Archetypal Feminine, Fantasies and Aspiration for Freedom in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer

Archetypal Feminine, Fantasies and Aspiration for Freedom in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer

Dr. Mahendra Madhav Kamat

ABSTRACT

Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980) is one of the most controversial writers of the twentieth century America. His novels are actually a presentation of the series of autobiographical events in his life supplemented with fantasies and dream sequences. He defines his novels as ‘auto novels’.  Tropic of Cancer is his first published novel, which created a controversy in the contemporary American society and invited legal suits and consequently it was banned.

Miller challenges the conventional ideas of Victorian based morality of the contemporary American society and by presenting the sexual encounters from his own life in his novels and Cancer is the first such attempt of Henry Miller.  In this novel, Miller narrates his experience in Paris and his ‘adventures of penis’ in the city of fashion and trends. For the expression of his thought, Miller narrates his sexual encounters in the city mostly with whores and prostitutes and opens a dark world of brothels for his readers. Through which Miller also presents chaos and destruction of the cancerous world. Further, in order to complete his visions of freedom, Miller takes help of Archetype feminine and fantasies.

Archetype Feminine is emerged from neo-paganism and Wiccan traditions and it is explored in the Jungian psychology as inheritance of earliest human ancestors and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious. Through the archetypal feminine images the writers of the twentieth century have presented the contemporary female mind which resists the values, canons and taboos of the patriarchal society. Henry Miller is one of them in the modern American Literature who challenges the hegemony of canons and taboos and Tropic of Cancer is the best example of this.

(Key words: Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Archetypal Feminine, fantasy, individual identity)

A female archetype has emerged within neo-paganism, and more specifically Wiccan traditions. This archetype is one that encourages feminine empowerment and corroborates the spiritual aspect of female in a patriarchal society, culture, and values. In Jungian psychology, in fact an archetype is a primitive mental image that inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious. (Clarke, 2013) Through the archetypal feminine images the writers of the twentieth century have presented the contemporary female mind which resists the values, canons and taboos of the patriarchal society. Henry Miller is one of them in the modern American Literature who challenges the hegemony of canons and taboos of the Victorian moral standards in the contemporary America. He persuades his resistance through his autobiographical novels, in which his female characters register their rebellion against the Victorian model of morality.

Henry Miller, the eminent twentieth century writer expresses his life in his novels, which he delineates as ‘auto-novels’ and Tropic of Cancer is his first published auto-novel. In this novel, the narrator gives a spontaneous outlet to the feelings which have been bottled up for years. The novel is a document of Miller’s Paris life. In spite of this, the narrator, though, the author himself, remains detached and relatively free from of his environment, even when, he describes his own personal experiences and feelings including sexual one.  The narrator presents himself as a man bursts out of the detentions of his culture. He is an arbiter of values. Moreover, he presents himself as the messenger of the new world who comes after the final destruction of the contemporary world. Miller’s renowned critic William Gordon points out Miller’s intention in his famous novel Tropic of Cancer when he writes:

“Tropic of Cancer accepts that destruction and celebrates the affirmation of individual life. Its various sections explore the undiscovered life which belongs to the self but has been covered over in the effort to come to terms with a corrupt civilization.” (Gordon, 1967, p. 85)

In this novel, Miller leaves America and comes to Paris in search of the values imbibing individual freedom from social canons. He is consumed with the desires and loses everything to create new.  The task of Miller is to establish a sense of the self and a sense of the world. He tightly holds to the sense of self endeavour to make it freer and more independent of external events as the source of his well being and pleasure. Miller experiences the same pandemonium in Paris which he left in America. But he succeeds to sustain his self alive in the world of chaos. He expresses:

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am.  Everything that was literature has fallen from me.  There are no more books to be written, thank God.

This then? This is not a book. This is a libel, slander, defamation of character.  This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word.  No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny Time, Love, Beauty….. what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing” (Miller, 1968, pp. 1-2)

This also shows his becoming a parasite in order both to survive on his own terms, perhaps that is without working and despite his protestations to the contrary, in order to make literature of the experience. Miller further continues his efforts to establish his individual identity on the Victorian background. It is a form of rebirth after the destruction for Miller. To present his self destruction and rebirth he uses the archetypal feminine figure in the novel. According to him, the rebirth is from the womb of the terrible mother. Here, a terrible mother is EKHIDNA (or Echidna) is a monstrous drakaina with the head and breast of a woman. She, probably, represents or presides over the corruptions of the earth- rot, slime, fetid waters, illness and disease. This also suggests a struggle for self consciousness. This is a self destruction as Miller says to his beloved Tania in poetic expression. He expresses:

