J H Prynne, Mao Zedong, William Langland and the difficult poem

Having spent most of last week polishing the arduity site, I’ve had the opportunity to reconsider the scope of the project, which was initially about encouraging people to tackle work that is usually considered to be difficult. Since then I think I’ve modified my own understanding of the difficult and become a bit less zealous about converting everyone to the joys of this material. In fact, I’m now seeing it as a more detailed and thorough mulling over of stuff that is often ignored because of the ‘D’ tag.

The other lesson learned is that it’s a mistake to worry about definition, to try and compartmentalise the various facets that people might find intimidating / obscure / baffling. It is probably best to try and give examples and to concentrate on how they work or function rather than what they might mean. This is the current premise and has so far resulted in pages on ‘Scenes from Comus’, ‘The Triumph of Love’, and ‘Mercian Hymns’as well as a long page on the first three parts / chapters of David Jones’ ‘In Parenthesis’.

All of this is a way of getting ready to re-write the Celan and Prynne pages, add something on the notes to the Meridian which was published last year and to try and say something useful about ‘Kazoo Daydreams’ without scaring off those new to either poet. I want to use this to illustrate some of the problems that ‘KD’ presents. In amongst the ‘reference cues’ at the back there is an apparently famous speech ‘On Contradiciton’ from 1937 which, Wikipedia tells me, “is considered his most important philosophical essay”. I’ll deal with what Prynne does with this in a moment but ‘Piers Plowman’ (in both ‘B’ and ‘C’ texts’ is also listed and these present a similar kind of difficulty.

I think I need to point out that I’ve never been keen on this Marxian contradiction rigmarole primarily because (it seems to me) that the selection of the contradictory elements needed to achieve a resolution is too arbitrary and has led (oddly) to the reification of dialectical materialism at the expense of other methods of analysis. The part of the speech that Prynne has included exemplifies this particular tendency.

The other part of getting some structure into life is to engage with the late Medieval period and Middle English. I started with Thomas Hoccleve and am now oscillating between him and Langland. I didn’t think there would be too much in Piers Plowman that would need unpicking but then (yesterday) I got to an extended grammatical analogy which is in the ‘C’ text but not in either ‘A’ or ‘B’. This relates to the nature of reward and is part of a fascinating debate reflecting the economic anxieties of the latter half of the fourteenth century and can be considered hard to grasp at a number of different levels.

So far, ‘KD’ has three themes / subjects which are reasonably clear, the first relates to being and un-being, the second to contradiction and the third is a kind of response to the current economic fiasco which continues to destroy lives across the planet.

The thoughts on contradiction take their cue from these extracts from the 1937 essay:

There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes……It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions.

and-

But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other’s existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite.

Prynne follows this with:

I saw these gaps of explanation rolling like wheels contrary within
 
themselves, alien motions on fire with coriolis demeanour. I saw 

the grains self-rotate in their own amazement with noise of spheres

 metallic and burnished, along the baseline it is by amount at 

principle neither so nor not because contradiction is inherent and
 
not alternate in sense-ordering. I saw this notion in full fiery

 finesse, alive alive-o.

( For the sake of accuracy, I’ve maintained the line breaks as published).

Both of these are blockquoted paragraphs, but there is also:

...............................................'External causes

are the condition of change and internal cause are the basis 

of change, and external causes become operative through internal causes'.

Mourning does become the law but not this one, to be is not to

become or at fault with moment practice was what can I say I saw,

darker than ever dark to be'.

The dilemma here has a number of dimensions, the first concerns the Marx – Lenin – Mao lineage and the variations along the way and the second concerns the relationship between the quote and what follows. I’ve just had the dubious pleasure of wading through all of the essay and really wouldn’t want to inflict this on anyone else partially because people may be overwhelmed by the apparent density therein and because I’d be tempted to point out the very high nonsense factor. As the essay is used on three separate occasions however I will have to try and provide some context- including the fact that this made Mao’s reputation as an ideologue/theorist which was instrumental in his rise to power. I’ll resist the temptation to go on about the genocidal Great Leap Forward and his readiness to kill more than 40 million people for the sake of an ideological nicety but this won’t be easy.

