[lit-ideas] Re: Sextoniana
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- Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 08:10:51 -0500
Helm writes:
"I have been unfair to Sexton, thinking of poems I didn't like. There were
many I did like. Here is one such from her first volume To Bedlam and Part
Way Back. At the time I read this I was under the impression, as
apparently
most readers were, that Sexton learned to write in a mental institution.
According to Kumin that wasn't true. She was a poet before she got
there...
After typing it out and thinking about it as I typed I must change
"like" to "sort of like." Reading it the first time the "Mister?" at the
end emphasizes a bit shockingly her lostness which struck me as very
effective. But I didn't care for her "la la la." I suppose that was to
signify her mental breakdown and perhaps she really did sing "la la la"
when
she was there but it doesn't seem up to the job. Maybe there really were
four ladies over 80 in diapers but I don't see how that adds to the poem.
They could as well have been in a hospital as a mental institution.
But what about the change to first person in the last stanza? She ends the
third stanza with "I have forgotten all the rest" but in the last stanza
begins "they lock me in this chair at eight a.m." Does this signify that
she is having another episode or that she is remembering the earlier
episode
so vividly that she still needs to ask "which way home . . . Mister?" Sort
of good but not great IMO.
Thanks to L. Helm for commentary on "Music Swims Back to me". I found
further analysis below.
My lines proceed along Grice! When lecturing on 'and' and 'if' at Harvard,
he introduced _publicly_ the concept of 'implicature' (Sidonius uses
'implicatura') that he had been using informally already in Oxford for some
years now (in his seminars). At Harvard he applies, for jocular effect, the
concept to 'poetry': a few lines by Blake ("love that never told can be"). M.
L. Pratt takes on this, and considers that poets _flout_ some 'precepts' of
efficient communication. This seems to work fine with Sexton here.
I will proceed by analysing the thing alla
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/music-swims-back-to-me/
Since I very much base my analysis on that, I use double quotes for the
verbatim and append my notes to them.
"The poem", the author notes, "does begins with its title," -- "Music
Swims Back to me" -- (which happens to occur in the body of the poem, unlike
say, "Home, Sweet Home"), and the title is part of the poem in that it
"evoking themes of motion, fluidity, transience, return and self", and in any
case, since the line reappears in the body of the poem (even if it's not the
FIRST LINE -- as most ballad collectors would prefer) there you go.
To say that music swims back to Grice, to Grice, who wrote on "Personal
Identity" (and we'll see this approach is central to Sexton -- an approach to
Grice's, or Sexton's, self in terms of memory)
'evokes themes of motion, fluidity, transience, and self'.
So here the title is poetic and NOT misleading, and, as in blank verse, it
may count as part of the poem, plus the fact that the line reappears in the
body of the poem.
It's perhaps a SONG that swims back to Sexton, but never mind.
There is a difference between 'la la', the song, and 'music' in the
abstract. But more of that later.
The title, the link above notes, is interesting: "its flow of association
swims with buoyancy, yet prospect of drowning."
Or possibility of drowing. Cfr. Ovidio on LEANDRO, for example, on which
operas were written, and Byron's attempt to recreate the myth by swimming
back as Leandro had!
"Music presently swims back to its source, the ‘self, ’ implying
homecoming and remembrance, yet nothing besides music is remembered."
Indeed. This is paradoxical for Grice. In his early "Personal Identity",
not being very original, but following Locke (as Quinton will later follow
Grice), the very self is DEFINED in terms of memory (or temporary mnemonic
states as Grice prefers). Oddly, the example that Grice uses is
"I'm hearing a sound"
as in
"I'm hearing the sound of music".
Here we have _music_ or song and self. Now if you
"I don't remember that song".
"What was the name of that song?" (I think the actual title of a song is),
or "The song without a name", there may be a contrast between the self and
what the self remembers and which is what constitutes the self.
"Music is both personal and public – catchy songs are often referred to as
being ‘stuck in our head’ to the point of driving us mad, implying further
underlying themes of continuance, circulation and madness."
Song is perhaps more interactive, in that it involves the physical organs
-- the mouth and hearing yourself singing, 'la la'. But then, a song can be
catchy, stick 'in your head', but if you have some control over what you
do, you don't have to go on SINGING 'la la'.
