Discussion Notes on Modernism and Temporality

1: RE: Dorian Gray and the difference between ritual and addiction

One could argue that Dorian Gray is addicted to the life of experience. As his compulsion to act on “infinite curiosity” progresses, the narrator says something essential about this condition: “The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.”

This is interesting from a temporal perspective: the moment of satiating desire loops immediately back to the moment of desire; there’s no real movement, in other words, beyond a reiterated moment, that inescapable presence of addiction (ie. addiction is always present); rather, that moment gains ever more gravity. “Passion makes one think in a circle,” as the narrator says elsewhere. This adds a layer of meaning to Dorian’s eternal youth: he is caught in the perpetual ‘now’ of impulse.

If addiction can be characterized, thus, as the impulsive return to the desiring impulse, I would argue that ritual, in contrast, is neither impulsive nor perpetual. This depends a lot on how one defines ritual (and I’m sure I don’t have the ‘correct’ anthropological or social definition), but in my personal experience of sacred and secular traditions, ritual time is deliberately allocated and structured to link the present with the past or a desired future (or both). Thus, though I almost entirely agree with Julia’s response above, I would say that ritual is the closed circuit (ritual time begins and ends, and it is the distinction from regular time – from the present – that gives it meaning and power), whereas cycles of addiction, devastatingly, keep going.

2) RE: Heart of Darkness and the myth of progress

Marlow's story highlights humanity's lack of progress, what he calls "truth stripped of its cloak of time:" that "the dreams of men" have actualized no dawn to follow the "night of first ages." This message, alongside the narrator's comment that the meaning of Marlow's "episode [is] not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale," lead me to wonder if Marlow's final stance "in the pose of a meditating Buddha" is one of enlightenment. Has Marlow grown?, in other words: is his "ascetic aspect" indication of some progress through experience, even as his story undermines the possibility of such? My interest here is ultimately the author himself: given that Heart of Darkness "illuminates" humanity, can we say that the author, at least, enjoys a vantage point that contradicts the narrative by formally modelling enlightenment?

My questions are prompted partially in consideration of Chinua Achebe's strong position against Conrad's "obvious racism." Contrary to the impossibility of progress that Heart of Darkness suggests, Achebe argues for pursuing progress (by way of eliminating Conrad's "racist" work from the western canon of classics). I wonder how Conrad might respond, particularly when Heart of Darkness presents even "infinite pity" as a veil. If there is no progress from "the horror" of darkness, is storytelling obliged to any imperatives?

Evidently, I have more questions here than answers. But the general drift of my thoughts is that, just as Heart of Darkness explodes the certainty of distance between the present and primordial past, it also explodes the certainty of the narrator's remote perspective. Instead, the external "haze" becomes just as much subject of the narrative as the inner "glow." In this sense, Heart of Darkness is about storytelling itself, that old "monkey trick" of creating myths out of experience: it seems to me that in the aspect of an 'enlightened' Marlow spinning his yarn, the author presents a commentary on yarn-spinning itself as formally enacting the myth of progress in endless "visions and revisions," as Eliot says elsewhere.

Building into a discussion on realism (responding to professor)

Professor, I appreciate your prompting me to think about the realist novel and its aims... my general understanding of victorian realism is that it was an attempt to see and represent the world rationally, empirically, scientifically - to capture and convey all the details (a kind of colonization of the real). Conrad's novel, alternatively, destabilizes every representation of reality and perhaps representation altogether (in the "mere incidents" of life, "the reality - the reality I tell you - fades" as Marlow says).   

I'm also mulling over what you say above re: whether narrative requires change "towards a modern 'self' with a propensity to...'accumulate' and adequately consume." We might theorize experience as the thing that is consumed (or raw material, to use another metaphor) in the production of narrative. A sentence from Conrad's work jumps out at me, towards the end, Marlow reflecting on Kurtz: "his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life." This links, also, to my point on seeing Marlow as a figure who has died through one experience and is reborn as the narrator, a Buddha no less, a figure who is continually reborn, accumulating lives!

RE: European linear time and its relationship to colonial ideas of progress (responding to a student)

You touch on a very interesting point here re: time as discourse, historical consciousness as ideology (shared reality rather than "the real," per our discussion on Lacan yesterday) wielded by both capital and state to dominate those outside the discourse, history's subalterns - ie those who do not interpret the real in that way, speak in those terms, understand time as linear progress. In this sense, history - by which I mean Western historical discourse - is bound to colonial and imperialist violence.

Marlow gains insight into the contrived, unreal nature of history; thus we can read Heart of Darkness as a progressive text critiquing ideology... but at the same time, the novel absolutely relies on a linear, historical framework to make its narrative and thematic moves (even as it doubts that linearity). In class we spoke about how Marlow senses the jungle, whereas others just see the trees (our Lacanian analogy), suggesting his commitment to "the real" - but an issue with the text is its inability to think of the jungle beyond the framework of time: the jungle represents the primordial (as do the natives - Achebe's contention). An inescapable primordiality, yes (in which sense the text questions history), but primordiality nonetheless (ie. its meaning depends on historical discourse).