“The world is a cancer eating itself away. . . . I am thinking that when the great silence depends upon all and everywhere music will last triumph.  When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written. You, Tania, are my chaos. It is why I sing, it is not even I, it is the world dying, shedding the skin of time.  I am still alive, kicking in your womb, a reality to write upon.” (p. 2)

A feeling of self destruction hangs out his mind. He searches for chaos, moreover, to express his fascination. Miller’s archetypal feminine figure is not a person but Paris. For him, it is an eternal city. Female figures are Miller’s major concentration in the novel and he does not construct these figures from imagination or fiction though they appear in illusion some of the time. A renowned critic, Frank Kermode, who recognizes that Miller’s Paris is potentially symbolic, sees the city as representatives of twentieth-century American and European civilization, especially, and oddly, the puritan cultures of the North.  His female characters are mostly whores, prostitutes and hags. They are also dirty and starving people but, they are necessarily human beings having a symbolic relationship with images. Many of the female figures in the Cancer are visually fragmented. They appear with different names like, Tania, Irène, Llona. They are manifestations of a devouring, castrating, chthonic, Aphrodite, fascinating and deadly aspects of terrible feminine. Tania is equated with chaos. It is a destructive source of writer’s inspiration. She gives him both a reaction of hatred and a feeling of fascination.  A trouble with Irène, a wealthy woman in the forties, whom Miller’s companion Carl and Miller write letters is ‘that valise instead of cunt’. She expects the fat letters to shove in her valise. Miller retrieves her in illusion and presents his dream. He expresses:

“O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thigh? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out.” (p. 5)

His illusion continues with the strong possessive sense of sex in either situation. His dream continues thereby:

“I am fucking you, Tania, so that you’ll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately. I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris’ chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces…..” (p. 6)

Here, Miller expresses his erotic passion. There is, actually, his revolt against the social taboos in the figurative way. He gives the roles of wives and mistresses to these feminine figures. Their function is the symbols of the unconscious. These women are stylized emphatically in order to show the outlining of their sexual functions. The Gorgonesque quality of the chthonic feminine is clearly recognized in the figure of Mona. She is a significant character in the novel. She comes to visit Miller in Paris. He commemorates her in a state of despondency and there, he seems to have some more affinity for her.  Mostly, she is symbolic and she flows as a memory. Mona is hardly a realistically developed character. Moreover, she is an image of other female figures and city. Miller describes:

“She talks to me so feverishly – as if there will be no tomorrow. “Be quiet, Mona! Just look at me . . .  don’t talk!” Finally she drops off and I pull my arm from under her.  My eyes close.  Her body is there beside me . . . it will be there till morning surely . . . It was in February I pulled out of the harbor in a blinding snowstorm.  The last glimpse I had of her was in the window waving goodbye to me. ...” (p. 19)

Here, Miller creates a dream image of Mona that is actually the expression of revolt which he conceals in his heart. She is a visualisation of his subversion also.

Furthermore, Miller creates a number of nonhuman symbols of the Feminine.  In a later passage of Gorgonesque, nature is revealed. He writes:

“I wake from a deep slumber to look at her. A pale light is tricking in. I look at her. A pale light is tricking in.  I look at her beautiful wild hair. I feel something crawling down my neck. I look at her again, closely. Her hair is alive. I pull back the sheet- more of them. They are swarming over the pillow.” (p. 20)

The figure of the Gorgon is one of the most familiar representations of the Terrible Mother in ancient mythology. Miller uses these symbols of Medusa and Gorgon to present a lust of a person and its outcome. Miller presents the demonic world of Terrible Feminine in Cancer with the crawling vermin in Mona’s hair, the serpents and spiders, the lice and bedbugs of the filthy scenes. Miller feels that this world is inescapable. This is a tenacious symbol of the unconscious and its dangerous but fecund character. Also, this filthy world is a birthplace of the sterile world. Fertility, creation, and life are impossible while having sterility. At the end of the first section, Mona and Miller leave the filthy Paris Hotel for the Hotel des Etats-Unis to rescue from bedbug.  In spite of this, they have to confront the dangerous and unpleasant encounter with the demonic world.  His confrontation with filthy world is unavoidable for him. And, accordingly, it creates a sense of fear in his heart and further, he expresses the afraid of loneliness. Miller writes:

“When I sit down to eat I always sit near the window.  I am afraid to sit on the other side of the table-it is too close to the bed and the bed is crawling.  I can see bloodstains on the gray sheets if I look that way, but I try not to look that way.  I look out on the courtyard where they are rinsing the slop pails.” (p. 65)

