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. 

The Problem With Language in Avison's "Butterfly Bones"

From the onset of “Butterfly Bones,” Margaret Avison likens the act of writing a sonnet to that of capturing a butterfly, and both of these she marks, further, as destructive processes: "The cyanide jar seals life, as sonnets move/towards final stiffness" (1-2). This association between sonnet-writing and death is carried through to the end. The poem is indeed a “sonnet against sonnets.”

                Avison's criticism of the sonnet stems, in part, because it is a fixed form. By comparing sonnet-writing to the capturing, killing, and mounting of butterflies for display in museums, she indicates that the art of sonnets is a science, requiring "skill,...patience,...learning,...[and] precision" (5-8). The writing of a sonnet, that is, depends necessarily on rationality, as opposed, perhaps, to the free-flow of emotions that has been lauded in art since at least the Romantic era, during which time Wordsworth wrote, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (273). The primary concern of the sonneteer is form, order, and structure - a methodical concern which Avison criticizes.

                In this light, we come to the concluding couplet which contains the rhetorical question "Might sheened and rigid trophies strike men blind/like Adam's lexicon locked in the mind?" (13-14). One might read this as Avison further denouncing sonnets (those "rigid trophies") in favour of more natural forms of poetic expression ("Adam's lexicon" being the most primitive and untampered human language). The question may then be paraphrased thus: Can sonnets have as much of an effect on their readers as unaltered forms of poetry do? The answer, we are led to believe, is negative; just as "shivery wings" (10) are more real, more engaging, than "museum spectres" (9), so too would a poem not forcefully fixed into a preconceived form have more power than one which is – namely, a sonnet.

                However, Avison's diction in the final line can equally lead to an alternate interpretation. Specifically, that she writes "Adam's lexicon [is] locked in the mind" in a poem which criticizes things being sealed (line 1), "cased" (2), and fixed (line 7) brings to mind the question of whether even the most unsophisticated, unformulated poem is truly any more effective than a sonnet.

                I am reminded of the linguistic concept of the sign, developed by Ferdinand de Saussure. The model is as follows: the sign - or the word - is like a coin; on one side is the signifier - ie. the phonemes which make up the word - and on the other is the signified - ie. the idea that is evoked by the word (Barrie). For example, when one says the word "elephant," the pronunciation of it (as e-luh-fuhnt) is the signifier, and the idea one has in their mind (of a big, gray, four-legged animal) when they hear or speak the word is the signified. What the sign must inevitably exclude is called the referent: the actual object to which the word refers (Barrie). There may very likely be a million things regarding the elephant that a word for it either does not or can not convey. Thus, while language may capture an idea of a thing, it can never, ever convey the entirety of it.

                Avison compares writing a sonnet to capturing a butterfly. However, in capturing a butterfly, one kills it. Even as one looks at a butterfly pinned to a corkbord and thinks to oneself, this is a butterfly, there is that disjunction between what has been captured and what actually was - the creature that lived and existed freely. Similarly, what a sonnet captures is not the truth of that captured thing. In the concluding couplet, Avison seems to suggest that this is not an issue of sonnets in particular, but an issue of language itself.

                Language is one of few things that set homo sapiens apart; it is a biological function "locked in the mind" (14) and deeply interfused with other cognitive capacities which make us unique. We are rational creatures and we will always endeavour to understand and communicate what we see and know of the world - but inevitably, Avison suggests, we are doomed to fail because language cannot possibly convey the truth of that to which it refers, ie. reality. In attempting to capture and observe a butterfly - a thought, or an emotion - we are doomed to be left always with the "bones" - the exoskeleton, a mere shell - and never the essence. 

SOURCES

Avison, Margaret. “Butterfly Bones, or a Sonnet Against Sonnets.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in          English. Eds. Donna Bennett and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 553. Print.

Barrie, Michael. Introduction Lecture. LIN1310 Introduction to Linguistics I: Words and Utterances. University of Ottawa. Ottawa, 6 January 2010.

Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. 8th ed. Vol. D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 263-274. Print. 