This reminds me of an article I read recently by Ashis Nandy called "History's Forgotten Doubles," wherein Nandy argues that that "historical mode" gained and maintains dominance over ahistorical modes due to the ways in which it links with the nation-state, science/Enlightenment rationality, nineteenth century ideas of progress/current ideas of development, etc. A vexing point from that article, and one way to think about how or why Conrad's critique of history still relies on history (as well as modernist temporal anxiety generally): "Historical consciousness is very nearly a totalizing one...once you own history, it also begins to own you."

3) RE: "Two Gallants" from The Dubliners, "moral paralysis," and the epiphany

While he's waiting to reconvene with Corley, Lenehan has a "vision [that makes] him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit." A moment of mindfulness ensues - but if this is Lenehan's epiphany, there's more of gravy than of grace to it: "He [feels] better after having eaten" and resumes his meandering night. 

This seems to be the point. The moment entirely lacks moral sway and is instead subsumed into Lenehan's circular "wanderings." (I wonder, also, at the superimposition of this moment on the event of a meal, the desires and anxieties therein possibly sustaining the spirit of Lenehan's ongoing "wanderings.") Thus, even the epiphany has its place in the cyclic (i.e. inert, paralytic) structure of Lenehan's life.

The final revelation of the gold coin, a second epiphany of sorts, similarly maintains the momentum of a circle, the gold coin answering the questions driving both Lenehan and the narrative itself: can Corley "pull it off all right," is the slavey "game," etc. Our discussion last class reminds me that we might read this coin as reward (i.e end of a cycle), investment (i.e. beginning of a cycle), or potentially both. 

There's something to further tease out here about the narrative function of epiphany, but I'm not sure what. The story's focalization causes the reader to experience the revelation of the gold coin along with Lenehan; thus the narrative itself becomes a transaction where we as readers exchange time for the reward of a conclusion. In other words, we read simply for the revelation of the story, to know where it goes (and does it go anywhere, from the reader’s perspective?). The coin reads to me like the culmination of a cycle, suggesting moral paralysis for the characters, but I'm not sure to what extent we should synthesize the narrative function of the reader's epiphany with the (lack of) moral function of the character's epiphanies.

4) RE: the dinner passage in The Dead

There's a way in which Gabriel as a character, along with his subjectivity as an experience for the reader, disappears within the dinner scene: "Kindly forget my existence" he requests, and the narrative obliges, mostly leaving him alone until the speech brings us back into his point of view. Before that, we catch glimpses of him "at ease" (as he is at the beginning of my assigned passage), no doubt because he finds himself in a customary role: he's an "expert carver" and this is "not the first time" they've gathered for their annual Christmas dinner, as he emphasizes. It's useful to recognize the dinner as a ritual, one in which Gabriel is able to seemingly, momentarily lose himself.

With Gabriel's subjectivity apparently diminished, the dinner scene reads almost like realism, particularly in the lengthy, detailed descriptions of the table, food, and ongoing shuffle of objects, guests, and discussion experienced through what feels like a relatively omniscient perspective. We might read this realism as a representation of the world as is, with subjectivity suspended. But there's something self-conscious about it too - like a performance of realism, rather than the real thing. It feels like what matters is not the details themselves so much as the contrived feeling of realism, of a detached perspective. In this sense, the lack of Gabriel's focalizaed, self-concious perspective is conspicuous, a marker, indeed, of Gabriel's subjective experience, which is, for once, fairly "at ease." In other words, his subjectivity has indeed retreated, in a way, but this retreated subjectivity still colours the passage, being present through absence.

5) RE: Mrs. Dalloway, and modernist temporality

I think of modernism as a period in which people lose faith in the progress of history; thus arise ambiguities around concepts of time. I’ve selected the passage above because it touches on these themes.

Perhaps the most significant event that struck off modernist thought was The War, in which coalesced all the emblems of modernity (technology, machinery, nationalism) with the basest qualities of humanity (greed, hatred, murder) to produce “the horror” (to recall another modernist work) of the realization that there has been no progress.

The War is treated lightly in this passage, reflecting Mrs. Dalloway’s mood – for her, it is “over” – but it has left its marks (on Mrs. Foxcroft, for example), persisting even in “the middle of June.” Of course, the novel takes this theme up in full with the character of Septimus, whose present is determined by a nightmare past that he cannot escape. (To the extent that Mrs. Dalloway can be read as a microcosmic portrait of “life; London; [all realized in this] moment in June,” the persistence of war represents the trauma to the social psyche that produces modernism as a historical break.)

This duality of time – that an event can pass and be “over” but simultaneously persist – is caught perfectly here in the motif of Big Ben. The striking of the hour exists, first of all, in the future: Mrs. Dalloway anticipates it, “having lived in Westminster…over twenty [years]”; thus the past, though over, persists as memory and anticipation. Interesting too, how this hour melts into the future “dissolv[ing] in the air” of quotidian life, rather than happening and then disappearing, without a trace.