The Crawling vermin is a part of the archetype of the Terrible Mother It is clearly apparent in the serpentine hair of the Gorgonesque Mona. He cannot avoid confrontations with the deadly aspects of the Archetypal Feminine. The inner Experience of the Archetypal Feminine is expressed through the “Madame Delorme” fantasy scene.  The external world of the Cancer is projected to the outside world and less directly revealed. But, notwithstanding, similar relationship between the narrator and the aspects of the Archetypal Feminine is outlined in this analysis. The movement between this inner and outer world is a part of the action of the book.  An individual self of Miller wants freedom from the canons and taboos. In fact, his urge for freedom is reflected in much earlier when he speaks:

“I am a free man - and I need my freedom.  I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companies, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company...” (p. 68)

Moreover, Miller wants to use the freedom for the satisfaction of appetites. But he is constrained to admit that he likes Germaine’s sexuality. Proving suitable to Miller’s vision, Germaine is also a whore but she is different for him than others. He describes:

“Germaine was different. There is nothing to tell me so from her appearance. Nothing to distinguish her from the other trollops who met each afternoon and evening at the Café de l’Eléphant . . . . . . She commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately............ (pp. 44-45)

He likes Germaine and her sexuality too.  He quite intensively expresses his feelings for her when he writes:

“There was Germaine and there was the rosebush of hers. I liked them separately and I liked them together.” (p. 45)

Miller shows respect for Germaine because of her possession of the values which he admires- they are guts, fire, stamina, courage, and cunningness. Kate Millet comments on Miller’s approach in her article ‘Narcissism’. She writes:

“Miller’s ideal woman is a whore. Lawrence regarded prostitution as a profanation of the temple, but with Miller the commercialization of sexuality is not only a gratifying convenience for the male (since it is easier to pay than persuade) but the perfection of feminine existence, efficiently confining it to the function of absolute cunt. To illustrate this he calls upon Germaine, the archetypal French prostitute of American tourism: “a whore from the cradle; she was thoroughly satisfied with her role, enjoyed in it.” (Gottesman, 1992, p.138)

Further, Miller searches freedom in the novel. This is a freedom of I from myself and it is an urge of the novel as ‘myself’ is a constituent of social and religious dogma. Miller uses the imagery of flow to present the confrontation of consciousness and unconsciousness with its positive and negative sides both.  According to Leon Lewis:

“Miller sings in his most powerful voice of a world at once awful and wondrous; a world in which the artist/hero can thrive and his art can prosper” (Lewis, 1968, p. 101).

To explain his point of view, Lewis refers the following much celebrated extract from the novel:

““I love everything that flows”, said the great blind Milton of our times.  I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring.  Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag.  I love the kidney with its painful gallstones, its gravel and what not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul; I love the great rivers like Amazon and the Orinoco, where crazy men like Moravagine float on through dream and legend in an open boat and drown in the blind mouths of the river.  I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow, be that carries away the seed unfecund.  I love scripts that flow, be they hieratic, esoteric, perverse, polymorph, or unilateral. I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the beginning where there is never end: the violence of the prophets, the obscenity that is ecstasy, the wisdom of the fanatic, the priest with his rubber litany, the foul words of the whore, the spittle that floats away in the gutter, the milk of the breasts and the bitter honey that pours from the womb, all that is fluid, melting, dissolute and dissolvent all the pus and dirt  that in flowing is purifies, that losses its sense of origin, that makes the great circuit toward the death and dissolution. The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now.  A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and parlyzed by thought.  ( p. 261)

The symbols used above are the symbols of creative power. They suggest fecundity of the creator, whereas, the womb represents the great feminine Archetype of the unconscious.  The last lines, ‘that makes the great circuit...’, point out the danger of facing the self, and powerful and incestuous wish.  The acceptance without differentiation of this flow and flux leads to death, and further the wish for such dissolution is primordial. Miller gives an intellectual recognition clearly to the fecund depths of the individual. The last line gives way to the necessity of avoiding the fatuous, suicidal wish.

Miller’s most of the fantasies are presented in illusions which are his efforts to topple the established Victorian moral ideas in the society. The orthodox Victorian morality gives hardly any scope to an individual to express one’s sexuality. Every sexual activity including the physical, verbal and social which is strictly under control is rejected by Miller. Moreover Victorian morality does not allow sexual expression and satisfaction of a woman. Sexuality is an obvious expression for men but not for women according to the Victorian moral standards. Miller revolts against the moral standards and endeavours to establish his own identity in the Victorian background. His women, too, achieve pleasure of freedom and ultimately the separate identity. They boldly come out for sexual gratification in the patriarchal society.

Miller presents here how sexuality was used as a means more to control the freedom of the thought than the freedom of the body and presents his aspiration for freedom. Therefore, Miller’s presentation of sexuality through the descriptions of actual incidents and the construction of fantasy and illusions are significant. They are not complete pornographic details of the sexuality. Through this, he asserts that his sexuality is not physical but it is his psychological necessity of subversion. He takes his fantasies and illusions to project sexuality. His sexuality is not purely for his own sexual satisfaction but they are also the representative of the subversion against patriarchal and Victorian moral values. Miller’s novels created agitation and anger in the contemporary society and simultaneously they were tremendously popular too. In fact, these were not only his efforts to convey the resistance in the mind of a contemporary generation to the social establishment and the flag bearers of the Victorian Morality in the contemporary American society but reflect the minds of the upcoming generation of the Western world.