I have no problem with identifying the ‘Molly Malone’ lyric and waxing eloquent about Prynne’s interest in the work song, nor with puzzling over the nature of the spheres, nor with speculating about the abiding presence of ‘sense order’ in Prynne’s work.

Given the presence of contradiction throughout ‘KD’, playing down this element and concentrating on the other concerns is nevertheless dishonest so I’ll probably try to present an overview, link to what David Harvey says about contradiction and leave readers to pursue this further if they so wish.

There’s also the sad fact that I’m both deeply partisan and opinionated and what I get from poems may not be a true reflection of what is probably available to others. For example, when Geoffrey Hill uses ‘self’ in any context I have this need to go into ‘selving’ and ‘inscape’ at very great length because that’s what I want to take rather than what might actually be there.

I’ll also indulge myself with extensive quotes from Gillian Rose on Poussin and on her debate with Sister Wendy and point to what Prynne said about Professor Rose at his reading of ‘Refuse Collection’- I may even bring Geoffrey Hill’s memorialisation into things and try and make some kind of point re Rose’s denunciation of all post-structural thought and Jacques Derrida in particular”.

‘KD’ is written mostly in the form of a medieval dream-vision poem with heavy use of the ‘I saw’ trope which is how ‘Piers’ starts. Prior to paying attention to Langland, I wouldn’t have seen the parallels between this and ‘KD’ but I now see that both are in part a response to changing economic circumstances and that neither take the easy option of presenting one ‘side’ or the other but leave readers to do the ‘thought work’ instead. As noted above, the poem does have remarkably obdurate sections but it is also a very real discussion of the anxieties and resentments that pervaded England at the time – for all kinds of reasons. This is how the grammatical analogy in the ‘C’ text of Passus III begins:

        Thus is mede and mercede as two maner

      rellacions,

    Rect and indirect, reminde bothe

    On a sad and a siker sembable to hemsuluen.

    Ac adiectif and substantif vnite aske

    And accordance in kynde, in case and in nombre,

    And ayther is otheres help - of hem cometh retribucuon,

    And that is the gyft that god giveth to all lele living,

    Grace of good end and gret joye aftur:

The problem here is about just how much context do people want and how much this may be of assistance rather than providing further obfuscation. I think it’s important to try and get this right if only to demonstrate that poetic difficulty isn’t confined to the modernist thread and because it’s a wonderful example of the poem as engaged political commentary. I don’t have problem with clarifying the language and elements of the analogy, nor with presenting an overview of the argument but I do get a bit unstuck with the detail of the economic realities, of ‘bastard feudalism’ and the workings of orthodox ideas about retribution and grace. This is because there needs to be a balance between enabling people feel confident about the poem and swamping them with (partisan and partial) context even though that might be useful.

Advertisement

Geoffrey Hill, J H Prynne and Gillian Rose

Plough Match 2012 Julian Winslow

In an effort to counter the liking-Prynne-means-that-you-can’t-like-Hill (and vice versa) syndrome I make sporadic attempts to identify similarities/affinities between the two. So far the primary one is admiration for the work of Paul Celan. I’ve recently come across another mutual affinity in Gillian Rose. Hill’s poem, ‘In Memoriam Gillian Rose’ was published in ‘A Treatise of Civil Power’ in 2007 and Prynne speaks about his friendship with Rose in his introduction to the reading of ‘Refuse Collection’ which is on the Archive of the Now. ‘Kazoo Dreamboats’, the latest and strangest Prynne offering contains a reference to Rose’s ‘Mourning Becomes the Law’ which is described as the philosophical version of her ‘Love’s Work’.

For those who don’t know, Rose was one of our brightest academics until her early death from cancer at the age of 48 in 1995. Up until the end of her life she wrote with enormous clarity and a fierce commitment to the ethical strengths of the European tradition which she saw as being undermined by the post structural and the post modern. ‘Love’s Work’ is a kind of autobiography which includes an account of her intellectual development and a brutally factual description of her battle with cancer. It is beautifully written and incredibly moving. I can say this because I was moved and this doesn’t occur very often.