One final note to make on time in relation to this passage, and generally in relation to modernism, is the de-sacralization of time, the belief that our lives keep time by some cosmic measure. In this passage we do indeed have something that feels sacred: “a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense…before Big Ben strikes.” However, the thorough narrative focalization destabilizes this, for it is Clarissa who is “positive” of this sacred quality, and even she doubts it: “that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza.”

This way in which the narrative undermines its own validity through the usage of unreliable narrators, is characteristically modernist, setting works of this period apart from realism. Modernism casts doubt on meta-narratives (including the omniscient narrator); in the aesthetic absence of a guiding principle, modernism sometimes looks (as it does in Mrs Dalloway, as well as, for example, Waiting for Godot) like a perpetual now-ness, a fixation on what characterizes the moment.

6) RE: The Wasteland and footnotes

Over the weekend, bearing in mind that I had to be attentive to the footnotes, I attempted to read a hypertext version of The Wasteland (linked below). I found it extremely distracting, but it did get me thinking about how the various footnotes and endless allusions produce an extensive hypertext, expanding the poem from 400 lines to something like thousands of lines, as a kind of poetic excess.

The temporal qualities of hypertext are fascinating - think of how the internet can be such a sinkhole of your time, the rabbit-hole of Wikepedia articles or Youtube videos, everything linking to everything else, so that you can just keep going and going forever it seems, in every direction and in circles too. When you read The Wasteland as hypertext, it feels like that - the hypertext produces an even greater sense of temporal disorientation than the poem itself. (Are footnotes pre-thoughts or post-scripts? Allusions seem to exist in parallel, so that brief poetic moments - sometimes just a line or a word - extend the present ever outwards into a dense, temporarily atemporal network of history and myth.)

I am reminded of Eliot's critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" wherein he posits an ideal "historic sense" as "indispensable" to the modern poet. This historical sense, according to Eliot, "involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence...a feeling that the whole of...literature...has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order...a sense of the timeless and of the temporal together...[that] at the same time...makes a writer...acutely conscious of...his own contemporaneity."

Eliot's dialectic between history and contemporaneity also reminds me quite a bit of clock-time versus cloud-time: there is the immediate poem, which moves (can we say forward?) as a series of fragmentary moments; meanwhile the various inter- and intratextual references produce a kind of temporal cloud around the poem, a cloud of what feels like distraction wherein we are jostled back and forth through time.

Which brings me to my final point, and a question: do the allusions and footnotes in fact offer a kind of cloudy coherence to the fragmentary poem? At the very least, they do demonstrate an author's hand at work (perhaps his "automatic hand," given Eliot's poetic ideal of impersonality). The footnote that really jumps out at me in this regard is the one about Tiresias (line 218), who the note clearly indicates is "the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest...[because] what he sees...is the substance of the poem." This footnote, pointing out (in an act of saving grace) the crux of a poem set up to challenge any crucial sense, is kind of remarkable to me for its confidence in substance. While most of the footnotes are not nearly as direct, I do therefore wonder if the allusive cloud within and about the poem betrays a unified consciousness distinct from the various fragmented consciousnesses represented.

That the hypertext felt like a distraction to me seems relevant here: considering one of the footnotes clearly points out the "substance" of the poem, perhaps it is more the reader's desire to filter out the hypertextual past in order to attend to the poetic present that is a distraction; perhaps it is at the "dull roots" of the poem that we find sense and substance. 

The hypertext version of the poem I was attempting to read:nhttp://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/Links to an external site.Another hypertext version that seems even better: http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explore.html

7) RE: The Wasteland and the roots that clutch

The poem plants this seed of a question - "what are the roots that clutch?" - setting us on a quest searching for those roots among the "stony rubbish" of the poem. The question itself uproots reader and poet alike into this quest, rather like the thought of the key which creates the prison.

I'm not sure these roots, "clutching" as they are, are particularly good for us, after all. Perhaps the question is not so much how can we ground and stabilize ourselves, but rather, how can we up-root and un-ground in order to escape (i.e. what roots clutch, holding us back?)? But it seems to me that the very question keeps us rooted to it, trailing along poetic branches, clutching for fixed foundations. We get trapped in the poem, following shadows back and forth; the poet wants to divert us to"dust" instead.

Does the poem thus suggest redemption in disintegration? That it doesn't allow us to set roots anywhere seems part of the wasteland's torment - but perhaps this is that "fear in a handful of dust" that the poem reveals, a fear that prompts the reader's restless quest for wholeness.

In thinking of the poem's ungrounded, unrooted voice in this way, it's hard not to think of Eliot's poetic ideal as a "continual self-sacrifice," an orientalist aesthetic that is echoed in "datta, dayadhvam, damyata." Eliot finds comfort and sense in a philosophy of letting go. But does the final "shantih, shantih, shantih" actually bring peace? Can the modernist root herself in "datta, dayadhvam, damyata" - in a mode of "continual self-sacrifice"? (Can the modern self be rooted in selflessness?)