Vaguest Gleanings Merely - the dual-voiced persona and its quest for meaning in Reaney's "Starling with a Split Tongue"

As its title suggests, “Starling with a Split Tongue” concerns itself with speech (the figurative tongue) as well as the concept of a single, twofold object (the literal split tongue). Appropriately, then, the speaker that Reaney creates is a dual-voiced persona. One intuits, as one reads the poem, marked shifts in the voice: the first of these arrives shortly after the first stanza, and the second (which re-establishes the voice used in the first stanza) comes shortly before the last stanza. What these separate voices present in and of themselves, and what they symbolize in contrast to and in conjunction with the other, is the topic of this paper.

                The poem begins on a negative note, with a description of a cruel act: boys capturing and cutting the tongue of a bird, and then cooping him in a “cage” (5). The tone employed by the speaker  is matter-of-fact, as though the bird is resigned to his bleak fate and apparent lack of agency as represented in the fact that he merely repeats what “passersby taught” (8). By the end of the stanza, this negativity and resignation has intensified as the speaker settles on the thought of the utter emptiness of his speech: “Though I pray I do not pray/Though I curse I do not curse/Though I talk I do not talk” (10-12). The repetitive structure of these lines gives the voice, as it speaks of the meaninglessness of the things it says, the ring of conclusive certainty. Yet even as the persona within the poem resolves himself to the idea that his words are meaningless, the poet unexpectedly establishes a hope: that one can “talk [but]... not talk...[is] 'kinda nice'” (12-13).

                This hopeful transition leads into the second voice - a voice which, following the first voice's accedence to a belief in hollow utterances – speaks with a resulting abandon of language altogether. This second voice is hardly coherent: it speaks openly in a double voice, as suggested by the structuring of the poem upon the page; it verbalizes nouns (18), and nominalizes articles (15) and prepositions (24); it establishes unlikely comparisons such as “As still as infinitives were the Stones” (28). I am tempted to say that this voice says nothing meaningful at all – and yet I am (and I suspect this was Reaney's objective) engaged by this voice which at first glance defies logical language; that is, my creativity is engaged, and sometimes succeeds, in establishing meaning in the apparent meaninglessness. For example, as unusual as the metaphor of line 28 is, the reader can perceive meaning: infinitives are indeed “still”; the action of an infinitive (i.e. untensed) verb is not done; therefore, no motion takes place.

                Meaning is, however, incontestably vague in the third, fifth, and sixth stanza - perhaps that is both the point and beside the point. The voice which speaks in these passages is not at all concerned with making sense since the speaker, in the first stanza, has already resolved himself to the idea that speech is meaningless. Thus the vagueness is the point of these stanzas: the poet has purposefully established it as resulting from the speaker's abandon of language. Having abandoned the conception of meaning in speech, however, the speaker has liberated himself. He is no longer trapped “in a phrenological cage/...[saying]/The cracklewords passersby taught” (5-7), but creating utterly new, unconventional expressions. He is playing with language and, fascinatingly, the readers are compelled to play with it as well – that is, to engage creatively in interpreting the text. The vagueness in meaning of these stanzas is thus beside the point: what is of more interest is the process of pure creativity within the mind of the speaker/writer as well as the interpreter.

                Now, that is a rather positive observance for a poem to make, but Reaney does not choose to end his piece there, but shifts back into the persona of the speaker's first voice, which has now turned to questioning higher powers about why tongues, and hands, and hearts are split. (We can be sure that this is, indeed, the first voice: the mention of jackknives recalls the poem's introduction; furthermore, the poem is physically structured such that it no longer suggests the double-voice embraced in the middle stanzas; the most obvious indicator, of course, is that the speaker is coherent again!).

                By thus reminding his readers of that first voice, Reaney suggests the split nature of his speaker: he is the creature trapped within the “cage” (5) of things he is taught, yearning for meaning but perceiving naught but lies in both “mask” and “face” (40-41), attempting to resign himself to a stoic belief in meaninglessness but ever “restless” (43) and questioning “Giant Jackknife in the sky” (39); at other times, he is a being at liberty, freed from the constraints of language because he expects nothing of it, and thus freed, able to create fresh meaning. These are, of course, contradictory personas: the one yearns for meaning in speech and does not find it; the other does not seek meaning but inadvertently creates it through language. At the same time, the two personas are deeply fused, for it is the starling's initial abandonment of language that allows him to spring into his free, creative alter-ego; that creative alter-ego would not exist without the ego which is ever giving up on finding meaning in language.

                “Starling with a Split Tongue” is a fascinating but obscure poem that stubbornly resists interpretation. It is, to summarize as briefly as possible, about the condition of being a split entity. Furthermore, it regards the question of how to make language meaningful. At the core of this poem (figuratively and literally), Reaney presents the notions of creation and interpretation of creation, both of which are playful and imaginative, fundamentally alike. By the end, when the starling asks “In the larger garage.../Do they not croak as I?” (46-47), there is, then, a hint that the “larger garage” refers to the world outside the poem, that “they” refers to us (the readers), and that we – starling/poet and the readers – are all a part of this croaking, this deep desire for meaning. But of course, by the last lines, we are, literally and figuratively, away from the heart of the poem where freshest meaning is created. Thus, meaning is elusive; as we attempt to grasp it, it evades us, and when it comes, it comes in vaguest gleanings merely – much like understanding of this poem.



SOURCE

Reaney, James. “Starling with a Split Tongue.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 626-627. Print. 

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.

The Butterfly and the God - Artistry in Layton's "The Fertile Muck" and "Butterfly on Rock"

Irving Layton's “Butterfly on Rock” and “The Fertile Muck” concern themselves primarily with the same issue. In “The Fertile Muck,” the speaker asks “How to dominate reality?” (25); in “Butterfly on Rock,” the poet contemplates the “desire/to be a thing alive” (7-8). In both pieces, that is, Layton ponders how to bring significance to mere existence. He explicitly provides two answers - “Love is one way;/imagination another” (25-26) – and the latter of these he brings to the forefront and focus of each of these poems.

In “Butterfly on Rock,” Layton explores the concept of the creative artist through the metaphor of a butterfly which settles on a rock, thereby making “manifest” (8) the lifeless object's yearning. He employs this metaphor, as well, in “The Fertile Muck,” where he describes insects as having a poet's “crafty eyes” (8). The image of the butterfly is evocative. Butterflies connote beauty and fancifulness – qualities which may be attributed to the artist or his craft – but, above all, they represent transformation. Layton suggests, then, that imagination is transformative; it has the power to “extend...rooms...without cost” (“The Fertile Muck” 19) – to transform, and transcend, what is.

Layton is, however, not content with settling on this earthy, delicate representation of the poet. In “The Fertile Muck,” for example, though “the winged insects...wear [his] crafty eyes” (7-8), they are no “better off” (7) than the empty wind. Perhaps butterflies are simply too common for Layton, too much a part of the “bleak forest” (“Butterfly on Rock” 10) he desires to escape. Layton does not see the butterfly as the ideal image of the poet because it is fragile; it can be destroyed or confined in “moth-proofed cupboards” (“Fertile” 17), its “irregular footprint” (“Fertile” 22) erased.

Being thus discontent with the fragility connoted by the butterfly, Layton elevates the poet further, to the status of a god. For instance, in “Butterfly on Rock,” it is not until the speaker most epically brings his “hand down on the butterfly” (14) that the rock actually comes alive, so to speak; it is the poet's hand which achieves the miraculous. In “The Fertile Muck,” Layton writes,

There are brightest apples on those trees
but until I, fabulist, have spoken
they do not know their significance
or what other legends are hung...
on their black boughs. (1-5)

The image of the tree and its legendary fruit is allusive: it brings to mind, for instance, the golden apples of Greek mythology, or the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. By putting his speaker in the position of the “fabulist” (2) then, Layton not only conveys that a poet is a mythmaker in a dual sense. The poet is a creator, an artist, drawing from the “fertile muck” of his mind and surroundings, and, like the religious Creator, he makes life meaningful.

While Layton, then, associates himself as an artist with the butterfly, evidently he is not satisfied with a purely natural symbol. In both of the poems in question, he chooses to represent his poetic expression as Godlike. He shows staunch - indeed, almost arrogant - conviction in the power of the creative artist - but perhaps Layton in his time, unlike the Romantic poets in theirs, though he is inspired by it, simply feels no complete reassurance in or by nature. Nature is death, “shattered porcupines...in [a] bleak forest” (“Butterfly” 9-10). To feel secure in his vocation - to bring significance to his art and thereby his own existence - Layton must, as he does, envision the poet - himself - as indestructible, Godlike.

WORKS CITED

Layton, Irving. “Butterfly on Rock.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 512. Print.

---. “The Fertile Muck.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 508-509. Print.