From "Ground Zero"

First, no I do not have Swine Flu. Second, dear reader, I am updating the blog since I left it a couple of months off due to school. Now that school's out until the temptative deadline of May the sixth I have some time to think regarding this disease and football.
I have been reading Geoffrey Hill's poetry in the last months and I am still overwhelmed by the power of his verse. I plan to make my undergraduate dissertation on Yeats but several times Heaney and Hill have crossed my mind, even McEwan.







Regarding McEwan everything went "smooth" in our Colloquium. Unfortunately this time I could not record any presentation. I received three critics from very good friends regarding my subject and these proved to be very helpful. I will be reading another presentation on the Sixth Classical Literature Students Colloquium as soon as classes resume. It will be on Yeats's "A thought from Propertius" regarding Bloom's influence theory.


A Thought from Propertius

She might, so noble from head
To great shapely knees,
The long flowing line,
Have walked to the altar
Through the holy images
At Pallas Athene’s side,
Or been fit spoil for a centaur
Drunk with the unmixed wine.


Did I say InFLUence? Yes. Streets were deserted today and to prove that today I passed through the park to see if some of hte lads were plaing: obviously not. Ussually thi place is packed at noon. I think I should keep reading and working on the blog, since wednesday's match approaches. Come on you Gunners!


Ovid in the Third Reich

non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare,
solaque famosam culpa professa facit.
—(Amores, III, xiv)

I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
Innocence is no earthly weapon.

I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much on the damned. They, in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.

Contemporary Fiction (well maybe not that contemporary)

Since we are organizing the Colloquium this year I have dedicated my time to read some of the books we will find in the event. Due to the popularity and wide knowledge of Paul Auster, he has become almost a "classic" in this event, and this year seems to have no absence. I rememeber I read a couple of years ago The New York Trilogy and later Smole & Blue in the Face.
This winter I decided to re-read the book in order to have a more fresh memory of the different approaches this three novels can have. I now can say that I have developed more as a student than when I read it and I have been thinking of several connections with other works. For example, (and I know that to some it may seem repetitive and boring) in Ian MacEwan's Atonement (which actually I am developing the paper for the colloquium) shares several characteristics. Many critics have developed the idea of "Metafiction" in the current postmodern novel. In this group you can consider MacEwan, Banville, Coetzee, Izhiguro and even Lessing. Auster does not derive from this concept and the point I am trying to make is the creation per se. In Coetzee's novels it is the creation of something in order to achieve certain effect: language to represent, fiction to create. In Izhiguro is the urge for remembering the past. In MacEwan I would say is how far can the mind create, and in which ways the reader, the writer and the narrative voice is involved with the story.
I would like to quote this passage from City of Glass, and after it I think that my point should be cleared.


"What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? Is it still the thing or has it become something else? [...] The word, however, as remained the same. Therefore, it can no longer express the thing." (93-94)

Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy. New York: Penguin, 1990.


This passage expresses tone thing that critics have not focused enough, refering to this topic of fiction, and that is certainty. In which degree can we, the author and the narrative voice can be certain of what is telling... That is an answer that Auster indeed answers but in the case of MacEwan, we will see dear reader, when you attend to our Colloquium.

Enjoying the Epiphany (I)

I found reading, whether Mr. White's Response theory works or he Joycean Epiphany instead, a very difficult thing to define. This is because the reader can or cannot enjoy a reading and this may affect his/her response, which eventually will not leave place for the epiphany.
I think, above all the linguistic developments of a poem for example, that a good reading is the one that makes you think or re-read. The mental process of the epiphany may work in a second (and it is supposed to be the reading) but the second part of the epiphany is working it. Thus the thinking takes place. One of the best examples in contemporary novel is Atonement. The epiphany arrives in the third part, specifically in the letter sent by the editors rejecting the novel which at the end will become Atonement. In the final part, even with the elegiac journal entry of Briony in her late seventies one has to think in the concept of the "meta-meta novel". This thinking and re-reading is the final process of the epiphany.
In poetry is much more complicated and a nice example would be "Follower" by Seamus Heaney. There is a singular pattern in this poem, the cyclical repetition of the boy-man-old man. The child-perspective of the sail-like-shoulders encounters a strong opposition with the final stanza. Now his father (poetic's voice) is "stumbling/Behind me". Certainly the perspective of the shadow, the remembrance and the duty to fulfill the work of the crops is reached with a second or third reading.
The opposite is supposed to happen with the short story. Quoting Cortázar's famous sentence a Raymond Carver story would be the choice for the perfect epiphany. And thus leading this short discussion to Hemigway's perfect short story: "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn".