Wednesday, March 30, 2011

"The Story of Actaeon" Continued

I've been pondering loss of speech as a symbol. Melanie's comment about Actaeon losing his identity because speech differentiates us from other animals is interesting. Diana's action has caused the hunter to know what it's like to be hunted. In this way she is able to use his company of friends and his own hounds to accomplish her revenge. His friends have urged the dogs on. (I think it's interesting to note that "company" is from the Latin com meaning "with" and panis meaning "bread."  The root is "a group that shares bread.")  In other words, those very close to him have killed him not knowing that he is Actaeon. What will they feel when they find him missing?  Actaeon's loss of speech causes him to lose his identity, his power and his life.

T&G wonder why Diana "did not exact revenge on his eyes." That would seem the logical thing to do. However, he'd still have the power of communication since he retains his human mind even in his metamorphosis.  And as T&G indicated, perhaps retaining thought but being unable to express any thought is a worse form of punishment. Another thing to consider is that when these myths and legends were evolving, the majority of people were illiterate. Not being able to speak or gesture would cause almost total isolation. An earlier audience may have been able to empathize even more than we can.

What Diana seems to fear is that Actaeon will tell what he has seen; that he will make what is private public. Common, community and communicate all have the same derivation. Latin communis means to share something. (Munus is "duty.")  The opposite of communis is proprius or "one's own." In other words, in seeing her bathing (whether by accident or intention), Actaeon has appropriated  something that belongs exclusively to the goddess: her identity. (To make the symbols even more interesting: What if Actaeon replaces Ovid and Diana replaces Julia, Augustus' granddaughter, or even Augustus himself?)

The last story I'd like to look at in Metamorphoses also includes loss of speech but with a different solution: "The Story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela" in Book Six.

Monday, March 28, 2011

"The Story of Actaeon"

As with most myths there are different versions of the story. In the original Greek version, Actaeon is not innocent. Upon seeing Diana--the Roman version of the Greek Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt--he is overcome by her beauty, hides behind a tree, and deliberately spies upon her while she bathes.  According to Ovid, Actaeon's encounter with the goddess is accidental. He is "guiltless; put the blame/ On luck, not crime: what crime is there in error?" Interestingly, this is the same way Ovid described the reason for his own exile.

In the story, Actaeon has finished the day's hunt and he tells his "company" to "Give up the labor,/ Bring home the nets." Somehow he ends up "wandering, far from certain,/ Through unfamiliar woodland till he entered/ Diana's grove, as fate seemed bound to have it." Note that fate is to blame. It's also interesting that Actaeon seems to be wandering the "pathless woods" just as Daphne had done. When Diana, bathing with her nymphs or handmaidens, sees him she blushes "As the clouds/ Grow red at sunset, as the daybreak reddens" and throws water into his face, crying, "'Tell people you have seen me,/ Diana, naked! Tell them if you can!'" Note that her punishment is directed at his voice.

At that moment, Actaeon sprouts horns and turns into a stag. "There is one thing only/ Left him, his former mind." Again, as with Daphne, the metamorphosis involves appearance and not mind.  He still thinks like a human, making the punishment somehow worse. He is too ashamed to go back home and too fearful to remain in the forest. However, it's too late. His hounds have seen him. We are next given a "catalog" of his hounds, their names and characteristics as they attack him. "Actaeon, once pursuer/ Over this very ground, is now pursued."

He tries to cry out to tell the hounds and his companions who he is but he cannot speak. "He groans,/ Making a sound not human, but a sound/ No stag could utter either, and the ridges/ Are filled with that heart-breaking kind of moaning." He kneels on the ground "like a man praying" but since he has no arms his pleading is in vain. He is mangled and torn. "And so he died, and so Diana's anger/ Was satisfied at last."

What does loss of speech symbolize?