There may be an expansion here which Grice deals with, as when we say, "he
said to himself" (silently). Does this count as an act of meaning and
communication. Similarly, one may 'hum a song to oneself', and one may
'imagine'
(in an auditory form) the song in one's brain, and some psychologists may
say that EVEN THERE some physical correlate is involved (the articulations
of the vocal chords as you mere THINK of the sound of the song).
"Sexton opens with a commanding voice, then immediately back-peddles with a
question for direction: ‘Wait mister. Which was is home? ’ Power is
quickly negated."
Here the idea to INCLUDE the title as part of the poem provides ONE
interpretation. If one doesn't, as I wouldn't, then the poem STARTS with no
power
at all.
---- It starts with a little girl lost, 'mister, which way is home?'. The
'wait' may trigger the implicature that something has happened before (the
grand statement "Music Swims Back to me") and that we may need to take back
some steps and reconsider.
--- Note that it's "Wait" and "_But_ wait".
"We move blindly into figurative darkness,
‘They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner."
"Sexton’s use of enjambment drives us forward with the fluid motion we
expect from her title."
"In total, there are 13 lines of enjambment in the poem and only 11
end-stop periods."
"‘They’", and Helm makes a point about this, too, "is a third person
pronoun, suggesting both a personal and impersonal collective with whom we
cannot identify, other than to associate negative imagery."
Indeed. In French, they distinguish between 'they' (their version) and
'on': there are various ways of expressing impersonality. In Italian, the use
of 'si' (they speak Italian there). So, English restricts Sexton in her
choice of the impersonal collective.
"The verse line is typically childish in tone, since children are afraid
of darkness when parents turn out the light."
And this sort of regress seems to be a theme in the poetry -- cfr. her
"Transformations", out of which a whole opera was composed. Based on the Tales
by the Brothers Grimm, they never mention infancy or childhood as such, but
adults 'acting like children'.
"Darkness appears to move in corners through fear of evil, yet the
utterance
‘they turned the light out’
can be interpreted as an adult derogatory buzz-term for loosing one’s
mind."
Indeed: in other languages, the episode of lighting turning out can be
explained or expressed without reference to the subject, 'they': an active
subject (the sentence is not in the passive voice) which remains impersonal and
collective.
"Hence, the tone is dichotomously split between child-like fear and adult
accusation."
"Sexton further implies a dichotomous child-adult utterer through the
unhyphenated compound word ‘sign posts’", plus the important deictic, "THIS"
('this room').
‘There are no sign posts in this room, ’ A signpost denotes a figurative
interpretation as either clues to enlightenment or an act of metaphysical
guidance."
"Literally, a sign post states the obvious – there would be no actual sign
posts in a room, only signs."
Grice was fascinated with sign posts, as his mentor on these matters was,
Peirce. Grice disliked the word 'sign', but in 'sign post', it sounds
appropriate enough. There are signs, and there are sign posts. And a sign post
is a sign.
Sign post may be taken as Peirce's example of an index. "The sign post
shows that...". But signposts can mislead, or lie, or negate what they
purportedly are being signs for.
"8 of the verse-lines begin with the conjunction ‘and’ - a child-like way
to narrate a story."
Initial 'and' is perhaps another matter. Cfr. Blake (Grice's favourite
poet): "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains
green?".
"And" is a child-like way to narrate a story. One of Grice's maxims is 'be
orderly', and the conjuncts are supposed to correspond with temporal
ordering.
This is para-taxis. A non-child-like way to narrate a story includes casual
particles, adversative particles, and so on. ("For", "Although",
"Furthermore"). Grice deals with this under the idea of a CONVENTIONAL
implicature
attached to this or that 'connector' (the infamous difference between 'and'
and 'but', for example, which Grice thinks logically equivalent, "She was
poor BUT she was honest").
"Through this, we can assume Sexton’s character as returning to her state
of infancy."
Indeed. Knowing about Sexton's life helps, especially the problematic
relation with her mother (whom she loved -- she died in her fur coat) and
daughter (who dealt at length with growing up being Anne Sexton's daughter in
her own book).
"An undercurrent of dementia is detected in the following:
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
One would think 'over eighty' to IMPLICATE 'over eighty years old'. But the
author provides a cancellation for this on occasion.
"While ‘Mister’ and ‘they’ are sketchy, impersonal characters, these
ladies are described in terms of sex, number, age and ‘diaper.’"
The latter word further implies a return to infancy, although describing
patients with toiletry aids."
"Yet it fails to entirely clarify -- or as I prefer EXPLICATE, as opposed
to IMPLICATE -- cfr. 'explicature' -- the term ‘turning out the light’ as
sometimes ‘losing one’s marbles’ with age, as the two listing commas
present possible shifts in meaning."
four ladies, over eighty,
There are various interpertations here alla Grice's Blake line, "Love that
never told can be" -- and if the ambiguity is intentional, it is an
implicature.
"Perhaps there are four ladies and each lady is over eighty years old."
This seems to be the standard interpretation of what is merely IMPLICATED
(and thus cancellable).
"Or there are four ladies, and then there are over eighty ladies in number
(who can tell in the dark?)".
Surely Sexton never SAID (as opposed to 'implied') 'years old'.
"Also, there might be four ladies with a collective age of over eighty,
making each approximately 20 years old."
And there are further implicatures if one takes the etymology of 'lady'
literally, as _I_ should.
"We are quickly then distracted with a sudden outburst of singing," and the
title of the poem or key word to the poem:
‘La la la, Oh music swims back to me
Helms writes that he "didn't care for her 'la la la'", but there may be a
note on historical music here. Recall the way
do re mi fa sol la si
were instituted. La is not just la. It's "A", in musical notation.
Ut queant laxīs resonāre fībrīs
Mīra gestõrum famulī tuõrum,
Solve pollūtī labiī reātum,
Sancte Iõhannēs.
Sexton:
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.’"
"they" played. It was a tune and a song. We have a strong ability to
recognise a SONG out of the tune ("Name that tune"). Then there are tunes that
are not songs that we can also 'feel': Colonel Bogey, for example.
"We sing along breathlessly through Sexton’s strongest and longest point
of enjambment."
"Through the childish, ambient protection of song,"
or tune
la la la
imagine Colonel Bogey not being whistled but la-la-laed.
our utterere "reccounts her first night ‘in this private institution on a
hill.’"
"Retirement homes are not usually referred to as private institutions ‘on
a hill’. Mental institutions usually are."
So, even if as Helm notes, Sexton was a poet BEFORE getting to a mental
institution, and Helm provides this poem as evidence of this, the poem is
ABOUT her first night in a 'mental' institution (Helm above: "At the time I
read this I was under the impression, as apparentlymost readers were, that
Sexton learned to write in a mental institution. According to Kumin that
wasn't true. She was a poet before she got there," as "Music Swims Back to
me"
testifies or illustrates).
The visual imagery of this line throws up an almost unavoidable exclamation
mark! Atop its hill, the institution is elevated, pronounced,
threatening."
"Sexton plays on our cultural pre-suppositions, pointing a dramatic
verse-line finger up towards the stereotypical hammer-horror mental ward."
"Out of reach, but not out of sight, the unconscious looms shadow-like
over, rather than behind, its conscious suburban demographic."
--- This is an interesting idea of SUB-urbia!
"Stanza one’s climactic revelation suspends us between stanzas with the
technical grip of a cliff-hanging horror film."
"The following stanza represents a shift in consciousness, yet Sexton’s
character remains in the same crazy clutch."
‘Imagine it. A radio playing / and everyone here was crazy’
commands stanza two, echoing the directness of the poem’s opening ‘Wait
Mister.’
"It is as though we’re looking back over our shoulder to previously issued
words."
Or savouring their implicatures.
"The theme of return is played out again, anchoring us back in from
unstable imagery. Here, we have music returning, or ‘playing’ the way children
play, and the direct use of the word ‘crazy’."
But then cfr. the use of 'mental' in 'mental' institution. Language, being
the epitome of rationality, as Grice notes, may encounter this or that
problem in describing the irrational. Cfr. Dodds, The Greeks and the
Irrational.
"And yet, this crazy mise-en-scène isn’t concrete, since we are being told
to imagine it. Sexton uses a period rather than a colon, semi-colon or
comma after ‘Imagine it.’ and so she’s not directly instructing us to imagine
anything, just ‘it.’ hinting at a mental lacuna."
