the style in which he/she works. - from "Physics and Philosophy"
 
direstraits said:
I agree novella. Sometimes you know there's more to the book than words when you read from people like Saramago and Ayn Rand, who is definitely saying something behind the story and characters. But what? So you dig deeper. It's very satisfying when you realize something new.

My question then - do you try and figure out everything by yourself, now that the internet is available? Or do you go online, check out commentaries or comments or discussions of the book, to see if there's anymore life you can wring out of the book?

ds

I am just now rereading this thread, and noticing new things to respond to.

I have spent a lot of time looking at the free sparknotes.com , which I find very helpful. Sometimes, I will become curious about a book, read the notes essays found through searches, and then become enthused enough to get a copy of the book, and study it. I guess it is more accurate to say that I study a book rather than read it.

Somehow, this is all about making something your own. If you discover, through your own efforts, something which others before you have discovered, then it makes the book more yours. It is a feather in your cap, so to speak. It makes you feel good about yourself.
 
The browser locked just now during update

Due to enormous technical difficulties with posting today
I am continuing my posting at this link at my site, and will put what is
there back in this thread, where it belongs, if problems clear up in the
coming days.


(see link in my signature, below)

It almost seems like "windows of opportunity" where I can squeeze in
a post. But if I try to update every 20 minutes, as is my habit, then the
browser freezes.

My machine has locked up dozens of times... I do not have to reboot,
but I have to go into task manager and kill AOL, then restart... but it
was the same story at work yesterday, where I do not use AOL, but
Internet Explorer and a DSL provider.

I have to try and add this as a new post, rather than do an update edit, since thats where the great problem seems to be.

So, if you are interested in the continuation of my post, my thoughts, then please visit the above link, which one day I shall post back here, when posting problems clear up for me.


I imagine that at least Peder will have some interest in continuing, and perhaps a few others.
 
Beer good, ever since I saw that cartoon I have trying to find a place to use it.

You win.
 
I love xkcd! It's like he can distill the intricacies of the universe and metamorphorsize the constituent parts into the atomic bifurcation of the self, conveying the synergistic pericombobulations, and syphoning it into my soul.

He's great.

ds

p.s. BG, get your butt in to bbforum, will ya?
 
I love xkcd! It's like he can distill the intricacies of the universe and metamorphorsize the constituent parts into the atomic bifurcation of the self, conveying the synergistic pericombobulations, and syphoning it into my soul.

He's great.

ds

p.s. BG, get your butt in to bbforum, will ya?

Unrelated to this thread but I always chuckle at this one:

aimgs.xkcd.com_comics_purity.png
 
Literary criticism doesn't interest me at all. What I really want to know is, where do you find all those great cartoons?
 
Interesting to reread the thread and see some old-old names.
In case anyone had further thoughts as well as cartoons I'd still be as avid a listener as ever.
Peder
 
I should rectify my last post: actually I care about literary criticism, but much of the navel-gazing intellectual porn that passes for criticism bores me. I think writers write the best literary criticism: what Borges, Kundera, Nabokov, Eco, Forster, Proust, have to say about books are infinitely more insightful, amusing and passionate than what Barthe or Eagleton could come up with. It's like expecting a Lego fan to write about engineering.
 
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