Dennis Lee's Self-reflexive Examination of Language and the State of Existence in "Worldly"

The preposition “in” proposes two entities (one thing is in another); “only,” which can be broken up into the morphemes 'one' and '-ly' proposes one entity; the affix “un,” signifying negation, suggests no entities. As such, Dennis Lee's poem “Wordly” begins - “If inly, if only, if unly” (1-2) - as a countdown. That, and the fact that, towards its end, Lee brings up the concept of the reckoning (punning with “rekenning,” found in the ninth line of the poem), gives the poem an apocalyptic feel. Following this intuition, one may interpret the poem as Lee's examination of the ultimate state of the world; he envisions it as fragmentary and somewhat absurd, but among these qualities he highlights the possibility for creativity and happiness. His envisioning of the world as such is done through a self-reflexive examination of something intrinsic to the human world: language.

What any reader is likely to immediately notice about the poem is that it defies comprehension, mainly because the poet breaks language down, playing with the “emes” (4) – the sounds and bits of words – in an attempt to forcefully create new meaning. For example, Lee constructs the adjective “cripcryptic” (7). When first reading through the poem and coming upon this, one might exasperatedly think that the poem itself is cryptic. In fact, I think Lee is here speaking about the poem, or, more broadly, about language – alluding to the idea that words are signs which try to capture and convey some truth; that is, words are cryptic. However, the addition of “crip,” a word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, derived from “cripple,” indicates, also, that the crypticness of language is crippling, confusing, so that to speak is merely to stutter - “cripcryp-.” This goes to explaining the sense of incomprehensibility in this poem and, I think, in many postmodernist works, generally: postmodernists believe that language is incapable of conveying truth. Language presents a deconstructed version of truth.

Despite the fragmentariness one finds in language, one also finds “ec-/statisyllabic largesse” (7-8). That is, within the “emes,” the syllables, one finds lavishness, an abundance of something. Perhaps this something is meaning; this is suggested in the word “heart-/iculates” (2-3). “Heart-/iculates” replaces the “art” in “articulate” with “heart” - denoting perhaps the insertion of the heart into language's articulations. At the same time, the only difference between “heart” and “art” is the addition of the phoneme /h/. It is a very minimal addition; phonologically, the sound /h/ is merely an unobstructed exhalation of air. This indicates the close association between art – language – and the heart. As such, Lee suggests that language is an intrinsic part of human nature.

That said, there is still the element of the absurd in language, as evidenced by the ending of Lee's poem: “rekenning, rekeening, re-/meaning our worldly demesne.” With “rekenning, rekeening, re-/meaning,” Lee encapsulates his notion of language. A kenning is a compound metaphor; as such, it represents putting things together – literally, putting words, or free morphemes, together. To keen is to wail, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, particularly over someone's death – and as such, the use of this word signifies things falling apart. “Remeaning,” again, entails putting things together, restructuring after things have fallen apart. Lee's repetition of the prefix “re-” indicates that this happens again and again; furthermore, that he uses the gerundive forms of these verbs indicates that this repetitive process is ongoing, neverending. Finally, the poem ends with Lee referring to our “worldly demesne,” suggesting that there is no possibility of transcendence. In fact, as the entire poem can be seen as a self-reflexive examination of the nature of language, Lee might possibly be suggesting that our “demesne,” our only true possession we have to work with, is language.

In Lee's vision, humanity is like a child with a single set of building blocks – a set of “emes.” The only thing he or she can do is structure and restructure those blocks into various forms, various words, various meanings. This is both a hopeless, resigned view of existence, yet also absurdly hopeful, for as a child plays, he or she derives happiness and employs limitless creativity, as, I believe, Lee did in writing this poem.

SOURCE

Lee, Dennis. “Worldly.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 868-869.