I'm not sure. As "Tradition and the Individual Talent" suggests, Eliot's de-personalization is fundamentally a means of recovering the self in the higher, more stable order of tradition. If we think to our contemporary world's turn to Eastern religion, philosophy, and practice as a means of finding the self, we also clearly see how such philosophies are always corrupted by modernist anxiety. The modernist desire to let go of the self is always corrupted by an ulterior motive of finding the self.

So, too, I think, if we think of "datta, dayadhvam, damyata" as the answer to "what roots clutch" - the quest for an escape from our rootedness in the wasteland corrupts our ability to escape the wasteland. Thus, I think if there is peace at the end of the poem, it can only be found by forgetting the questions that drove the poem in the first place (which is to say, the poem must uproot itself).

8) RE: Good Morning, Midnight and "negative 'hailing'" (Prof. G. Leonard's phrase)

I strongly agree with your notion of a "negative hailing" that Sasha experiences. It does seem to me, though, that, in addition to being excluded, she is significantly included in the world around her, very much against her will (as perhaps negative hailing implies?). In the dream, for example, she is being forced to look at the signs and move towards the Exhibition - her desperate desire for "the way out" is produced within the context of having both her gaze and self forcefully directed further in. So too, of the landscape, built of "certain cafes, certain streets, certain spots" that Sasha is trying to avoid: both her movements within the world (as acts of a positive and permitted self) and the movements she avoids (acts of a negated, othered self) are products of the same landscape, which sometimes includes her where and when she doesn't want to be. 

My general understanding, in line with this, is that alterity, by virtue of exclusion, is actually produced (interpellated?) by ideological systems, and is therefore inherent to them. Thus, it seems to me that Sasha's othered subjectivity is propped up by a world which includes it by means of exclusion. She herself captures this relationship quite clearly when thinking about Mr. Blank, her boss:

"You, who represent Society, have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month. That's my market value...We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich...There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours."

Although he's not part of the landscape, the exchange with Mr Blank is particularly illuminating on the nature of visibility in the production of otherness (i.e. invisibility) within social relationships. Sasha clearly doesn't want to be seen by Mr. Blank - "Don't let him notice me, don't let him look at me," she thinks - but what is most fascinating is the way her subjective voice explodes into lengthy internal narrations in direct response to being seen. An example:

'She speaks French,' Salvatini says. 'Assez bien, assez bien.'
Mr Blank looks at me with lifted eyebrows.
'Sometimes,' I say idiotically. Of course, sometimes, when I am a bit drunk and am talking to somebody I like and know, I speak French very fluently indeed. At other times I just speak it. And as to that, my dear sir, you've got everything all wrong. I'm here because I have a friend who knows Mr Salvatini's mistress, and Mr Salvatini's mistress spoke to Mr Salvatini about me, and the day that he saw me I wasn't looking too bad and he was in a good mood. Nothing at all to do with fluent French and German, dear sir, nothing at all. I'm here because I'm here because I'm here. And just to prove to you that I speak French, I'll sing you a little song about it: 'Si vous saviez, si vous saviez, si vous saviez comment ca se fait.'
For God's sake, I think, pull yourself together.
I say: 'I speak French fairly well. I've been living in Paris for eight years.'

As I think this passage demonstrates, being seen produces the unseen/unheard (that which can not or does not want to be visible) as an excess of what is "pulled together" in response to the act of hailing. Indeed, even what you might call Sasha's political consciousness as an other, an example of which I quoted above ("You, who represent Society..."), is produced in one of these moments in which her internal narration explodes in response to Mr. Blank's "boiled eyes, served cold." We could further argue, of course, that this invisible self was 'always already' there, and only brought into realization in this social exchange. 

9) RE: Good Morning, Midnight, history and subjecthood

There is a question to consider, I think: whether Sasha is a a figure of subalternity (out of history) or alterity. Subalternity - a la Gayatri Spivak's "can the subaltern speak" - is such thorny theory, but here we go.

My discussion post last class argued, as you do in this section, that the system Sasha wishes to escape "require[s] her continued presence." Thus, I would push back a little on your claim that Sasha's "perspective comes from a non-place." In fact, Sasha does not have a zeroed-out value -- at one point, she was worth 400 francs a month -- but it is the case that her value is constantly depreciating. An aging woman darting in and out of poverty, she flickers on the verge of disappearance; she knows what it is to be nothing (she has seen the horror), so I do agree with you that her perspective is strongly informed by non-existence.

You make a very interesting connection between history and accumulation when you say Sasha's is a history of the places she has existed. Western history is a temporal collection; the "accumulation" aspect makes me realize that it is also a system of accounting: to self-narrate is to account for the self. This presupposes, of course, a self to be accounted: how do you account for your self in instances where subjectivity is decimated, and a self is not present?

I think again to the exchange with Mr. Blank (a conversation in which Sasha must account for herself). What is so interesting is that a good chunk of Sasha's thoughts during the exchange are only constructed in retrospect: "Did I say all this? Of course I didn't. I didn't even think it." We could make a strong case that, in this instance for example, Sasha's narration creates a subaltern self, materializing both voice and thought in retrospect (hello, again, Spivak) in order to construct a subjectivity for a subject that was, in situ, truly annihilated in a moment of objectification.