References:

-        Gordon, William A. (1967). The Mind and Art of Henry Miller. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

-        Gottesman, Ronald (Ed.). (1992). Critical Essays on Henry Miller. New York: G.K. Hall and Co.

-        http://www.theoi.com/Ther/DrakainaEkhidna1.html. (2011)

-        Jung Carl Gustav. (1968). Man and his Symbols. Dell: Mass Market Paperback.

-        Lewis, Leon. (1968). Henry Miller: The Major Writings. New York: Schocken Books.

-        Miller, Henry. (1961). Tropic of Cancer. New York: Grove Press.

-        Richard L. W. Clarke. (2013). http://www.rlwclarke.net/

John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, a Theme of Ethnicity and Environment, and Apocalypse of Disaster (An Eco-critical Analysis)

John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, a Theme of Ethnicity and Environment, and Apocalypse of Disaster (An Eco-critical Analysis) Dr. Mahendra Madhav Kamat

In the decade of 1990, Eco-criticism emerged and developed as a separate branch of literary criticism. It began in America and initially it was a meeting place of American critics discussing and exchanging thoughts and views on American literature specifically. During the same period the various environmental discussions especially after United Nation’s Harlem Brundtland Report in 1987, began on the international level and thereby it left its impressions on the world of literature also. Consequently, it emerged into the discussions of the eco-criticism and these critics have founded their association ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) and their journal ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and  Environment). Moreover in 1996, Cheryll Glotfelty, began The Ecocritical Reader, a special journal of eco-criticism. As ecology is concerned with the relationships between living organisms in their natural environment as well as their relationships with that environment, eco-criticism is concerned with the relationship between literature and environment or how human relationship with its physical environment is reflected in literature. Some other contributors to the eco-criticism movement are Lawrence Buell, Cheryll Glotfelty, Simon C. Estok, Harold Fromm, William Howarth, William Rueckert, Suellen Campbell, Michael P. Branch and Glen A. Love.

The movement of Eco-criticism is significantly marked with the focus on ‘Deep Ecology’. The term is coined by a Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, in 1973. According to Naess one should “go beyond the factual level of ecology as a science to a deeper level of self-awareness and ‘Earth wisdom’” (Porrit and Winner, 1988, p.235) The two major principles (No. 1 and 3) of ‘Deep Ecology’ are: The well-being and flourishing of non-human life on Earth have value in themselves, independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes. And, humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. (p.235). In fact the ecological problems severed after the industrial revolution and thereby capitalism and colonialism. The ethnic culture of the world, especially the cultures having heritage and history were true and honest and moreover coherent to nature and hardly there were any exploitation of the nature other than the vital human needs. The Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future or Gro Harlem Brundtland Report of 1987 also focuses on the conditions of ethnic minorities and impacts of the industrialization on them in the first chapter of the report, “A Threatened Future”. The reflections of Eco-criticism movement and ‘Deep Ecology’ are found in the contemporary world literature, more specifically in the literature of the Third World, who are prominent sufferers of the problems and also in the American literature, the nation which perhaps is the most responsible for the problem.

The human interference in ecology and its impact on the ethnic culture is also focused in the beginning of the twentieth century American Literature. The dangers of common future and environmental disasters are predicted in the first half of the twentieth century and also there is presentation of the destruction of eco-friendly culture of ethnic communities by colonialism. American Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner novelist John Steinbeck’s (1902-1968) novella The Pearl (1945) narrates a story of a Mexican-Indian pearl diver and the confrontation of his ethnic thoughts with the capitalistic one. The novella is interpreted from the ecological point of view. The fact that just before writing this novel, John Steinbeck, along with his friend Ed Rickets went on the exploration of the seacoast in terms of the ecological functions of the various organisms that existed there. During that exploration Steinbeck first heard of the story of the “Pearl of the World” from the ethnic members. It was a story of a large pearl which was eventually tossed back into the sea from where it was originally taken. During that period Steinbeck was more engrossed in ecology and therefore some critics have interpreted this novella as Steinbeck’s statement about the need for the ecology to be left as undisturbed as possible. When one takes a great pearl from its natural setting, then one is destroying a part of the natural order of things, which could result into a catastrophe or disaster.

