Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

My problem is that I have so much (mostly unread) material on Shakespeare and Hamlet, that I feel a bit swamped... :S

Re the ashy (burnt out, geddit? :P) blues... yeah, sistah, ah know where ya'll at.... exactly... it's a very bluesy burnout, like ashy molasses with Louis Armstrong-y echoes. #_#

Greetings, fellow actors! (...for all the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.)

In the case of our famous play that we have decided to discuss, there's such a glut of commentary out there, that I scarce know where to begin, my fellow travelers in literature.

How to introduce one of the famous characters in literary history, who appears in one of the most famous plays in literary history, written by one of the most famous playwrights in literary history? I honestly doth not know... That it should come to this! What to say, or not to say: that is the question. On the one hand, brevity is the soul of wit.

On the other, this above all: to thine own self be true. In my mind's eye, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.... so, though this be madness, yet there is method in 't!

Thanks, Amy!
Yeah, I think Eliot read most of his poetry on record, and I must agree that I don't care for it much.

Imma still going to come back for the last stanzas of this, but I think we burned ourselves out a bit...

...and tomorrow we start with Hamlet! :O

Thanks, Amy!
Hmm, right there on the first page you linked to, I found something interesting:

""Poetry is not a substitute for philosophy or theology or religion, as Mr. Lewis and Mr. Murray sometimes seem to think; it has its own function. But as this function is not intellectual but emotional, it cannot be defined adequately in intellectual terms. We can say it provides 'consolation': strange consolation, which is provided equally by writers so different as Dante and Shakespeare." - T.S Eliot, "Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca"(1927)

In other words, although Eliot is obviously an intellectual man, we should not approach his poetry wearing more of an intellectual cap rather than an emotional cap, and that kind of really helps with a poem like this where there appears to be a lot of literary and cultural allusions.

Hi Jennifer! Long time no see. You can, although if you only want them for your PC you can also dld a lot of them for free. I was personally attracted to the site because I ADORE all of those old illustrations they used to do for books in days of yore. You just don't find that kind of thing in books for adults these days, sadly.

...and if you think about it, this... denouncement of spiritual solipsism, self-centeredness or "blindness", seems to tie in for me with an inkling that I have, being that Eliot might have had a profound fear of nihilism (this might be a very personal interpretation because I had personally struggled with that a lot when I had renounced my own religion).

..but I've been thinking and wondering about why such a very 'aware' and intelligent person such as Eliot would convert from a more open-minded, (and in my eyes more 'sensible') religious view to (what I personally see as ) one that is more narrow and less 'believable', and then I wondered if it is not perhaps the fact that Catholicism is a lot more personal in various senses.

It requires involvement, and it presupposes a personal relationship with Jesus, Mary and whichever of the saints you would like to or not like to have one. In other words, it is a religion that feels more “alive” and it also gives you a greater sense both of belonging, and a bit of a feeling of a need for personal sacrifice, for … I don’t know if I am expressing myself well enough here.

Of course, the Catholicism thing would not apply yet to the time at which Eliot wrote the Hollow Men, but the fact that he uses the first person viewpoint, might indeed indicate that he himself had at the time had a feeling of hollowness, a spiritual need. So, he was spiritually seeking at the time, I would guess.

(And as far as his personal life goes, of course, the issues with his first wife's mental problems had been getting him down.)

Hmmm, this discussion made me realize that I had at some point in time started confusing the two kinds of Unitarianism, and I'm glad I realized it, because they are rather different from one another. (Although one embraces the other.)

This is the kind of Unitarianism that Eliot had grown up in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitari...

...and this is the kind of Unitarianism that I tend to think of as "Unitarianism" (whereas the term is rather Unitarian universalism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitari...

Something I am getting from checking out essays and writings of Eliot's external to the Hollow Men text, is that he had a holistic outlook when it comes to art, literature, religion/philosophy and society. He felt that one needed to see them as an integrated whole, and that does have some bearing to the EEYYYS and "seeing" issues, because he seems to have felt that those who can see the true interconnection of things has "true vision". Maybe also a little bit of the kind of vision that a "visionary" has.

Ok, I know I am digging deep now, but I really want to get to a point where I feel satisfied that I know where Eliot was coming from. Eliot also waxes forth quite a bit about a kind of spiritual solipsism, and this may also be what the "Hollow" people refers to - people whose vision are turned in on themselves, who cannot see outside of themselves to something greater than themselves, be it an idea, a diety, a whatever that they can strive for or hold in regard outside of themselves.