This way of looking at the text helps me grapple somewhat with my sense that, although as you say, Sasha "longs to have a history," she also actively discards history, changing her name and avoiding "certain spots" just as she avoids memory. Not wanting to be subject to the past she has been subjected too, she effaces her history of effacement -- significantly, as a mode of self-preservation against a history that threatens to efface her as a figure in time (consider how time collapses when she collides with things she wants to avoid; what is the temporality of trauma, after all?).

From here, I think I can tentatively turn to considering the ending of the book, with emphasis on the way Sasha dissociates from her attempted rape. In relation to your point that Sasha has no social relations to mediate the collection of images she has accumulated through life, it seems to me that Sasha mediates her exchange with Rene specifically through memories (images in her "film-mind") that she is trying to avoid -- when he touches her leg, for example: "It reminds me of - never mind." This produces a dissociation from the present moment, fled from as it collapses into the past: "We kiss eachother fervently, but already something has gone wrong. I am uneasy, half of myself somewhere else." Sasha does not fully want to exist in this moment, which she relates to (and produces) as an image: "I want to avoid...a scene in this hotel...My idea is not so much to struggle as to make it a silent struggle. Nobody must hear us." This dissociation, as it relates to the subject in history, a self that makes a mark (being seen or heard), is, as I've said above, a survival tactic of the dispossessed, and a paradox: Sasha does not want to exist in a painful objectifying moment in which she does not exist (ie. an instance of rape); meanwhile, her inability to exist in the present moment is conditioned by and perpetuates a history of such moments of dispossession.

My final thought, which I won't fully flesh out given space, is that Sasha's embrace of the man in the "white dressing gown" (recalling the father in her nightmare, to speak of another image mediating social relations) represents a traumatic implosion of time and history. The "yes yes yes" is utterly ambivalent (does it represent positive subjectivity or loss of self in utter objectification?). I'm sure we will get to discussing this in class. Looking forward!

Nature in the female form – an exploration of the connection between femininity and the primitive in Zamyatin's We and Murphy's “His Vegetable Wife”

We by Zamyatin and “His Vegetable Wife” by Pat Murphy, because they examine and criticize the ideologies prevalent in the modern era, to some extent also criticize patriarchy which is inextricably linked with – even responsible for – those ideologies. Following a very long tradition, these twentieth-century authors associate the feminine with sensuality, spontaneity, irrationality, and the primitive; female characters, such as I-330 and the vegetable wife, embody elements that the patriarchal societies in the novels seek to subjugate. The male protagonists, Fynn and D-503, who serve as representatives of their respective societies, through their engagement with female characters, access the feminine within themselves. This inner feminization, furthermore, is mirrored by a feminization of the outer world, represented by the gradual overcoming of structured society by unstructured nature by way of revolution. Thus, Zamyatin and Murphy explore the powerful force of the feminine which lurks both at the borders of civilization and at its centre, a force that is disruptive and potentially destructive, yet also unifying and nurturing.

The argument outlined in brief above relies on this premise: the worlds depicted in Zamyatin's We and Pat Murphy's “His Vegetable Wife” are patriarchal. In “His Vegetable Wife” this is clear enough; because it is a short story, stripped of extraneous detail, one may understand its setting as microcosmic: Fynn's farm is representative of society at large, and it is ruled over by a man – thus, symbolically, it is patriarchal. The development of agricultural society is, furthermore, often linked with patriarchy. Historian Gerda Lerner, for example, develops this Marxist feminist view:

Approximately at the time when hunting/gathering or horticulture gives way to
agriculture, kinship arrangements tend to shift from matriliny to patriliny, and private property develops...All agricultural societies have reified women's...reproductive capacity...In the course of agricultural revolution the exploitation of human labor and the sexual exploitation of women became inextricably linked. (49-52)

Fynn's farm represents patriarchal society thus not only by way of analogy; the setting also reminds readers of the agricultural roots of modern society and patriarchy.

We, as a longer and thus more complex work, is more challenging to interpret. Especially when one considers that one of the self-defining aspects of the One State is its desire for equality, a world in which everyone is “alike” (6), it appears that the One State is in fact not patriarchal, for patriarchy, by common definition, promotes inequality. Despite its supposed devotion to equality, however, the One State has evolved out of, and to a great deal retains aspects of, a patriarchal system: namely, Christianity. The One State's roots in, and likeness to, Christianity is continually referred to throughout the book: at one point, D-503 claims that Christians are the “only predecessors” of the citizens of the One State (128); the services held in the society are of a Christian nature pervaded by a “Gothic silence” (45) that D-503 speculates may have been “experienced by the ancients during their 'religious services'” (45); elsewhere, R-13 outlines clearly the fundamental alignment of the One State with Christian values, stating that the One State and “the ancient God...[are] side by side, at the same table” (61). Thus, the One State is clearly qualitatively Christian. As many an ardent feminist today might claim, Christianity is closely related to patriarchy in a number of ways. It is the worship of a male sky-god; a female was responsible for original sin, while a male redeemed humanity; the Bible's depicts the first wife as being created from man to be his “help meet” (Authorized King James Version, Genesis, 2.18): all of these and more have been historically used to suggest woman's natural inferiority and to promote her subjugation.