Saturday, March 26, 2011

"Apollo and Daphne" Artworks

The three examples of artwork that I posted earlier depicting the story, show the moment of metamorphosis. Poussin’s painting of 1625, includes all of the elements of the story: Cupid with bow, Peneus the river god who seems to be weeping in sorrow, Apollo holding Daphne as she becomes the laurel. He seems to be seated with his arms raised up to Daphne and with an imploring look on his face. Daphne looks dazed and emotionless. The subject has been described as “poetic melancholy” with the theme being the victory of chastity over love. I don’t buy that since I find no victory for anyone, with the possible exception of Cupid. This painting does not depict the story that Ovid has given us.

The Waterhouse painting was exhibited in 1908. The art critic, Peter Trippi, feels that the painting centers on the “gaze exchanged.” Daphne in deshabille looks back over her shoulder on the verge of becoming hysterical. Apollo, on the other hand, doesn’t seem at all emotional. He’s holding his lyre with the other arm stretched out to Daphne but he doesn’t appear to be seeing her. Perhaps this is the expression that the god or reason would have when he’s been overpowered by emotion: a helpless stoicism. I don’t buy this either given the things that Apollo says to Daphne in Ovid’s account.

Probably the most famous piece of artwork based on this story is Bernini’s sculpture (1625). It is in the Galleria Borghese in Rome and was commissioned by Cardinal Borghese who was a patron of Bernini. It is made from marble. Daphne, her mouth in the shape of a scream, is covered in bark from the waist down except for her right leg. Her arms are raised and she is twisting while her hair and hands are turning into leaves and limbs. The “rushing movement” of the running pair causes Apollo’s robe to flow backward and around him. As Bluecat mentioned, when she saw the piece and looked at it long enough, it seemed to move. If you Google the sculpture you will get images from various angles. They almost look as though they are different sculptures. Apollo’s left leg is out behind him and one hand is holding Daphne on her waist which has become covered with bark. Some find the look on his face one of empathy as he finally realizes how she feels. I interpret it as a look of satisfaction: He thinks he has her in his grasp at last.

Ovid’s “portrait” of Apollo making the laurel tree his own as a symbol of “triumph and ovation” does not reveal an empathetic god. It seems more like blind arrogance. And the “Yes” at the end of the story reinforces that presumption. It is Apollo at the end who interprets the “stirring” of the laurel as “consent.” Ovid’s portrayal demonstrates absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Next: “The Story of Actaeon” from Book Three.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

"Apollo and Daphne"...3

Daphne is frightened. Apollo is described as preying on her: “When a hound starts a rabbit,/ In an open field, one runs for game, one safety/…So ran the god and girl, one swift in hope,/ The other in terror.” She is “deathly pale” and when she sees her father she cries, “O help me,/ If there is any power in the rivers,/ Change and destroy the body which has given/ Too much delight!” I find it interesting that Daphne feels guilty: She thinks that it is her fault for being too beautiful. What we have portrayed here is power and vulnerability. Why does the one being terrorized feel that she is to blame?

It gets worse: Her father turns her into a tree. “Her limbs grew numb and heavy, her soft breasts/ Were closed with delicate bark, her hair was leaves,/ Her arms were branches, and her speedy feet/ Rooted and held, and her head became a tree top.” Apollo loves her still and he “placed his hand/ Where he had hoped and felt the heart still beating/ Under the bark; and he embraced the branches/ As if they still were limbs, and kissed the wood,/ And the wood shrank from his kisses.” Terrified, Daphne literally becomes petrified; she is trapped in her metamorphosis. The beating heart shows that inside the tree there is still a young woman. Her shrinking from the unwanted kisses shows that she still feels repugnance but she’s trapped and helpless to stop Apollo‘s attentions.

Apollo exclaims that if she can’t be his bride she will be his tree. “Let the laurel/ Adorn, henceforth, my hair, my lyre, my quiver/…And as my head/ Is always youthful, let the laurel always/ Be green and shining!” Daphne, then, has been given immortality. However, is this a prize or a punishment? It seems to me that what Ovid has portrayed is endless torment. He may also be making a social statement: Apollo, the god of order and stability, has been overpowered by passion; it is uncontrollable emotion that can destabilize the social and moral order. The question, of course, is what or who does Apollo symbolize?