...so, I think if we try to narrow the poem's meaning down -too- much we would be doing it a disservice; I think that with some of his figurative speech, he might indeed actually be make approximate generalizations.

Wow, now that's a cool term - "approximate generalization" ! :D

(view spoiler)[ ..but.. but what does "approximate generalization" MEAN? I don't know, it came out approximately intuitively, I guess, so I suppose it would mean approximately what you think it does. >:D I've been reading too much Mieville, methinks. ) (hide spoiler)]

Ruth wrote: "Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Well - the thing is that he calls women minorities when actually we're not."

True, but it seems to me that in the US there was a going thing there for a w..."

Yep, thanks for that. Indeed, calling the majority of the world's human population a minority, just shows how skewed those old patriarchists thinking really was. Whether it was fashion or not, it was a fashion that was denigrating towards the majority of human beings.

The fact that footbinding and FGM is/was also fashion once upon a time in a large % of the world's population, doesn't make the practice justifiable. The fact that it was once fashion to flog your slaves to keep them in line, doesn't make it a commendable act.

Hi Ruth! Welcome to our personal Eliotian torture chamber! :D Thanks for braving it and giving us some practical and emotional support in here.

Let's make a note to definitely put HOD on our schedule. We've got planned stuff until about the end of April, at which point our schedule becomes less definite, and we could slot it in (thankfully it's short) at more or less any time later than that.

More or less when would those present feel it would be a good time?

Re Hollow Men, I admit that I've had a very busy day and have only had time to try and delve a bit into Eliot's religious background because I do feel it would be enlightening with regard to understanding what he meant.

So, apologies, but I haven't had time to do any more "close reading" analysis, and all I've found so far is what we already know: that he was born a Unitarian and that he had a religious conversion to "Anglo-Catholicism" in 1927. I guess the main thing that stood out for me, is that his personal sentiment and his poetry before the 1927 conversion was secular in nature, and that after 1927, his poetry and general life sentiment became markedly more religious in nature.

So, perhaps one shouldn't try and find a too personal "Catholic" attitude in The Hollow Men, which makes me lean even more to wanting to think that the 3 kingdoms are a sort of homage to Dante rather than something arrived at through personal Catholic convictions at that specific time in his life.

More later - sorry but got to run. :)

Btw, I spotted something rather interesting. (Yes, I have been researching a bit... well, been paging through my T.S. Eliot literature that I had at home)

Apparently, :" Part I of The Hollow Men ('We are the hollow
men') was published separately in the winter of 1924—5. Part III
('This is the dead land') was published as the third of 'Doris's
Dream Songs' in November 1924. Parts I, II and IV were
published together in March 1925.

The whole poem, with Part V, appeared in Poems 1909-1925 later in the same year. As with
The Waste Land, the fragmentary composition partly
accounts for the poem's lack of narrative sequence or argument
(its separate meditations circling round a single mood) and its
changes in tone, though there is a deliberate monotony about the
whole which is quite different from The Waste Land. "

I got that tidbit from T. S. Eliot: The Poems by Martin Scofield .

Thanks for all that! My mind is still steaming and stewing away! I might start consulting sources myself soon, which are not frowned upon if we tried to figure it out ourselves and remained desperate for an answer.

Bloodorange wrote: "I think you guys did a great job deciphering what is what:) Amy, I understand we're in stanza III, right?
.."

Yes, as to at which point we are with the 'close reading', we have not completely finished pulling stanza 3 apart word by word yet, although Amy has started with it and has also looked at section IV, and has commented on most of it. But for clarity's sake, I'll re-post stanza III in its unified form:

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

When he mentions stone images, my mind immediately goes to Stonehenge, although Stonehenge is of course not the only instance of menhirs in Europe. So my first question would be exactly which stones he is referring to, or is it just a general reference to such a practice over the ages? In any case, I do think Eliot made the phrase "prayers to broken stone" kinda famous...

Anyway, the next thing I want to look at are all the potential applications of the poem as an allegory, but I need a slight few hours breather. We've done some hard work on this, and I need my mind to stew a bit on the pot we've mixed together by now. :)

Anne wrote: "Strange. I's never really thought of Guy Fawkes night being unheard of in some countries. In New Zealand it still happens every year. Not so much the historical aspects - I'm sure most people dont ..."