It is interesting, in light of the present comparison between We and “His Vegetable Wife,” to note, further, that agrarianism and modern religion co-evolved in the Neolithic period, during which time the transition from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles significantly altered worldviews. John Haught outlines the close relationship between agriculture and Christianity in his text, What is Religion?, as follows:

The images that were born in the religious awareness of the agricultural revolution have provided the central metaphors and myths of the world's religions ever since. Think, for example, of the savior figure undergoing death and resurrection in Christianity...The imaginative basis of [this journey] lies in the agricultural experience of grains of wheat, or other seeds, perishing in order to produce new life. The religions of the world owe a supreme debt to the agricultural revolution and the new images...it called forth. (26) 

We may presume, then, that the agricultural world in “His Vegetable Wife” and the quasi-Christian world in We are in some significant sense alike. As I have argued, they are both patriarchal – but what does this mean, after all?

What the worlds depicted by Murphy and Zamyatin share is an emphasis on controlling and structuring nature. Indeed, the same can be said of agriculture and Christianity. Agriculture relies on controlling and manipulating the earth's productivity. The religious/Christian myth of resurrection, as Haught relates it (above), similarly conveys the desire to, in some sense, trump nature: to escape the most fundamental experience of all life – death. I venture that the agricultural revolution, while it saw the emergence of a prominent “mother-goddess” (Haught 26), also saw the development of a contempt for the earth and nature which transferred into a religious disdain for the flesh. The female entity of the earth – Mother nature, Gaia, Bhoomi, etc. - was something to be handled, manipulated, husbanded, so that crops would resurrect with equal or greater fruition and human survival would be ensured. In the course of the development of Christianity, it is Jesus Christ (and, subsequently, countless other heroes, traditionally, rather than heroines) who “descend[s] into the depths” (Haught 26) and re-emerges, victorious over death, while the earth, being the grave, takes the less favourable role of “the depths.” If, as Haught says, the resurrection mytheme is a representation of the cyclicality of crop growth, it is the re-emergence of the crops (which will later evolve into the resurrection of Christ), aided by human cultivation of the female entity of the earth, that is celebrated. Thus, the agricultural revolution witnessed not only a demarcation of humanity as separate from the natural world but also a growing contempt, on humanity's part, towards the earth – the growth, that is, of an antithetical relationship between nature and humankind, where the latter seeks to subjugate the former. The Christian valuation of spirit over flesh and reason over emotion, is based on this contempt toward nature and expresses a desire to control what is spontaneous and natural. Thus, both agriculture and modern religion – which, as outlined above, developed together through a period of co-evolution – emphasize control of nature: this is what is significantly alike between the two and marks each, moreover, as patriarchal. According to Dr. Zoi Coucopoulos of the Criminology department at the University of Ottawa, patriarchy is defined, not necessarily by the subjugation of women (although this is almost entirely the case) but by an obsessive desire for control; this obsession for control runs through the sedentary, agricultural human existence, through Christianity and, because agriculture and Christianity are the basis of the worlds developed by Murphy and Zamyatin, respectively, the obsession for control over nature also provides the basis for these fictitious worlds.

The works confirm this hypothesis. The protagonist of each story, firmly embedded in his world and embodying its values, strives for order, rigidity, and stasis, in contradiction to the natural world. Fynn, for example, takes great pleasure in reforming the natural environment in a way that is knowable to him, and therefore controllable by him: “The soft wind in the grasses irritated Fynn; he thought it sounded like people whispering secrets. He had enjoyed hacking down the grass..., planting the straight rows of cimmeg” (628). The rows of plants contrast sharply against the “vast expanse of swaying stalks [that]...[shift] and [move]” (628). This difference from the natural world, whose “whispers” (628) terrify him, is precisely what Fynn values and intends to create: he prefers rows of plants to “swaying stalks,” prefers nature that is linear, predictable, and within his control (which is, of course, to say, cultivated nature). The motif of the straight line figures prominently in We as well. It is central in the first chapter, wherein D-503 lays out his intentions:

Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to...a straight line. For the line of the One State is the straight line. The great, divine, exact, wise straight line – the wisest of all lines. (2, emphasis mine)

As the italicized sentence above indicates, the straight line is the symbol of the One State: the line represents not only the One State's “straight, immutable streets” (5) and “square harmony” (5), but also its Table of Hours which rigidly delineates each day, and even its ideal of equality which is merely an ideal of complete conformity, an aim for a world without any variation – no “classical noses” in contrast to “button-noses” (7), for example (one may envision such a world mathematically, graphically, as a straight line without any outliers). The natural world beyond the Green Wall, in contrast to the markedly linearized world of the One State is described not in terms of a straight line, but as a wave: “From...behind the wall rose a wild wave of roots, flowers, branches, leaves” (93). Waves are characterized – indeed, defined - by their fluctuations (ie. differences in amplitude), and as such, the natural world in We is entirely different from the settled straight-line world of the One State, just as Fynn's farm contrasts and opposes the natural world beyond it. Furthermore, Just as Fynn desires to reform nature into rows according to his own understandings and purposes, D-503 aims to “unbend the wild, primitive curve” (2). While Fynn's obsession with control has the connotation of colonization and settlement – he seeks to build an “empire” (628) – D-503's evocations of the linear ideal are decidedly religious – he speaks of the “great, divine...line” (2). Thus, each work suggests not only an antithetical relationship between humans and nature, but also a desire on humans' part to subjugate nature by reshaping it, perpetuating and perpetuated by systems of patriarchy which are the basis of the modern world.