Modernist Anxiety as Depicted in Yeats' "The Second Coming" and Beckett's Endgame

The "catchphrase" of the twentieth century, derived from W. H. Auden's 1947 poem which bore the term as its title, is the "Age of Anxiety" (“anxiety” Def. 5). It is not just present-day scholars who have used the tag, but writers and thinkers within that era itself; for example, a 1953 publication of the Economist refers in one article to the “Age of anxiety;” it comes up again, also, in a 1958 edition of The Times (“anxiety” Def. 5). In light of this lasting label, then, used not only retrospectively by those studying an historical period but also by contemporaries of that period, we may be quite sure that the twentieth century was, indeed, a time in which anxiety was so pervasive and profound that it defined that time both from within and without. Having settled upon this, a host of questions arise, enclosed in this one: What is the nature of modernist anxiety?

Comparative analysis of “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats and Endgame by Samuel Beckett yields a comprehensive answer to this question, demonstrating a variety of elements that contribute to the characteristic super-anxiety of the modern era. These texts indicate that the modernist anxiety is at least threefold. Most basically, the anxiety arose from current affairs which were, as most would agree, worrisome. However, the modernists were also preoccupied with the past, the ideals and values from which, precisely because of current affairs, they felt alienated. This disconnection with past ideas and structures meant that the modernists experienced things in a void: suddenly without any faith in the support of a set of values against which to measure the world, the modernists could not value the world at all; to them, it became unknowable and insignificant. A comparison of “The Second Coming” and Endgame thus indicates that the anxiety which understandably arose from the present condition of the world expanded, ultimately, to an extreme anxiety over the futility of all past, present, and future existence – a threefold, all-encompassing, utterly hopeless anxiety.

In this interpretation, the modernist anxiety emerges most basically from current events of the early- to mid-1900s. One sees this clearly in the beginning lines of “The Second Coming,” wherein the poet depicts a dark, uneasy present world. Among the things he notes about the contemporary world is a trend of violence. The image of the falcon, for example, no longer under the control of a falconer as it flies ever higher, indicates (as the falcon is a bird of prey) a steady increase in brute violence. Elsewhere, the poet refers to “the blood-dimmed tide” (5), the mention of “blood” again suggesting violence that has “dimmed” the world. The editors of the anthology wherein this poem may be found note that it “was written...in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution and on the eve of the Anglo-Irish War” (Yeats fn.2). Undeniably, this was a turbulent time in which to live, a time of “passionate intensity” (8). The famous opening lines of “The Second Coming” demonstrate that the violence perceived during the era contributed to the troubled, anxious modernist outlook of the world.

Aside from the notion of violence, the major characteristic Yeats attributes to the modern world in “The Second Coming” is disorder. The violence itself is a result of this disorderliness: the poet envisions violence as something that has been restrained – that is, managed within an order - and, in the current times, “loosed” (5). The “falcon [who] cannot hear the falconer” (2) is another image of disorderliness: literally, the falcon no longer takes orders from its master. Yeats, then, sees the time in which he lives as one disintegrated into chaos. The images of “mere anarchy” (4) which Yeats uses to begin his poem establish the dire, discomfitting tone of the piece. Thus the poem suggests that comprised within modernist anxiety is a perception of a chaotic modern world.

One can find the motif of order and the chaotic ruin waiting beyond order also in Beckket's Endgame, in the characters of Hamm and Clov who form a pair, as physically manifest in their matching red faces. The two are engaged in a “vexed relationship...[of] master... [and] servant” (Stallworthy and Ramazani 2394). They are similar, then, to the falcon and the falconer of Yeats' poem. However, whereas Yeats mainly focuses on the chaos that erupts when hierarchical order “cannot hold” (3), Beckett examines the tension felt within an ordered situation of dominance and submission. Clearly, the hierarchical relationship between Hamm and Clov is not ideal for either party, as evidenced in the dialogue:

HAMM:...Why do you stay with me?

CLOV: Why do you keep me?

HAMM: There's no one else.