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

"Apollo and Daphne"...2

To answer my question, I think the blame is Apollo’s. Cupid’s ego has been hurt by Apollo’s comment and that is the reason for his revenge. Daphne is the victim of both male egos.

Ovid gives us the cause in the first few lines of the poem: Apollo falls in love/lust with Daphne because of Cupid. Many translators use “malice” to describe Cupid’s behavior. Humphries translates the line as, “And this was no blind chance, but Cupid’s malice.” Frank Justus Miller, translator of the Harvard University Press edition, renders it, “It was no blind chance that gave this love, but the malicious wrath of Cupid.” In the original, Ovid uses the Latin “saeva Cupidinis ira.” Ira means wrath or anger. We derive “ire” from it. Saeva means violent or fierce. “Malice” is the desire to inflict injury because of hostility or meanness. In other words, it carries a connotation of some ignoble, petty or small-minded act. “Wrath” on the other hand has the connotation of indignation.

It seems to me that Cupid feels indignant because he is offended by the way Apollo speaks to him. “The torch, my boy, is enough for you to play with/…Do not meddle/ With honors that are mine.” Apollo is not only demonstrating the overweening pride of hubris (which in Greek means “insolence”); he is showing contempt for someone who does not have his strength and power. In other words, he is not wielding authority wisely.

We see the same arrogance in Apollo when Daphne flees from him: “I am no shepherd,/ No mountain-dweller, I am not a ploughboy,/ Uncouth and stinking of cattle. You foolish girl,/ You don’t know who it is you run away from.” It is inconceivable to Apollo that Daphne wants nothing to do with him. And what does Daphne feel?
 

Monday, March 21, 2011

"Apollo and Daphne"

Ovid's story of "Apollo and Daphne" is taken from Greek myth. Apollo is the Greek god of prophecy, music, reason and light. He is sometimes identified with the sun. In Homer's Iliad Apollo is against the Greeks and on the side of the Trojans. This is appropriate for Ovid's purposes since, according to legend, the Romans are directly descended from the Trojans. (See Virgil's Aeneid.) In fact, Apollo was taken by Augustus as his special patron.

Daphne is a nymph. In Greek myth nymphs are female personifications of natural objects who are always young and beautiful but are not immortal. Daphne is the daughter of the river-god, Peneus, and she is a huntress. According to Ovid she is a rival of Diana, the virgin goddess. (Diana is the Roman name for Artemis who is the twin sister of Apollo.) Though her father urges Daphne to get married and give him grandsons, she charms him into allowing her to remain a virgin. She is not interested in love. (It is interesting to note that under the rule of Augustus, Roman marriage law required women between twenty and fifty years of age to marry and bear children. There were penalties imposed against those who did not.)

Cupid, or Eros in Greek myth, is the boy-god of love, son of Venus and Vulcan. One thing to keep in mind when reading this story is the clash of egos. Cupid's curse and revenge make the god of reason lustful and this brings about the "action" of the story. Who is at fault?

Again, there are many artworks depicting "Apollo and Daphne."  Here are three:

Bernini sculpture:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=1872

Poussin painting:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=2882

Waterhouse painting:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=838

Saturday, March 19, 2011

"The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe" Continued

John William Waterhouse's (1849 - 1917) work, Thisbe (http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh23.htm) painted in 1909, is a "genre painting," meaning it tells a story. That story is taken from a particular moment in Ovid's poem with some embellishments by Waterhouse.

Thisbe has apparently just gotten up from her loom because she's heard Pyramus at the chink. She has her ear to it and is concentrating on his words so that she seems to have forgotten about her work. Perhaps this is the moment when they are making plans to run away. The tile on the floor is very decorative as are some of the designs on the wall. Thisbe's gown has patterns of Egyptian lotuses and the stool at her feet contains Egyptian motifs. Her face is turned toward the viewer but all of her energy seems concentrated on listening. What does the look on her face reveal? It's not joyful. It seems to be a look of desperate determination.

The tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe at the end of Midsummer Night's Dream is presented as a burlesque which seems to mock the tragic lovers. In part this is because of the poor acting abilities of Bottom and company. It seems to me that the story is used to rephrase what could have happened to Hermia and Lysander had it not been for the magic of the fairies and Puck. Unlike the situation in Romeo and Juliet (which scholars have concluded was probably written just prior to Midsummer Night's Dream), the parental power which forbids the love has been ignored and a tragedy averted.

That may be the moral in Ovid's tale. His line, "You know how fire suppressed burns all the fiercer," shows great understanding of human motivations. The parents have forbidden the relationship thereby inciting rebellion. The suppressed lovers feel that their love is even greater because unattainable. In the end Ovid has the parents putting the lovers' ashes "in a common urn" there to "rest" for eternity apparently.  The parents were "touched" but too late. Moral: Wield authority wisely.

Next: "Apollo and Daphne" in Book One of Metamorphoses.

Friday, March 18, 2011

"The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe"

Of the 250 tales in the Metamorphoses, “The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe” is one of the few not based on Greek or Roman myth and legend. It is set in Babylon. The star-crossed lovers are neighbors, and acquaintance has turned into love.  Their parents forbid them to marry but as Ovid knows, "fire suppressed burns all the fiercer." (I'm using the edition translated by Rolfe Humphries.)

They meet each day and speak to one another through "a chink in the wall between the houses," a chink that none but the lovers had noticed ("love is a finder, always") until they finally decide to run away together. They plan to meet at Ninus' Tomb.

(Digression: Ninus is apparently based on Greek legend which claims that he was the founder of Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria. He was said to have trained the first hunting dog and to have broken wild horses for riding. However, I've never heard anything about his "tomb." I always think it would be more interesting if Ovid had referred to Sardanapalus who was, according to Diodorus the Sicilian (go to Google Books to find his history) "the 30th from Ninus." According to Diodorus, Sardanapalus "succeeded all his predecessors in sloth and luxury" and we do have his epitaph which he apparently wrote himself: "What once I gorg'd I now enjoy/ And wanton lusts me still employ./ All other things by mortals priz'd,/ Are left as dirt by me despis'd." A sardonic fellow. Byron wrote a play about him and Delacroix painted a beautifully sumptuous work based on that play--The Death of Sardanapalus. In it we see a rather indifferent Sardanapalus leaning on his pillow while he watches all of his treasures, concubines and slaves being killed before he has his bed set ablaze. He prefers death to the inevitable defeat by his rebellious enemy. He doesn't want the enemy to get any spoils of war.  Here is a link to that painting:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/delacroi/p-delacroix22.htm )

For Ovid's story, the importance of Ninus' Tomb is that it is near "A Mulberry-tree, loaded with snow-white berries."  Thisbe gets there first and is frightened by "A lioness, her jaws a crimson froth" and hides inside a cave dropping her veil as she flees. The lioness finds the veil and mauls it. Pyramus "coming there/ Too late, saw tracks in the dust, turned pale, and paler/ Seeing the bloody veil." He blames himself for not protecting Thisbe whom he assumes has been killed and

"draws his sword, and plunges it into his body, / And, dying, draws it out, warm from the wound./ As he lay there on the ground, the spouting blood/ Leaped high, just as a pipe sends water spurting/ Through a small hissing opening, when broken/ With a flaw in the lead, and all the air is sprinkled./ The fruit of the tree, from that red spray, turned crimson, / And the roots, soaked with the blood, dyed all the berries/ The same dark hue."

Thisbe coming out of the cave finds Pyramus who "saw her face, and closed his eyes." She sees her bloodied veil and understands what happened. She "Fell forward on the blade, still warm and recking/ With her lover's blood." (Ovid always seems to love describing the blood and guts of any situation.) The tragedy is complete and because Thisbe's "prayers touched the gods," mulberry trees bear red fruit rather than white.

The dead lover's parents bury the ashes in a "common urn." What is the moral of the story?

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Metamorphoses

Ovid's masterpiece includes fifteen "books" or chapters beginning with the primordial chaos and ending with the deification of Julius Caesar. It tells the stories of Greek, Roman and Near Eastern myth and legend and was the source of many later stories. Shakespeare, for example, used the story of  Pyramus and Thisbe as the basis for Romeo and Juliet. It is also the play-within-the-play enacted (in burlesque fashion) by Bottom and company at the end of  A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It seems to me that Ovid claims to be explaining the origins of certain things found in nature but he's doing this in a tongue-in-cheek manner. The real theme of the work is that change is the only constant. After the first several tales about the creation of the world, the stories are linked by association and contrast rather than in any chronological order. So, I plan to look at several of my favorite stories in no logical order. I also find some of the artwork that has been influenced by the stories fascinating so I'd like to look at those along with the stories.

I'll be starting with "The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe" at the beginning of Book Four. If you Google  those names, you can see images of several pieces of artwork depicting that story. My favorite is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse titled Thisbe. Here is a link to it:

http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh23.htm

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Ovid

Ovid is an interesting character. He was born in Sulmo, east of Rome, in 43 BCE one year after the assassination of Julius Caesar and was 13 years old when Octavian (Augustus) defeated Marc Anthony at Actium. His family was of “equestrian rank” meaning they were well-placed and Ovid’s father had him educated in Rome because he wanted his son to be a lawyer. (This means that he was educated in “rhetoric”--the art of speaking in order to persuade. We'd call it debate.) Ovid preferred poetry to law and he traveled to Athens and Asia Minor. Messalla, a Roman patrician who had supported Antony (that is, until Antony’s involvement with Cleopatra which caused Messalla to shift his support to Octavian) was Ovid’s patron. I think Augustus preferred Virgil whose patron, Maecenas, was the Emperor’s trusted adviser. (Do you see where this is going?)

Rolfe Humphries, a modern translator of Ovid, calls Ovid a “romantic” poet rather than a “classical” writer. By that he means that Ovid didn’t write as a citizen should but as he pleased. Using this definition, Virgil (70 - 19 BCE) would be considered a “classical” poet. His Aeneid celebrates the origins, growth and power of Rome and of Augustus. (Virgil knew what was to his own advantage.)

Writing as he pleased, Ovid produced three volumes of what has been called “erotic” poetry: Heroides or Letters of Heroines to their lovers or husbands; Amores, a first-person account of a love affair; and Ars Amatoria or The Art of Love, instructions to men and women in the art of seduction. This last was a very popular book. Some of the walls found at Pompeii have graffiti quoting from it. None of this poetry conformed with the “Roman virtues” and moral reforms that Augustus had established.

Ars Amatoria may be one of the reasons that Augustus exiled Ovid to Tomi on the Black Sea in 8 CE. According to Ovid his offense was “carmen et error” or a poem and a mistake. (He was sentenced to relegatio rather than exsilium which means that he didn’t lose his property or rights as a citizen of Rome; it was the mildest form of exile.) He never explained the “mistake” but scholars have speculated that it may have involved Augustus’ granddaughter, Julia, who was also exiled the same year.


In his autobiographical poem, Tristia, Ovid describes his last night in Rome, the terrible voyage to Tomis, and the boredom and deprivation of life in exile. He wrote the fifteen books of Metamorphoses in Tomi and died there in 18 CE.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Digression

I'm digressing from Ovid today because I've been noticing several things about English usage lately. I've seen a sentence similar to this: "That quote is interesting." Now, "quote" is a verb; "quotation" is the noun that should be used in that sentence. Why is this being done?

Another thing that is now prevalent: using the conjunction "but" instead of the adverb "however." "I really want to read the new Chet and Bernie mystery. But there are three books in my pile that I haven't read yet." The two words in this usage mean the same thing: contrast.  The usage rules are not being followed: A conjunction joins two sentences; an adverb may act as a transitional word. Why is this being done? (Of course, the choice would be obvious regarding the Chet and Bernie mystery!)

The reason, I think, is the usual reason for usage changes. We're lazy--too lazy to go to the trouble of adding a few letters in order to use the correct word.  Another reason is that the longer word may seem too formal. Whatever the reasons, usage overrides rules and eventually the language will change according to the way it's used. My students always make the two words "a lot" into one word no matter that it's a weak usage either way. What's wrong with "many"? Pity the poor English teacher. However, (but) it is fun to watch language change.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Authors...Ovid

It's been a while since I read or taught Ovid's Metamorphoses. I think it would be fun to go back and look at a few of the stories, starting Monday.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

To The Lighthouse...Conclusion

In "The Lighthouse" section of the novel we have Lily painting her picture and remembering Mrs. Ramsay. These chapters alternate with the trip to the lighthouse. The novel begins and ends with positive assertions: "Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow" and "Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision" (3 and 209). I think that Woolf's message to her readers is, in part, Montaigne's belief that "the greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself " (Essays, Book I, Chapter 39) and then one can carry on under any circumstance.


Upon reaching the lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay says, “’Well done!’ James had steered them like a born sailor.” And Cam thinks, “addressing herself silently to James. You’ve got it at last. For she knew that this was what James had been wanting.” James “was so pleased that he was not going to let anybody share a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him.” They sit in the boat looking at their father. “What do you want? they both wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will give it you” (206-207). In a reversal of their compact to fight their father’s tyranny to the death, both James and Cam have come to an understanding about themselves and their father. This understanding allows them to accept him and themselves.

While Lily is painting she is also remembering the past. The act of painting is a catharsis for her just as the trip to the lighthouse is a catharsis for James and Cam. As the boat reaches the lighthouse, Lily completes her painting. “With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished” (209). The words “it was finished” are those used by Mrs. McNab when she has finally gotten the house back in order (141). Lily, James and Cam seem to have gotten things in order. A cleansing of the spirit has taken place. There is an element of forgiveness and resolution at the close of the novel. We are left with a sense that these survivors will not only endure, they will prevail.

The line that Lily draws in the center of her canvas could represent many things. I'd suggest that it represents the lighthouse. The one unchanging, stable concept in the novel is the lighthouse--the lighthouse as dream, goal, reality--it is a constant. In a diary entry of June 23, 1927, Woolf wrote: “One stable moment vanquishes chaos. But this I said in Lighthouse.

Monday, March 7, 2011

To The Lighthouse...Cam and James

Cam thinks that, unlike James, she is exposed "to this pressure and division of feeling" regarding their father. While sitting in the boat on the trip to the lighthouse, she looks at her father and thinks, "For no one attracted her more: his hands were beautiful, and his feet, and his voice, and his words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, and his passion, and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, each alone, and his remoteness" (169). Cam is observant and thoughtful, much more so than James. She also seems more independent than her mother was.

If we equate Cam with any real person, it would be Woolf herself.  In an essay she wrote for The Times on November 28, 1932, "Leslie Stephen, The Philosopher at AHome: a Daughter's Memories" Woolf talks about the fact that her father allowed her full access to his library. That extensive reading and the discussions she had with her father about those books, constitute Woolf's informal education and account for her understanding of history and the human character. Cam remembers being in her father's study. "Just to please herself she would take a book from the shelf and stand there, watching her father write, so equally, so neatly from one side of the page to another....And she thought, standing there with her book open, one could let whatever one thought expand here like a leaf in water" (189).

I think that we witness James grow in understanding on the trip to the lighthouse. He remembers when he was six wanting to go there: "The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now--James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too" (186).

James has come to accept reality while at the same time remembering his dream. More importantly he understands that one perspective is not the only truth; that there are numerous frames of reference.  It seems to me that that is what Woolf is showing us in this very "cubist" novel where she paints various points of view simultaneously.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

To The Lighthouse...Mr. Ramsay (3)

I've always felt that Mr. Ramsay is the better parent. Our first introduction to him is on page four: "He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness (here Mr. Ramsay would straighten his back and narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure." He is honest and knows that his children need to be strong in order to succeed in life. That, I think, is a better preparation than Mrs. Ramsay's cover-ups.

His children have very ambivalent feelings about him, James especially. "Had there been an axe handy, or a poker, any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it" (4). These are James' thoughts as a child of six after his father has dashed his plans to go to the lighthouse. It is a symbol that James repeats while in an "impotent rage" ten years later, sitting in the boat going to the lighthouse at his father's insistence.  James claims to himself that he will never be like his father (184).

However, I think that James is very similar to his father. At six James wants his mother's full attention and is jealous when his father interferes. "By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped" (37). Ten years later James has convinced Cam to make a compact "to resist tyranny to the death," the tyrant being, of course, their father. But Cam is having difficulty with the pact. She, like Mrs. Ramsay ten years earlier, is being torn between James and Mr. Ramsay.

Friday, March 4, 2011

To The Lighthouse...Mr. Ramsay (2)

Mr. Ramsay is sixty years of age, a university don (professor) and philosopher. He's published a number of books. When Lily asks Andrew what his father's books are about, Andrew says "'Subject and object and the nature or reality'" (23). Lily doesn't understand that and Andrew tells her to think of a kitchen table when she's not there. (I think it's interesting that Woolf has us doing just that in the "Time Passes" section when she places us in the empty summer house.) In other words, Ramsay is an intellectual and someone, as Lily concludes, who "could not be judged like an ordinary person" (23).

There is, however, an "ordinary" side to Mr. Ramsay: husband and father of eight. "They gave him something" according to William Bankes but "they also, his old friends could not but feel, destroyed something" (22). Both Lily and Bankes are trying to understand why it is that Ramsay needs constant support and praise. Perhaps Bankes hits upon the answer when he says, "'Ramsay is one of those who do their best work before they are forty'" (23).

We may be seeing Mr. Ramsay at a very vulnerable time: His eminence is fading and he is concerned about his reputation and his future. In the "present time" of the first section of the novel, he is attempting to think of a subject for the lectures that he has been invited to give "for the young me at Cardiff next month" (43). He seems to fear that he has nothing worthwhile to say. I'd suggest that Mrs. Ramsay knows this and that that is the reason for her defense and support of her husband. However, I can't help but wonder if her attitude merely reinforces her husband's egocentricity.

Do these two guises of Mr. Ramsay, the thinker and the family man,  make him in Lily's words, "strangely...venerble and laughable at one and the same time"?  We're given what seems to me to be a related question in Ramsay's own ponderings: "Does the progress of civilisation depend upon great men?" (42). Again, what is Woolf suggesting in this complex portrait of the Victorian male?

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

To The Lighthouse...Mr. Ramsay

I've always enjoyed Mr. Ramsay. One of my favorite scenes is in "The Lighthouse" section (chapter II) when he stands by Lily wanting something--she calls it "sympathy"--from her. He has asked her if she has everything she wanted:

"'Oh, thanks, everything.' said Lily Briscoe nervously. No; she could not do it. She ought to have floated off instantly upon some wave of sympathetic expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous. But she remained stuck. There was an awful pause. They both looked at the sea. Why, thought Mr. Ramsay, should she look at the sea when I am here?" (151; emphasis mine).

Such innocent arrogance! And I think that that is what it is. Mr. Ramsay does not realize the effect he has on people. The question, and it's a very complex question, is what made him the way he is?

Mr. Ramsay is based on Woolf's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), who was an "eminent Victorian."  Stephen was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Many readers feel that Mr. Ramsay's monologue on having reached Q but fearing that he cannot make it to R is based on Woolf's early memories of her father (Stephen resigned the editorship in 1890 when Woolf was eight). In fact, in the novel Mr. Ramsay's dilemma in the first section is fear of failure:

"A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him" (34).

In her memoir "A Sketch of the Past," Woolf describes "the sociable father," "father as a writer," "the tyrant father" and her ambivalent feelings about him.  (As a child Woolf asked her sister Vanessa if she preferred their mother or father. Vanessa preferred their mother while Woolf preferred their father.) In a diary entry of November 28, 1928, one year after To The Lighthouse was published and on the anniversary of her father's birth, she wrote:

"Father's birthday. He would have been 96, yes, today: & could have been 96, like other people one has known; but mercifully was not. His life would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books,--inconceivable."

Is this comparable to Woolf's claim that she had to "kill" the phantom angel in the house out of a sense of  self-preservation? It will be interesting to look at the complex portrait of the Victorian man and father that Woolf gives us in Mr. Ramsay.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

To The Lighthouse...Lily (3)

It's interesting to compare the dinner scene experiment that Lily has to give up in "The Window" section with the "boot scene" in the first part of chapter II in "The Lighthouse" section. During the dinner Mrs. Ramsay's look forces Lily to give up her experiment not to play the social game. In the final section of the novel, Mrs. Ramsay has been dead almost a decade.

Lily wants to paint. She has remembered the picture she was working on when she was last at the Ramsay's summer home ten years earlier and has determined to start afresh. She sets up her easel and canvas on the lawn. At the sight of Mr. Ramsay, she knows that he wants sympathy from her. "He permeated, he prevailed, he imposed himself. He changed everything....That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took" (149).

At this point, Lily dislikes Mr. Ramsay's selfish egotism. He keeps her from painting and forces her to pretend that she is not serious about painting. He makes her waste her time "playing at painting, playing at the one thing one did not play at" (149). Reverting to the Victorian ideology, it must be presumed that, because she is a woman, her painting is merely an "accomplishment" and is not to be considered a serious vocation. Mr. Ramsay makes Lily feel "other" and she loses her "essential self."

"Well, thought Lily in despair...it would be simpler th[e]n to have it over. Surely, she could imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody, the self-surrender, she had seen on so many women's faces (on Mrs. Ramsay's, for instance) when on some occasion like this they blazed up--she could remember the look on Mrs. Ramsay's face--into a rapture of sympathy, of delight in the reward they had, which, though the reason of it escaped her, evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss of which human nature was capable. Here he was, stopped by her side. She would give him what she could" (150).

What she gives him is the exclamation, "'What beautiful boots!'" and immediately feels ashamed of herself. "To praise his boots when he asked her to solace his soul" (153). Mr. Ramsay, however, is completely satisfied. He begins to tease her. "'Now let me see if you can tie a knot,' he said. He poohpoohed her feeble system. He showed her his own invention. Once you tied it, it never came undone. Three times he knotted her shoe; three times he unknotted it" (154).

I'm not sure what this signifies but it reminds me of Mrs. Ramsay's thought that she is not good enough to tie Mr. Ramsay's shoes. I've never been clear on the way Lily has changed if, in fact, she has changed. She seems more serious about her painting which she finishes by the end of the novel. She also seems determined not to become the angel of the house. But why does she feel guilty, ashamed of her remark? "Why, at this completely inappropriate moment, when he was stooping over her shoe, should she be so tormented with sympathy for him that, as she stooped too, the blood rushed to her face, and, thinking of her callousness (she had called him a play-actor) she felt her eyes swell and tingle with tears?" (154). What is Woolf portraying through Lily at this point?