As they figure and explore the patriarchal impulse to control, both Zamyatin and Murphy employ female characters symbolically to represent the interrelated things which patriarchy seeks to control - wilderness, irrationality/emotion, and sexuality – and, as such, these female characters act as counter-forces, threats, to the established patriarchal worlds within the stories. The vegetable wife, an all-but-literal personification of nature, is, of course, a prime example. As Fynn plants her and watches her grow, we get a sense that he is in his element: he knows what he is doing, for the “instructions on the package [for the wife] were similar to the instructions on any seed envelope” (628), and he is comfortable, even smiling as she ripens on schedule (630). Supposedly, he is happy because he is in control. However, this happiness and self-assurance erodes into irritation, anger, and finally violence, when it becomes apparent to him that his vegetable wife embodies the wilderness which he despises so; the “whispers” that aggravate him from beyond his fields figure themselves in her hair, to his increasing “annoyance” (630). Arguably, it is her unknowability which bothers Fynn most of all. Fynn cannot understand the vegetable wife, not least because she does not speak any human language. The vegetable wife, as - just that - a vegetable, exists in a world wholly different from Fynn's human world. Fynn attempts to fit her into his own systems of understanding, treating her like a human wife (based on his relatively shallow notions of what a spousal relationship is like): he cuts her a rope long enough so that she can stand by the window and “watch him work in the fields” (631) (as, one might imagine, the happy housewife of a hardworking farmer might); he brings her flowers; he tries to induce her to sleep with him at night. However, the vegetable wife does not fit into Fynn's marital schema; she does not respond as he expects a wife to respond, but rather like nature responds to us, impassively. This, her passive plant-ness, reassures him at first, when he worries that he has hurt her: “He [was]...reassured by her [blank] expression. He knew she felt no pain. The instructions had said so” (630-631). Later, however, when she does not respond emotionally to his calling her “a tramp, a whore, a filthy prostitute” (632), the vegetable wife's lack of recognition of the socially constructed, gender-based insults he throws at her “inflam[es]” Fynn (632). Fynn recognizes at this point that he cannot, try as he might, control the vegetable wife in any profound sense beyond the purely physical - “Though the sap flowed from the welts on her back, her eyes were dry” (632) – because she does not respond except at the most natural and primitive level: she only responds to immediate bodily threats. To this extent, she is irrational, unknowable on human terms, unfittable into rational human schema. This is what finally drives Fynn to attempt to murder her (somewhat comically, I think, through completely ineffectual strangulation – she does not even fit into his homicidal schema).

I-330, like the vegetable wife, embodies wilderness, sexuality, and irrationality and is, like the vegetable wife, completely oppositional to the One State, not least because she seeks to lead a revolution against it with the aim of breaking down “all walls...to let the green wind blow free” (157). She disorders the completely ordered schedule established by the Table of Hours, particularly by way of her body and sexuality, engaging in intercourse with “no pink coupon, no accounting, no State” (74). D-503 describes her laughter as a “sharp curve [as opposed to a straight line]...pliantly resistant” (29). Above all, I-330 represents the unknown: she is characterized by the “shades” (26) lowered over her eyes and the “constant, irritating X” of her face. (Interestingly, the X often serves to heighten a likeness between I-330 and the image of the satyric devil, with the top half the X – the “sharp, mocking triangle” (55) - resembling the horns. In a Christian-based society, I-330 takes a devilish role as tempter.) Like the vegetable wife, then, I-330 is a representative of the natural world that the One State is detached from and seeks to subjugate and as such, D-503 cannot understand her; she defies his understanding and remains an unsolved variable in his life.

I-330 is central because, as the representative of a world beyond the One State, she acts as D-503's guide into a non-patriarchal, free world of “anti-Christians” (165). She also, however, significantly is D-503's guide into himself, making him aware of the wilderness and irrationality within as well as without. She is the first in the novel to draw attention to his “'ape's hands'” (7) which she links later to what she calls his “'sunny forest blood” (168). She also leads him to become astutely aware of the distinct irrationality and unknowability of himself, as the following passage (following his first sexual encounter with I-330) indicates:

I had believed that I knew everything within myself. And now... I stand before a mirror...Here I am...Steel-gray eyes...And there, behind this steel...it turns out that I have never known what is there...he, with his straight eyebrows, is a stranger, alien to me, someone I am meeting for the first time in my life. (59-60)

I-330 thus leads D-503 into serious introspection and the recognition of the other within himself. The geographical movement outward in the novel - from the world of transparent glass, into the opaque Ancient House, down through hidden tunnels, and finally up and out into the jungle beyond the One State – mirrors D-503's inward journey into discovering his “soul” (89), and I-330 serves as guide for both. It may be similarly argued that through his engagement with his vegetable wife, Fynn's own irrationality and brutish nature come into greater relief. This suggests that femininity, the primitive, the irrational, even as they are exiled to the borders of civilization retain a repressed place at its heart. At a more basic level, even as an individual externalizes the feminine, the primitive, the irrational, and defines himself in opposition to these, he represses these very things within himself.