CLOV: There's nowhere else. (2396)

The situation is one of resentful “co-dependency” (Pearson 215). Clov and Hamm depend on one another because they are both, in some way, crippled, not fully competent: Hamm needs Clov to move him about and act as his eyes; Clov needs Hamm to give him food. Numerous times, Clov voices a desire to leave. However, as Hamm remarks, “Outside of here it's death” (2397). Thus, Beckket demonstrates that order is established to ward off the destructive, “outside” forces. In other words, order is set up to assuage the anxiety over threatening forces – death, in Beckett's work; chaotic violence in Yeats. However, as Beckett demonstrates, even within order, there is oppression, unhappiness, tension, and therefore anxiety resulting from a strained desire to escape order, as we find in Clov.

As aforementioned, the anxiety regarding disorder is rooted in current conflicts such as the First World War and the Russian Revolution which gave modernists a glimpse of the chaos and violence that erupted when various groups attempted to break out of an established order. However, the anxiety caused by the desire to escape an established order (even as disorder caused equal anxiety) is also rooted in contemporary affairs. For instance, as Nels Pearson contends in his essay subtitled “Codependency and the Ghosts of Decolonization,” the hierarchical relationship between Hamm and Clov can be interpreted as a parallel of the postcolonial relationship between colonizer and colony within the context of Irish history. As Pearson suggests, the strained, anxious relationship between the protagonists of Endgame derives from anxiety regarding the established order present in society (for example, the oppressive postcolonial relationship between Ireland and England).

To add to this point that modernist anxiety, as depicted in the two works in consideration, derived primarily from the present condition of the world is the observation made by some critics, such as Raymond Federman, that the setting of Endgame “reveals itself to be...a human skull...the two windows on the backdrop representing the eyes” (160). In this light, the tenants of the house or shelter – Hamm, Clov, Nell, and Nagg – are separate voices or thoughts within the skull; the mind depicted on stage is thus split-personalitied: it houses four people. Fascinatingly, modernists at the time “believed that Europe had a mind” (Brooker 12). Most notably in consideration of the split mind depicted by Beckett, T.S. Eliot maintained that the European mind is “schizophrenic” (Brooker 13). According to Eliot's The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Europe had undergone “'a splitting up of personality'” (Brooker 13). It can be argued, then, about Endgame that the play represents a single human mind conflicted within the structure of its own mind, but in the same vein, it can be argued that the setting represents the collective, “schizophrenic” (Brooker 13) mind of present-day Europe, with its tense conflicts. After all, according to Jewel Brooker, modern “philosophers and social scientists accepted the idea that the mind of the individual, the society, the culture, and the human race developed in parallel stages” (11). Thus, as suggested by the possible dual interpretation of the Endgame stage as both an individual and collective mind, the anxiety that modernists felt regarding order and disorder is a direct reflection of the anxiety and current tension in Europe at large. Paradoxical as it seems, then, the condition in Europe was both ordered and disordered, and, furthermore, both order and disorder caused tension on the continent and, in parallel fashion, in the minds of modernists. One must note, also, that, because the modernists felt uneasy with both order and disorder, they perceived themselves as trapped, like the characters in Beckett's play, with no where comfortable to stand.

Thus far I have argued that modernist anxiety stems primarily from the order and lack of order that the modernists witnessed immediately about them. However, as well as deriving from the present world, the anxiety felt by the modernists was intensified by their consideration of the past. Of course, the modernists' situation in, and preoccupation with, the present greatly influenced their view of the past; after all, when one considers an established order, he or she is inevitably considering an order that has been created in the past based on the past's ideals. So, for example, when Yeats writes, about the present, that “things fall apart” (3), he is recognizing that the old values which shaped the world no longer have the power to keep “things” together, that “the centre cannot hold” (3). Beckett also realizes this: in depicting Nell and Nagg (the older, parental generation) as with colourless faces, by placing them in trash cans, and by portraying the death of one of the two on stage, the play strongly indicates that the old ways are fading. Marc Hewson, in speaking of modernism, has called it an “age of awkwardness,” stating that the awkwardness – the “lack of ease” (“awkwardness” Def.3) akin to anxiety's “uneasiness” (“anxiety” Def.1) - comes from the modernists' recognition that they had lost the ability to use their parents' and grandparents' “tools.“ Thus, modernist anxiety, as well as coming from the present state of the world, was intensified through consideration of the past.