The 'it' can be merely grammatical, but surely this is an implicature. The
'it' can ALWAYS receive a literal interpretation. Cfr. 'It made it very
difficult'. "Make what?" "It". "What is it?", asked the bird. "It depends".
"Well, usually, it's a worm for me" (Adapted from "Alice in Wonderland").
"Stanza two is replete with sensual imagery, arresting connotative verbs
and nouns, fluid senses, sharp textures, musical sounds and overwhelming
synaesthesia."
Grice was fascinated with synaesthesia, in that he wrote "Some remarks
about the senses" taking into serious consideration Aristotle's and Urmson's
idea that the senses are _five_.
‘music pours over the sense’, ‘music sees more than I.’
"The latter suggests both confusion and clarity."
Cfr. "Music remembers more than I". If with Grice we define the self in
terms of memories, the utterance becomes charmingly paradoxical in terms of
implicatures that are cancellable.
"The tone is almost orgasmic. Imagery from stanza one flows back as she
remembers her ‘first night here’ - the institution becomes present, immediate
and inclusive."
"For the first time, Sexton commits to violent metaphors:
‘strangled cold of November’, ‘stars strapped in the sky’,
(as a patient is strapped in the chair)
‘moon too bright / forking through the bars to stick me with a singing in
the head.’
"Each metaphor conveys a repressed unconscious memory rising to its
conscious surface."
And a metaphor is an implicature, always, due to a category mistake.
Grice's example, "You're the cream in my coffee". And perhaps the KEYWORD on
the
poet's repertory of tropes. Grice had a polemic with Davidson on this. For
Davidson, metaphors have to be taken literally AS FALSEHOODS. For Grice,
the implicature trumps the explicature.
"Psychologically, the music is linked with violent acts that Sexton’s
character has possibly repressed since they prove too traumatic, as in the
metaphorical too bright moon."
"In remembering and vocalising the music, her unconscious activities rise
with it, fragmented and partial."
"Sexton affirms her psychological connection with the final line, ‘I have
forgotten all the rest.’"
"Using well-known Freudian theory, it is simple and satisfying to
understand the poem’s axis: Music constantly returns because it has replaced
suppressed memories too traumatic to remember."
"However, as we’ve read, slippage occurs through a series of displaced
violent associations."
"This way, Sexton implements psychology accurately, but also poetically, in
revealing the possible causes of our character’s madness and subsequent
institutionalisation."
"The ‘strangled cold’ implies attempted suicide or successful murder
during the month of November."
"Down the left-hand side of this stanza we can see a total of five ‘I’s,
forming a column of isolation."
"The isolated ‘I’ is locked ‘in this chair at 8am.’"
"presenting a repetitive return to consciousness and madness in stanza
three’s opening."
"From lines two to nine, Sexton repeats key phrases from stanzas one and
two."
"Everything returns, encircles and closes in with heightened drama: ‘and
there are no signs to tell the way, ’, ‘the radio beating to itself’, ‘the
song that remembers more than I.’"
"Notice how Sexton’s singing, ‘Oh, la la la, ’ is now situated on the
right-hand side of the poem as opposed to the left."
"Its mirror image creates an elliptical effect, containing the poem’s body
within its own figurative chair."
"Even the poem’s title is repeated, “music swims back to me”."
"Crucially Sexton writes “The night I came, I danced a circle / and was not
afraid” reiterating line three of stanza two “I liked it and danced in a
circle”."
"The poem is dancing with Sexton in a circle they cannot escape."
"The poem ends with ‘Mister? ’ returning full-circle to its opening."
"This is not an exit but an open-ended question, tying us in to the poem’s
complications."
"Does Anne Sexton’s Mister exist?"
"Did he exist at all or did we/she simply imagine him?"
"This one word calls into question the entire poem’s existence – is
anything that Sexton mentions throughout her verse real or is it a figment of
her character’s insanity? Through Sexton’s brilliant use of language,
imagery, form, punctuation and psychological mechanisms, she draws us into her
fluid, unstable institution of uncertainty and loss of self."
Cheers,
Speranza
---
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.
Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I like it and danced in a circle.
music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.
They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
And was not afraid.
Mister?
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