The Pearl is a story of Kino, a Mexican-Indian pearl diver and his wife Juana. They are living their happy life within their periphery. The ethnic belief of Kino and his community is unaware of the culture of mastering anything but being a part of nature. The Capitalistic ideas of ‘ownership’ and ‘master-slave relationship’ are beyond their comprehension but the culture has now been unscrupulous due to the invading attitude of the Europeans in their region including the Church and Christianity, a totally new religious and more a dogmatic belief imposed upon them by the white people. One fine morning Kino goes to dive in the gulf for oysters from his canoe. Juana tends to Coyotito, their son in the canoe by applying brown seaweed to his shoulder, which is swollen from the scorpion’s bite. While collecting oysters at the ocean bottom, Kino spots a larger-than-usual oyster at the bottom of the gulf. Kino curiously collects it, and returns to the canoe. He does not want to open it immediately, but Juana prompts him to open the oyster. When Kino opens it, he is amazed to find a pearl of a larger size of a sea gull’s egg. Juana gazes at the immense pearl whereas Kino is extremely happy about both the pearl and his cured son Coyotito. The pearl later on becomes an attraction of other oyster divers and the villagers including the European doctor and priest. The news is spread in the nearby villages and some merchants approach Kino to purchase the pearl. Kino is also excited and started to build the dream castles of the future of Coyotito. He wants his son to live a sophisticated life like Europeans. But his expectations meet frustration when the merchants offer him a very less price for the pearl when Kino knows that it costs much more than their offer. Moreover the merchants are united and thereby Kino is trapped by them. The pearl thus brings a series of calamity and catastrophe in the quiet life Kino and his family. On the other hand Juana senses that the pearl is evil and urges Kino to throw the pearl back into the sea, but he refuses, believing still that the pearl will give them better lives than they have. Juana reminds him of the ethnic belief of not to take too much from the ocean. If ocean gives you anything excess it should be returned to the ocean. Juana’s advice reflects the native Mexican Indian culture which is against the exploitation of the nature. This reflects the ‘Deep Ecological’ attitude that human beings have no right to reduce the richness and diversity of the nature except to satisfy vital needs, which is already imbibed in the ethnic culture of Mexico. Kino is helpless to leave his house as well as his village as merchants follow him vehemently. One night Kino is attacked and wounded for the pearl. Kino is bloodied and beaten, and the attackers managed to escape without Kino being able to identify them. Again, like the previous night, Juana begs Kino to throw the pearl back into the sea, but obstinate Kino again refuses to do so. Now, he again envisions the pearl being sold and the money being used to fund Coyotito’s education. He resolves to sell the pearl in the capital.

For a day he lives with his brother, Juan Tomás but as the followers reach there he runs away from there. Kino, Juana and Coyotito now head towards Loreto. Kino is careful to leave no tracks but all his efforts are futile. They travel for the whole night until the next dawn and because of this journey they fall asleep but Kino is suddenly awakened by noises and when he comes out stealthily and sees trackers following them. They all now head toward high mountains and when they reach the first rise of the mountains, Kino tries to convince Juana to hide Coyotito while he leads the trackers away. But Juana refuses to do so and they march forward where Kino finds a stream. He there hides Juana and Coyotito in a small cave and makes false tracks up the side of the mountain, hoping to mislead the trackers; he then hides in the cave with his family.

The trackers follow them there too and make camp for the night. Kino realizing the future danger vows to attack the trackers before they attack him and his family. As he moves near the campfire of the trackers, one of them points out Kino and aims his gun toward where he has heard a cry in that night. Kino jumps on the tracker and kills him with his knife. He snatches the dead tracker’s gun and shoots a second tracker. The third tracker manages to scramble away from Kino, but Kino shoots and kills this tracker as well. He now notices the quietness of the night but it is broken by the huge scream of Juana. Kino loses everything when he knows that Coyotito has been killed by the watcher’s gunfire.

In the concluding part of the novel the narrator presents Kino and Juana walk side by side into town. Juana is carrying a bundle that contains a corpse of Coyotito. People watch in silence as the two walk silently, as in a trance. Kino and Juana reach the beach where Kino offers the pearl to Juana to throw it in the sea. Juana refuses and tells Kino that he should do it so He cocks his arm and throws the pearl as far out into the sea as he can; it sinks to the sandy bottom among the water plants.