This leads us to the question, 'What constitutes “the centre” (3) of which Yeats speaks?' The first representative image presented in “The Second Coming,” that of a falconer at the centre of the “widening gyre” (1) of a flying falcon, provides some suggestions as to the “centre [that] cannot hold” (3). Glancing into the history of falconry, one finds that

Falconry...was the sport of kings in the Middle Ages...Social position not only

allowed time for the sport, but also dictated what species of bird could be used.

The technique and vocabulary of falconry was ritualized. (Jackson 21)

As falconry was a sport of the nobility, one might interpret Yeats' reference to it as indicating that “the centre” is – or was (since it no longer has any power) - traditional social hierarchy. Considering that Yeats disliked “the moneygrubbing and prudery of the middle classes...[and] looked for his ideal characters...to the aristocracy...[which had its] own traditions and lived according to them” (Stallworthy and Ramazani 2021), it is plausible that in the initial image of “The Second Coming,” he is expressing some regret for the loss of an ordered past in which the aristocracy stood at the controlling centre of things.

If the falconer is taken as an image of nobility, perhaps understood to be a king, he may also be taken as a representation of Christianity. The ordering of medieval society was based upon a desire to mimic the perfect, divine order, with the spousal relationship being a reiteration of the relationship of the king to his subjects, which itself was a reflection of the relationship between God and all of humanity – this is the reasoning that underlies, for instance, medieval concepts of petty and high treason (Plucknett 443), crimes which were seen as blasphemous acts against “the world order willed by God” (Carozzi 1365). Thus, if it is a noble falconer at the centre of the gyre which no longer holds, the image suggests that not only aristocracy but Christianity, as well, once held the world together. This interpretation is validated in the reference to “the ceremony of innocence [now] drowned” (6), a phrase one might take as denoting baptism, the Christian ceremony undergone by children. This view, that Yeats is suggesting Christiantiy to be one of the old structures that ordered society but no longer can, has been taken by many critics, including Brooker who writes “The center of which Yeats writes is Christianity, which for two thousand years held things together” (239).

The destabilization of these two centers of control – religion, and the traditional social system – was a long and gradual process and is a topic considered extensively in other works. For the purpose of understanding the modernist anxiety, however, we should note that this destablization was considerably hastened during the early twentieth century with publications of anthropological studies, among them James Frazer's Golden Bough, which “decentered” Western religion by placing it “in a comparative context as one of numerous related mythologies,” and philosophical writings such as those of Nietszche “who declared the death of God” (Stallworthy and Ramazani 1829). Furthermore, the World Wars of the twentieth century were a considerable blow on the modernists' faith not only in traditional social and religious structures but also in the methods – or “tools” (Hewson) - that had once created and perpetuated those structures, namely “conviction” (Yeats 7) – that is, firm “opinion or belief” (“conviction” Def. 7) as established through reason - and “passionate intensity” (Yeats 8) – that is, emotion. During the First World War, modernists witnessed many of the innovations which had been heralded as marks of human progress (for example, manned flight, first accomplished in 1903) turned to atrocious purposes (Hewson). According to Dr. Hewson, the “awkwardness” (or anxiety) of modernism arose from having to face the apparent fact that humanity was not what it had imagined itself to be. Thus, modernist anxiety, rooted in current events, intensified in consideration of the past, with the recognition that the “falcon cannot hear the falconer” (Yeats 2) - that is, that modernity was disconnected from its origins, from the structures and ideas that had once provided order and stability (a place to perch, if we extend Yeats' falcon/falconer comparison).