Rose was also the finest writer of polemic that I have come across. Her demolition of Derrida’s ‘Of Spririt’ is a delightful example of how these things should be done- and I speak as one who is sympathetic to Derrida. I readily concede that ‘Of Spirit’ is probably his weakest work and that it’s a relatively (pun intended) easy target but the level of destruction wreaked is extreme, no prisoners are taken and it is a pleasure to watch an expert at work. She’s even better than Alistair Fowler in full flight. Incidentally, something very similar to the Rose position can be found occasionally in the poetry of Keston Sutherland and Simon Jarvis but neither come close to Rose’s verbal ferocity and wit.

Hill’s poem is remarkable because it is clearly heartfelt and that it probaly reveals more about the poet than it does about Rose. The poem recognises that Rose would have responded negatively to his wooing and “wiped me / in the championship finals of dislike” which is very, very likely but he also has this:

5

Your anger against me might have been wrath

concerning the just city. Or poetry's

assumption of rule. Or its role

as wicked governor. This abdication

of self-censure indeed hauls it

within your long range of contempt


6

unlike metaphysics which you had time for,

rewedded to the city, a salutation

to Pallas, goddess of all polemics

to Phocion's wife - who shall be nameless - 

in Poussin's painting, gathering the disgraced

ashes of her husband. As you rightly said,

not some mere infinite love, a finite act

of political justice. Not many would see that.

This might just be my perspective but isn’t the last phrase massively patronising? Isn’t it likely that Rose would have taken greater exception to being patronised by Geoffrey Hill than being wooed by him? The Poussin reference is an allusion to the first chapter of ‘Mourning Becomes the Law where Rose makes a case for the action of the wife’s servant in anxiously watching over her mistress as signalling an act of justice.

Moving on to Prynne, I have remarked before that we are assisted by the inclusion of a list of “reference cues” at the end of the poem yet neither John Skelton (two references to ‘Speke, Parrot) nor Rose are included. ‘Mourning Becomes the Law’ is referred to with unusual clarity:

.......................................Look out for dread it's your

letter speciality, bunk of delirium day-trading. 'External causes 

are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of 

change, and external causes become operative through internal causes'.

Mourning does become the law but not this one, to be is not to

become or at fault with moment practice was what can I say I saw,

darker than ever dark to be.

This may or may not be helpful but the quote is from Mao Zedong’s ‘On Contradiction’ essay from 1937 which is one of the listed reference cues. The ‘I saw’ motif that runs through the poem is likely to be an allusion to Middle English dream poems.

I do not want to get bogged down in the finer points of Marxist debate but would like to note that “not this one” refers to the quote which is part of a much broader thesis. It’s also useful to note how Rose explained her title:

Post-modernism in its renunciation of reason, power, and truth identifies itself as a process of endless mourning, lamenting the loss of securities which, on its own argument, were none such. Yet this everlasting melancholia accurately monitors the refusal to let go, which I express in the phrase describing post-modernism as ‘despairing rationalism without reason’. One recent ironic aphorism for this static condition between desire for presence and acceptance of absence occurs in an interview by Derrida: ‘I mourn therefore I am’. by contrast Mourning Becomes the Law affirms that the reassessment of reason, gradually rediscovering its own movable boundaries as it explores the boundaries of the soul, the city and the sacred can complete its mourning. Completed mourning envisages the creative involvement of action in the configurations of power and law: it does not find itself unequivocally in a closed circuit which exclusively confers logic and power. In the title, Mourning Becomes the Law, ‘Become entertains the gradual process involved, and the connotation of ‘suiting’ or ‘enhancing’ in the overcoming of mourning.

All of this seems eminently sensible and the correct response to the post-modern absence of substance and there is no doubting Rose’s sincerity in making her case. As with all of these arguments however I still get the impression that there’s too much protesting going on coupled with a failure to set forward a credible agenda. It’s also telling that the focus of most of this opprobrium is on Derrida whose long term influence may not be as great as either Foucault or Deleuze.

I’ve said in the past that I’m not convinced that philosophy is a fit and proper subject for poetry. I’ve since modified that position and am now of the view that only those poems that are exclusively philosophical are bad poems. For example, the Mutability Cantos at the end of ‘The Faerie Queene’ would be bad if they weren’t viewed as part of that magnificent epic. Hill’s poem is a poem about a philosopher rather than a philosophical poem and is therefore excluded. ‘Kazoo Dreamboats’ contains a wide range of elements, some of which relate to philosophy and one of the main themes (non-being) is more than a little philosophical but I’ll continue to give it the benefit of the doubt.

So, another similarity even though Hill may also have been motivated by Rose’s ‘deathbed conversion’ to Christianity, both will have recognised a formidable talent regardless of ideological stance.

Incidentally, Simon Jarvis also acknowledges her support in his book on Adorno.

Geoffrey Hill- a personal view

I’m approaching this with some trepidation. Many more qualified and erudite people have commented on Hill’s work and I am painfully aware of my own inferiority in terms of education and reading. However, in recent years I’ve spent a llot of time with Hill’s poetry and have recently read his criticism. What follows is an ‘ordinary’ reader’s account of what Hill has to say and the various ways in which he says it.

I’d tried to read Hill about twenty years ago but found the density of language too dense and formidable. I gave him another go in 2005 when he published ‘Scnes from Comus’. I was attracted to this by a rave review from Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian and also by the fact that I was familiar with ‘Comus’ and hoped that Hill might have something interesting to say about Milton’s poem.

Hill’s Comus made me smile, here was a poet clearly confident in his gifts and taking great delight in that confidence. I enjoyed his dexterity and his ability to nail the right phrase at the right time. He also quotes himself  as if tracking back to other brilliant turns of phrase. As for the subject matter, Comus is only tangenitally about Milton’s poem but does contain enough allusions for me to want to argue back (a good sign).  I was smitten and have read this collection many times since.

Geoffrey Hill has since become part of my ‘central’ reading list along with Milton, Spenser and Marvell. I haven’t yet acquired all his poetry so the following is a partial view of the great man.

Hill has a reputation for difficulty. This is entirely justified but it’s a strange kind of difficulty. Most of the poems are littered with references to other writers and their works- half of the pleasure of a Hill poem is in tracking down  those asides. This in itself isn’t all that odd- poets do it all the time- but what is disconcerting is that Hill abhors getting to his point. Most poems seem to contain small bits of meaning along the way rather than a clear theme. The meaning then becomes the summation of those constituent points. Another problem is that Hill’s themes tend to be quite arcane. No doubt Hill would argue that they only appear arcane in our overly materialistic culture. The other problem is that these poems are not written for an audience- Hill writes primarily for himself and is thus free to make few concessions to the reader.

Hill loves language. His criticism is littered with closely argued expositions on the meaning of indivual words at certain periods in history. His poetry is a celebration of the diversity and strength of language. I refuse to believe that anyone can have such an extensive vocabulary and am currently trying to spot which words he’s looked up in the OED prior to using. It’s a good game.

Hill is a committed Christian. His faith allows him to write movingly about figures such as Robert Southwell and Henry Vaughan. I am sure that he’s entirely comfortable with the ‘prophet’ mantle that others have given him. Hill’s faith should not however deter the lay reader- the religious bits are often beautifully done but you don’t have to agree with them.

It is possible to argue with Geoffrey Hill. In ‘Orchards of Sion’ he makes several references to ‘Atemwende’ and has several goes at elucidating its meaning. ‘Atemwende’ is the title of a collection of poems by Paul Celan and it means ‘breathturn’. I’m not happy with Hill’s various renditions of the meaning of ‘turn’ and feel that he misleads the reader. In ‘Comus’ Hill worries about the word ‘haemony’ which may be an allusion to the fact that we’ll never know what Milton meant by it but it kind of gets in the way.

Geoffrey Hill can be tender and humane. His poem about Gillian Rose  is moving and respectful in a way that she would have appreciated. It also shows that he’s read ‘Loves Work’ which must be impressive.

Geoffrey Hill has had mental health problems. From the one reference to lithium in the poetry, I take it that he’s bipolar. Hill’s poetry can be gloomy but he’s never written (as far as I can tell) from the depths of depression. Some critics seem to make much of Hill’s late productivity and put this down to finding the right treatment.  I don’t think it works like that, the tone of the later work may be more bright but that’s probably due to confidence rather than medication.

Hill tells jokes in his poems, most of them aren’t very funny.

Geoffrey Hill can be a complete bitch. When Hill doesn’t like something he can be both nasty and scathing. He’s also an elitist snob who doesn’t like anything that may have mass appeal.

Without doubt Geoffrey Hill is the best poet currently writing in English. Everyone should get to know him.