The novella is concerned with life and death philosophically and at the same time it focuses on the ethnic beliefs. For the European invaders these beliefs are ignorance and superstitions but in practice they teach the ethnics to become honest to the nature and avoid unnecessary ecological exploitation of it. During the course of the plot, the novelist presents how innocent family becomes a victim of the changing moral values which is not consistent with the ecological values. The moral order generated by capitalism and colonialism has destructed the genuine ethnic values. The ethnic values protect nature and teach human being to be part of it and not the invader of the nature. The pearl in the novella is actually supposed to be used to bring their child out of darkness and into the world of light, Kino expects the better future of his son with the help of the pearl and thereby he will be able to help all the natives. On the contrary, the pearl becomes the direct instrument of the child’s death. Steinbeck also emphasizes the idea of better future and civilization given by the capitalism and colonialism. The ideas of the development and progress after the industrial revolution are based purely on the destruction of ecology and nature. Over-exploitation of natural resources and man’s disregard of the air, water and soil that sustain him have given rise to the question of the survival of both human and the planet. Since the mid of the twentieth century the intellectuals of the world have been anxious about the ecological future of the world. United Nation’s Harlem Brundtland’s Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future focuses on the threatened future and redefines the concept of sustainable development. The report also endeavours to find out the solutions on the ecological disasters along with species and ecosystem and supports comprehensive human action for the resources of the development. It can also be found that, indirectly and perhaps unknowingly the Report intends to revive the ethnic social and moral values coherent with the ecological and environmental protection of the nature. The history shows that of all human extinctions which have occurred since 1600 AD, 75% of the mammal extinctions and 66% of avian extinctions can be directly attributed to human activity. (Jones et al., 1990, p.156) These are actually the consequences of extensive human greed. Moreover, these figures specifically include the largest and hence easily visible plants and animal species. A lot more can be there beyond our vision. The protection includes even cultural, social and linguistic values of the society, especially the values which are on the way of extinction. Steinbeck in The Pearl also focuses the destruction of culture and language. Especially ethnic languages have been disappearing since the seventeen century due to the European colonialism. The Mexican Indian community had been gradually losing its ethnic religion and language, which was a true vehicle of the culture. Steinbeck presents it with the use of various songs sung on the different occasions by this community. It also reflects the strong emotional and social bond between human beings in this culture. Unfortunately it is now on the way of extinction along with their language. Lawrence Buell emphasizes this threat. In his book The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (2005), he states that more than 6000 languages existing on earth are expected to disappear during the century. The main cause is the dominance of English. In this novella also Steinbeck focuses on how the native language becomes corrupt due to the influence of European languages, especially English. This new language is not capable to express everything existing in the ethnic culture as their native languages have more possibilities of expression. (E.g. Buell focuses on: English lacks the distinction between the intimate and formal second person singular or distinction between the relations from maternal side and paternal side.) This shows an ultimate destruction of the desirable language destruction in the ethnic Mexican Indian culture. Further the new concept of development and progress emerged in the innocent world of these people. These concepts have also fascinated the ethnic and native people too. Many of these cultures also faced either complete holocaust or extinction of their ethnic identity of civilization and religion. Helplessly they became the part of the new industrialized and capitalist culture which is based on the concept of ‘master-slave relationship’ and ‘ownership ideas’. The environment and ecology which was protected for thousands of years without any special and deliberate human efforts have been struggling to keep their own existence for the last more than two hundred years and moreover the intellectuals express their fears to be in more danger in next few decades. Steinbeck, in this novella, presents the futility of the concepts of modernity and development and underlines the strength in the ethnic cultural thought coherent with ecology.

The Brundtland Report is not only a study report or exploration of the present environmental conditions of the earth; it also foretells the disastrous future of the world. In other words the Report is an apocalypse of the destruction of the world owing to human activities. Steinbeck also predicts the future of the earth with the presentation of legend in the Mexican Indian culture in the form of literature. It does not only speak for the conservation loss but also it presents the massive loss of remedies over the conservation damage, which human cultures had been possessing for generations on the same earth. The novella reminds us about the treasure of cultures and civilizations which we have lost in the process of so called development since seventeenth century. The measures which are now being suggested to protect environment and thereby civilization were already the part of ethnic culture and they were destroyed. The ethnic cultural values presented here were coherent with Arne Naess’ concept of deep ecology in which he thinks of a deeper level of self awareness and ‘Earth wisdom’. Simultaneously, Steinbeck warns about the danger of existence of the earth and life on the earth in this novella and Brundtland Report of World Commission on Environment and Development accounts the same. Further, the movement of Eco-criticism was also flourished after the Report but these dangers were predicted long back in the first half of the twentieth century by John Steinbeck in his novella The Pearl, which also speaks for the apocalyptic vision of Steinbeck.

References:

-        Steinbeck, John. The Pearl. London: Puffin, 2011.

-        Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 

-        Gro Harlem Brundtland. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Oslo: United Nations, 20 March 1987.

-        Jones G. et.al. Collins Dictionary of Environmental Science. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990

-        Porrit, J. and Winner, D. The Coming of the Greens. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1988.

-    Tošić, Jelica. “Ecocriticism- Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and Environment”, Facta Univrrsitatis Series: Working and Living Environmental Protection Vol. 3, No. 1, (pp.43-50). Serbia: University of Niš, 2006.

T.S. Eliot's Four Quartrets

FIVE MOVEMENTS OF MUSIC IN T. S. ELIOT’S FOUR QUARTETS

Prof. (Dr.) Mahendra Madhav Kamat,

Four Quartets (1943) can be included in the list of the most mature and most advanced poetry by T. S. Eliot. Eliot is appreciated for establishing a new tradition of poetry in English literature with this poem. Helen Gardener is one of them, who appreciate Eliot for the same. In her words:

“Four Quartets is the mature achievement of a poet who has in a long period of experiment effected a modification and enrichment of the whole English poetic tradition.” (Gardener, p.2)

Gardener further considers this poem as a masterpiece of Eliot as the poem contains more poetic solution of his peculiar problems as a poet than any other work of Eliot. Four Quartets is actually a product of Eliot’s post-Waste Land Period. Between the time and publication of the Quartets Eliot made a protracted visit to the United States and he took a long break from lyric poetry during the years when he concerned himself mainly with dramatic devices.  During the interval, he published five brief poems jointly called Landscapes in which he experimented with the new forms and new ideas fully developed in the Quartets.

Like some other poems of Eliot this poem too contains enormous complexity and it becomes a main characteristic of the poem. Eliot composed this poem in symphonic structure in which each represents a sonata form with specific movement. Sonata form or sonata-allegro form is a musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period. While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes employed in subsequent movements as well. (Princeton)

Each of the voices in the poem represents an orchestral instrument. The general music is the music of speech, but also one can find a discovery by the poet to vary music of speech so that range from colloquial to the formal in terms of diction is broader than ever attempted by him before. Another remarkable feature of those poems is its use of musical bridges between the instrumental passages. Here the techniques consist of a passage of exposition of theme, a passage of recapitulation, a bridge and then a repetition of the pattern. Further, the contrapuntal arrangement of subject matter is corresponding with the contrast between real and ideal, between human and spiritual in his earlier poetry.

Eliot focuses the structure of the poem in its title itself. Each section has poetic equivalence of the classical symphony or quartet of sonata as distinct from suite. The subtitles or names of the sections show the music of Eliot’s own life, that they had personal significance for Eliot. Burnt Norton is country house in Gloucestershire, where Eliot stayed in the summer of 1934.  East Coker is a village in Somersetshire from which the Eliot family originated. Dry Salvages are a group of rocks of Cape May which Eliot remembered from his childhood, and Little Giddings the original location of an Anglican Community established in 1625, which Eliot visited in 1936.

Besides this personal or rather subjective touch to the poem, the poem mostly remembered for its unique feature. The major contributory part of the poem is its musical quality. The music of the poem goes beyond denoting speech alone; it implies the sound and rhythm of spoken words, but it also signifies the structure of interrelationships among different kinds of speech and other poetic devices.  Each of the poem and auditory imagination contains five movements, of course each with its own necessary structure. Among the five movements in each poem there is a suggestion of musical analogy in the first movement. Each poem contains a statement and counter statement of the ‘river and sea’ images in the Dry Salvages. It is a symbol for two different kinds of time: the time, we become aware and through air imagination. As poet writes here:

“The river is within us, the sea is all about us;

The sea is the land's edge also, the granite,

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

Its hints of earlier and other creation:”

Whereas, in Burnt Norton the poet presents a division between abstract speculation and an experience of a meditation on consciousness as well as a presentation of consciousness. He says:

“What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation”

In East Coker, Eliot changes the tune, where the first movement can be divided into four parts. The first theme of the time of years and the seasons, the rhythms of birth, growth and death resumes in the third paragraph and the second theme i.e. the experience of being outside the time or time having stopped briefly restates at the close. But in Little Giddings the third paragraph is a development of the first two, weaving together phrases taken-up from both in a kind of counter pointing. Thus one can say that the first movement is developed on contradictions, which the poem is to reconcile.

The second movement works with Eliot’s skill of presenting a single in two different or bodily contradictory ways. This becomes a major characteristic of his poem and gives it a Jazz like effect of hearing the same melody played on a different group of instrument, or differently harmonized, or hearing it syncopated, or elaborated in variations. The movement opens with a highly lyrical passage in a traditional metrical form with irregular rhyming, octosyllabic in Burnt Norton and East Cocker. For instance in Burn Norton, Eliot Writes:

“In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.”

Another example can be found in simplified sesting in the second paragraph of Dry Salvages. This is followed by an extremely colloquial passage. Here the ideas which had been treated in metaphor and symbolic in the first half of the movement are expanded and developed in a conversational manner. In Little Giddings Eliot has employed a modification of terza rima with the rhyme scheme – aab bcc dd.