Twentieth century anxiety thus arose from what the modernists knew immediately (ie. the order and disorder of contemporary life) and that which they knew retrospectively (ie. the inadequacy and failure of past structures and modes of thought). However, as “The Second Coming” and Endgame show, the modernist anxiety was further heightened by the perception of a looming presence which had yet to be experienced or fully known. In “The Second Coming,” this is the “shape with the lion body and the head of a man,/...[slouching] towards Bethlehem to be born” (14-22). The creature, though by its particular hybridity recognizable as a sphinx, is meant to be ambiguous. It is a “shape,” merely – Yeats does not specify its species; furthermore, it is located in the unspecific setting of “somewhere” (13). Yeats concludes the poem, finally, asking “what rough beast” (21). Thus the description of this creature yet to be born is deliberately vague. This vagueness contributes to the sinister aura which accompanies this creature; its “gaze blank” (15) – a gaze unreadable, unknowable – creates uneasiness in the poet, troubling his “sight” (13) as well as ours, indicating that there is anxiety in not knowing.

This, of course is very troubling for the modernists. Because they now seriously doubted and had renounced old systems of thought and methods of knowing, the only thing the modernists could use to establish knowledge was individual perception, which they recognized as subjective and therefore not capable of ascertaining objective, absolute truth. This dilemma is captured in the setting of Beckett's play, which, as aforementioned is a depiction of a skull. The mind within the skull (ie. the four characters) has only two windows, two eyes, with which to see the outer world – aside from those, the mind is self-enclosed. Thus, as Beckett demonstrates, modernists recognized that the subjective perception which was now their only mode of perception was, by nature, limited and inadequate in ascertaining truth. This, coupled with the fact that there is uneasiness in vague, incomplete knowledge, indicates that the anxiety the modernists felt over not knowing was inescapable.

It must be noted, however, in a comparison of Yeats and Beckett, that in Endgame while there is a depiction of modernist subjectivity, the anxiety over not knowing is not brought into as much focus as in “The Second Coming.” Instead, Endgame foregrounds the knowledge that the characters, self-enclosed within some protective shelter, have of the outer world – that is, it examines what the characters fear to experience. When Clov peers through his telescope on “the without,” he states that he sees “Zero...zero...and zero” (2404). Earlier, Hamm states that “Outside of here it's death” (cite). Thus what the characters fear is death or, more generally, non-existence, the “infinite emptiness [that] will be,” as Hamm says (2406). Beckett associates death with the desert by causing Nell's final word before dying to be “desert.” The image of the desert is a suggestive symbol: it suggests not merely physical lack of life but also spiritual aridity (as in “The Second Coming,” where the dawn of a new era takes its setting in “sands of the desert,” suggesting the spiritual aridity at the end of the preceding, Christian era). Overall, the desert is a symbol of general void. The irony of the situation in Endgame, however, is that, in trying to guard themselves against the void, the emptiness, and the spiritual and physical death which await them, the characters create a stifling, unhappy system and a life for themselves which, self-enclosed, is equally void and empty: a life spent desiring to escape, as Clov does, or like Hamm, recognizing “it's time it ended” but continuing to “hesitate” (2395). As with the anxiety over not knowing, the anxiety caused by a fear of the void of substance (physical, spiritual, etc.) is inescapable, not only because in attempting to protect one's self from the void, one creates another void but also because, specifically, the modernists could no longer rely on older systems to impart meaning upon the void and thus make it meaningful (for example, in the Christian vision, death is merely one step on a the greater journey towards God/heaven). Modernist thought perceives that, within and without social structures (friendship, family, master/servant coordinations, religion, etc.), there is no meaning; thus, even as modernists yearn for structures of meaning, they recognize the futility of such structures, thus creating an inescapable anxiety.