..and why? Because fireworks are fun! :D (Not to mention pretty!)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: " Boring side comment: [ I would say I don't think a Christian would ever style heaven as a kingdom of death; heaven in Christian belief is, in so many ways, simply the vanquishment of death and its wages, but Eliot was still a Unitarian at the time of writing Hollow Men, so I'm not perfectly sure that is true as I don't know what the Unitarians of his day believed about life after death."

Well, it might just be a poetic way of saying "life after death" :)

Ugh, I hate you, T.S, Eliot! >:(
Okay, now I have that off my chest, let's see:

Characteristics of the kingdoms:
The dream kingdom seems the most lyrical one, but maybe we should also focus on what the EEYYYSS do in these kingdoms.

Other kingdom: this must be heaven, because the people with direct eyes went there.

The twilight kingdom must be hell, because :
"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

(Which kind of speaks for itself, wouldn't you agree - it sounds like the nasty empty place where empty people who have nothing to say, and who have no "spiritual" sight goes to. )

Okay, these are just guesses that I am throwing out there, so no prob at all if you don't agree.

I wonder then, (and I am really not sure about this one) if the dream kingdom is not akin to purgatory, because that is the place where you are in limbo, and therefore still 'dreaming' of your time on earth or your time to come in heaven - neither quite here or there?

Okay, re the kingdoms; let's collect them and then try to sort them.
We have:
1] Death's other kingdom
2] Death's dream kingdom
3] Death's twilight kingdom

He only mentions those three, so my guess is that one of them is heaven, one hell and one purgatory, (and if not, how can people then even remotely suggest that the poem refers to The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri , if this is not so?

So, how about we try to fit that in, and try to figure out which one is which?

Wow, this is really cool : http://www.fromoldbooks.org/

Phew, what a post! I'll reply to it in stages, but this thing really puzzled me as well, and I was hoping we'll manage to iron it out:

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
(In death's dream kingdom)
These do not appear:

[That is, "dreams" are amplified as "death's dream kingdom," so the speaker is dreaming, but then he doesn't have to worry about meeting the eyes because they aren't there in the dream kingdom?]

or as

Eyes (I dare not meet in dreams)
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:

[That is, in my "dreams" I dare not meet these terrible eyes, but in "death's dream kingdom" these eyes do not appear as eyes, but as these other issues I'm about to tell you about.]
.."

Will be back soon for more. :)

What do you guys think of K.'s interpretation of the letter that Barnabas brings him close to the start of chapter 2 - and of the decision he makes accordingly, and the reasoning behind it?

I'm referring to the situation around:
Undoubtedly these were contradictions, so obvious they must be intentional. The thought—a crazy one in the case of such authorities—that indecision might have played a role here, scarcely occurred to K.

He saw it more as a choice that had been freely offered him, it had been left up to him to decide what he wanted to make of the provisions in the letter, whether he wanted to be a village worker with a distinctive but merely apparent connection to the Castle, or an apparent village worker who in reality allowed the messages brought by Barnabas to define the terms of his position.

Michele wrote: "A note on authority. Authority is maybe the biggest psychological issue in any bureaucracy. I would argue it is the biggest.

Anyway, I noted that when he ended up at the same Inn as his superior t..."

Michele wrote: "A note on authority. Authority is maybe the biggest psychological issue in any bureaucracy. I would argue it is the biggest.

Anyway, I noted that when he ended up at the same Inn as his superior t..."

A bureaucratic structure can present itself as very impersonal, yes, isn't that so. Let's look, as we read, how these issues around authority manifest in the text of the novel. Certainly, up to now, it fit in with I had called "the pecking order" being of course, the hierarchy of authority to be found in most bureaucracies.

All this talk of bureaucracy made me look it up and a few dictionary definitions of it go:
:a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
and
:a body of nonelective government officials b : an administrative policy-making group. 2 : government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority.

..and look what I found on Wikipedia!
A bureaucracy (/bjuːˈrɒkrəsi/) is "a body of non-elective government officials" and/or "an administrative policy-making group". Historically, bureaucracy was government administration managed by departments staffed with nonelected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution.

Since being coined, the word "bureaucracy" has developed negative connotations. Bureaucracies have been criticized as being too complex, inefficient, or too inflexible. The dehumanizing effects of excessive bureaucracy became a major theme in the work of Franz Kafka, and were central to his novels, The Castle and The Trial. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy is a key concept in modern managerial theory and has been an issue in some political campaigns.

Michele wrote: "Anyway, I noted that when he ended up at the same Inn as his superior that he had to leave..."
Which part is that, Michele? (Please don't forget to use spoiler tags for anything after chapter 3, btw.)