In Burn Norton, the poet presents the rich symbolic presentation of the ‘Flux of Life’ perceived as a unity of consciousness that turns to be philosophic language of the relation of stillness and movement. This feature can specifically found in the third paragraph of the section. Poet presents time: past, present and future at the close and there is a return to imagery, when after the abstract discussion three concrete movements are mentioned:

“To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

The moment in the draughty church at smokefall

Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.”

In East Coker poet expresses confusion in the seasons and the constellations. This is in fact the expression of flat statement of the same confusion in the lives of individual men where the selected wisdom is dismissed as a deception.

In The Dry Salvages, the beautiful lament for the anonymous, the endless sum of whose lives adds up to no figure we can name. It also leaves little trace but finally wrecks on time’s ocean. The meaning can be found in the final paragraph where there is a direct development of the hint. He begins with little metaphor but ends by returning to his original images of the river and the sea. Perhaps the poetic expression of meaning of the Dry Salvages is expressed in the following lines:

“We had the experience but missed the meaning,

And approach to the meaning restores the experience

In a different form, beyond any meaning

We can assign to happiness.” 

The efforts to find meaning restore the original imaginative vision of the river and sea. Thus the first part of the movement is traditional in its metre, symbolic, romantic in imagery and also lyrical but in the second part of it, turns to be discursive, colloquial and meditative.

The third movement is the core of each poem out of which reconcilement grows. It is an exploration of twist of the ideas of the first two movements. The third movement, therefore, one can say is less conscious of musical analogies, for example, in East Coker the poet begins with:

“In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth… …”

Poet presents here the succession period of life and its rhythm and comes to “You say I am repeating / Something I have said before. I shall say it again.”  The poet here generalizes his personal experiences, for instance, the we of East Coker when he says, “We must be still and still moving/ Into another intensity.”  The plural pronoun is used to generalize the personal experiences. At the same time you as “if you do not come too close,” is singular here, a person is a person individual, listener and reader. Perhaps Dry Salvages seems more general from opening when poet expresses, “I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river/ Is a strong brown god—sullen,” then he comes to “we have to think of them as forever bailing,” This shows a rapid shift in tune and tone. 

One of the prominent features of the poem is suspense which denotes the music of the poetry. The repetitive circling passage in East Coker where one seems to be standing still, waiting for something to happen for a rhythm to break out. Here Helen Gardener compares Eliot with Beethoven’s genius, especially Beethoven’s love for the bridge passages and leasing passage between two movements. But this organization is not fixed and identical in every part divided by a change of mind without any change in metre. In East Coker, the change of feeling is not represented by break but it comes upon the mind. The change of mind is without any change in metre. In the lines, “The darkness shall be the light, and the stillness is dancing.” Poet changes rhythm from six-stress line to the four-stress line. In Little Giddings there is a very definite break as the poet changes form the personal to the historic. The poet here turns to beautiful stressed line, which before this was reserved for the close of the movement. 

The final movement of the poetry is recapitulation of the themes of the two poems with personal and topical application. This makes a resolution and contradiction of the first. It falls into two parts in each poem, but the change is slighter than in the second movement, and it is reserved. Here colloquial passage comes first and then, without a feeling of sharp break, for the metre remains fundamentally the same. The base of the line contrasts, and images return in quick succession. In various ways the last lines echo the beginning of the whole poem. The musical treatment to the image brings varied significance, for example, the images of sea holds different meaning in East Coker than that of The Dry Salvages. 

Movement in music is defined by Benward and Saker as such:

 “…a unit of a larger work that may stand by itself as a complete composition. Such divisions are usually self-contained. Most often the sequence of movements is arranged fast-slow-fast or in some other order that provides contrast.”  (Benward and Saker, 2009, p.358) 

Eliot’s poem Four Quartets is a composition which is complete in giving the musical impact. The poetry is contained and gives impact and effect as whole. It also gives successions of rhythms and tunes. One can realize that the poem is not only the mature work but it is also a unique and essentially inimitable. Eliot might have given to other poets a form they can use for their own purposes and simultaneously he tries here to rediscover the value of metrics. The twentieth century has been marked by a vast variety of experiments in metrical form but most probably none have been marked by a variety of experiments in metrical form, at the same time, none might have been so widely accepted as Eliot. Eliot has been the poet of the century who has the widest audience, both academic and popular which gave a wide-spread influence to others. Four Quartets made the use of recurrent theme which can be described as natural to poetry as music. 

References:

1.      Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets, http://www.davidgorman.com/FourQuartets/index.htm, Tristan Fecit, June 2000.

2.      Gardener, Helen. The Art of T.S. Eliot. London: Cresset Press, 1949.

3.      Benward, Bruce and Saker, Marilyn Nadine. Music in Theory and Practice Vol. II (8th edition). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

4.      Princeton. http://www.princeton.edu/ ~achaney/