One final observation can be made regarding modernist anxiety over what remained to come: both Beckett and Yeats, in their respective works, depict an anxiety over the repetition of life. The motif of cyclical existence is key in “The Second Coming” wherein Yeats employs his vision of history as two spiraling gyres which alternatingly expand and contract. As one gyre reaches its most expansive point (as during the modernist era), tension mounts, “things fall apart” (3). Thus, Yeats suggests there is anxiety over the cyclical, repetitive nature of history which predicts recurring chaos. In Endgame, similarly, there is tension at the possibility of life repeating. This possibility comes up three times in the play: with the flea, the rat, and the boy. In each case, Hamm and Clov express a desire to destroy life; when confronted with the existence of the flea, for instance, Hamm exclaims “But humanity might start from there all over again! Catch him, for the love of God!” (2405), indicating his tension at the thought of life reproducing. This disagreement with the cycle of life is somewhat perplexing in the case of Hamm and Clov. Considering their fear of the emptiness that awaits them beyond the here-and-now, one wonders why Hamm and Clov aren't elated at the prospect of life flourishing, filling the void - why they do not see the flea, rat, and boy hopefully. Similarly, one might ask why the poet of “The Second Coming” does not see the dawn of a new era as heralded by a “second coming” (even if a “second coming” without religious implications) as a hopeful change, why the image “troubles [the] sight” (13) of the speaker when it suggests a change in the current state of “mere anarchy” which the speaker deplores in the first few lines of the poem.

Both Beckett and Yeats suggest that the problem with hope, when it appears to occur, is that it occurs within a futile, inescapable system of stasis. For instance, the toy dog in Endgame which lacks one leg may be seen as a bizarrely hopeful object: it is a dog that is being put together; supposedly it will be complete – there is potential in the object. However, even if it is completed, even if that hope is fulfilled, it remains still a toy dog, a plaything, a pawn in someone else's game, just as the characters in the play are pawns (as suggested by their red and white pairing). The play ultimately views modern life as a futile “endgame” in which, despite appearances of hope, the final outcome (death, non-existence, emptiness) is unavoidable; the anxiety that arises at the notion of the continuation of life thus is an extension of the anxiety felt at living a futile, empty existence of which there can be no meaningful outcome.

Similarly, while the “Second Coming” in Yeats' poem would certainly mark a change in the direction of the world, it would still be a change within the limits of all possible history, a movement between two alternatives but not a true escape. In Yeat's model of history, it hardly matters what is at the center of the gyre, whether it is the figure of Jesus Christ or the figure of the sphinx, because, whatever it is, history will continue “turning and turning in the widening gyre” (1), continually leading to a point where “things fall apart” (3). Yeats and Beckett both indicate, thus, that the modernist anxiety permitted no sentiment of hope, for life, as the modernists viewed it in view of current catastrophic events and in consideration of the past's structures and ways of thinking which had so utterly failed, was futile, forever fluctuating between various extremes but never truly progressing.

The prevalent sentiment of the modernist period, anxiety, was so deep and dire that the period was nicknamed after it as “The Age of Anxiety.” To understand modernity, then, one must attempt to understand modernist anxiety. As I have argued based on analysis of Yeats' “The Second Coming” and Beckett's Endgame, the anxiety felt by the modernists was multifaceted; it derived from a number of aspects, which as in the interpretation of this paper, may be divided into aspects of the past, the present, and the future. The modernists felt anxiety over the lack of meaningful order in their contemporary world. Springing from their view of the immediate world, the modernists were forced to reconsider the past and recognize that the social structures and systems of thinking they had relied on could no longer hold - an understanding of disconnection that increased the modernists' sense of anxiety. Their view of the present and past cast serious doubts on the modernists' outlook of the future and the unknown in general. Stripped of the ability to trust in ordered systems of meaning, the modernists were reduced to an entirely subjective perception of the universe which denied the acquisition of objective, absolute truth – a perception which, in fact, suggested there is no such thing as objective truth. Similarly, the disconnection with and distrust of the past's systems of meaning rendered the modernists incapable of perceiving meaning in their surroundings; they were forced to confront the void, the unknown, the future, without anything stable to provide support, to help them make sense of and find meaning in the emptiness they perceived. As such, the modernist anxiety was all-encompassing and inescapable, creating in the modernist thinker and writer an outlook of all existence as inescapable futility, history as repetitive and barren.

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