D-503, with the guidance of I-330, struggles to integrate the various hidden and clear parts of himself, to create an individual whole, recognizing and giving equal weight to the aspects within himself of spirit and body, human and animal, masculine and feminine. His journalistic reflections convey the anguish of such an endeavour as he fluctuates radically between his love for I-330 (ie. for his own uniqueness, irrationality, wilderness, freedom, etc., which she validates) and his love for the One State (ie. rationality, order, stasis). The novel suggests that the various aspects of himself that D-503 attempts to bring together are all essential to him. He has, for example, a deep need to “[break] up infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions” (65) but he possesses an equally profound need to know what is “out there, where [the] finite universe ends” (230). He is, thus, host to dynamically opposed qualities, desires, ideas, and impulses, host to the “tormentingly endless movement” (165) that I-330 advocates. Patriarchy may be understood as the trumping of this constant dynamic interplay by an overarching, all-encompassing order and “entropy” (165). Yet the desire for entropy and the desire for energy are also in dynamic interplay, as we see in the character of D-503 who wants and yet does not want “salvation” (186) via the Operation. Indeed, it is an impossibly paradoxical position that I-330 advocates – and yet, as she indicates, it is a position modelled on nature itself wherein “revolutions are infinite” (174) and nothing can remain static for long.

Both stories end with revolution, signifying, at the least, Zamyatin's and Murphy's shared belief that entropic patriarchal systems cannot hold against dynamic nature. In “His Vegetable Wife,” the wife reaches a point at which Fynn's abuse of her (resulting from his patriarchal desire to control her) reaches its climax, and she revolts, reciprocating with an equal force of violence. Murphy states that, then, Fynn becomes “like a plant” (632), while the vegetable wife, having killed the owner of the land, takes his place; thus, there is an inversion of power. Similarly, in We, the revolution of the Mephi results in the loss of the One State's control to a chaotic world of “roaring, corpses, [and] beasts” (232). D-503 reveals, however, that the revolution has been hindered by a “temporary barrier” (232), and he further expresses confidence that the One State “shall conquer” the revolution. As readers, we are also aware, however, that the next generation has already been set into motion in the midst of this revolution: O-90 has presumably escaped beyond the Wall with her unborn child. In his decision to include such a reference to the continuation of nature and life beyond the metaphoric walls of the One State, Zamyatin is perhaps suggesting that, though it seems that the revolution is being halted under the One State's regime, nature continues to regenerate and revolution is very plausible, as “revolutions are infinite” (174). The powerful image of the vegetable wife at the end of Murphy's story similarly suggests the overarching, ultimate power of nature: “She would plant the man, as she had seen him plant seeds. She would stand with her ankles in the mud and the wind in her hair, and she would see what grew” (632). The vegetable wife becomes a matriarchal figure, re-taking possession of the earth.

The fictional worlds depicted by Zamyatin and Murphy, based as they are, respectively, on Chrstianity/religion and agriculture, are patrarichal: they demonstrate a valuation of control over nature and reason over emotion as of central importance. In these patriarchies, primary female characters, the vegetable wife and I-330, embody aspects which run counter to patriarchy: they represent sexuality/sensuality, irrationality, and wilderness. Through engagement with I-330 and the vegetable wife, furthermore, D-503 and Fynn, respectively, become aware that they possess the very things they seek to externalize and subjugate, the things which the females embody – they themselves have within them, in other words, something of the feminine, the primitive. The gradual uprising of the primitive within the protagonists is mirrored by an uprising of nature without. Ultimately, the stories explore the necessity and possibility of integrating the feminine and masculine within an individual, and nature and human civilization at large. Neither of the stories are, however, optimistic, in any conventional sense, nor very informative regarding the solution to the segregation of nature and humanity. Each story does, on the other hand, depict the powerful but patient power of nature as a force to be reckoned with.

SOURCES

Coucopoulos, Zoi. Class lecture. “Gender, Race, Class, and (Dis)ability.” FEM2107. University of Ottawa. Ottawa, Jun 18 2012.

Haught, John. “Early Religion.” What is Religion?: An Introduction. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1990. 14-29. Google Books. Web. Dec 3 2012.

Lerner, Gerda. “A Working Hypothesis.” The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. 36-54. Google Books. Web. Dec 3 2012.

Murphy, Pat. “His Vegetable Wife.” 1985. 628-632. PDF File.

The Bible: Authorized King James Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. 

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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