February 16, 2004
Wheeler, "With Post"
Gah. Dr. Watson is kinda sick, now that I think about it. Him and his whole "with poem" thing . . . I don't find that I am entirely comfortable with the idea of giving birth to a blogpost. Mostly because, at best, it winds up being a twisted mutant child. But I had that presentation in English Lit II today, and consequently I am "with post."
To begin with, Dr. Watson is, like, the most absent-minded person ever when it comes to remembering stuff about presentations. He cares as little as I do about them, but has less motivation to remember when they are. I've had to supply the date of our presentation to him every time I've mentioned it thus far (and that has turned out to be often). So this morning I wander into his office to say hello, and pick up the Tennyson recording he's loaning me, and he asks me what I'm up to this morning. I told him I was just generally roaming, skipping chapel (which confused him briefly, since chapel hadn't started yet), and practicing my presentation.
"Oh? Do you have a presentation today?"
"Yeah."
"What class?"
I laughed at him. He remembered.
*fast-forwards boring details until beginning of presentation* I go sit in the corner at the front to watch the opening (I know what they're doing, but I'm not involved in this part). Yearsley gets up and launches into "The Charge of the Light Brigade" with the kind of gusto and fervor I don't often have the pleasure of hearing from anyone (except on Thurday nights, from people like Moore). At the same time, Logan comes, well, charging into the midst of us wearing cardboard armor and riding a broomstick ("We found a witch!" . . . fortunately for him, he stayed on the ground). When Yearsley came to "Cannons to the right of them! Cannons to the left of them!" Robert hauls out a double handful of Reese's pieces . . . thingies and lets fly at Logan with a loud "BOOM!" Logan continues to run amongst the desks, half trying to duck and cover from the sprays of candy blanketing the room like . . . grapeshot, I suppose. Very nonlethal grapeshot.
I was amused. Everyone was amused. Watson ate candy, and was highly amused. Then came devo. I tuned out, because I was thinking about what I was going to say. It was on Psalm 92 and it somehow tied in with chapel and with David being a great poet. That's all I know.
Then Robert gave his talk on Tennyson's life. Robert was nervous. I could tell Robert was nervous. And I was somewhat upset with Payton. *notes confused looks* Payton, in Speech last semester, officially made it impossible not to notice every single solitary time that people say "Um" when they are speaking in front of others. And it drives me insane. And Robert said "Um" a lot. Grrr . . .
At least I don't notice when I say "Um" in general. If I did, I'd be really annoyed. However, Robert's talk did give me a certain amount of confidence, because I knew I could one-up it. And then I got up to talk about Lord Tennyson and DEATH . . . (ba-ba-ba-BUM). Tennyson wrote about death, like, all the time. It's rather depressing, I couldn't help but notice, and very affecting, when you're sitting all alone very late at night, reading this stuff and trying to get inside his head.
This isn't as apparent in The Lady of Shalott and Morte d'Arthur because the tone is so elevated and he pours it on so thick, that unless you really just want to get emotional, it's not going to happen. The Lady of Shalott, in fact, is kind of ridiculous, really. It's black humor, highly ironic . . . but probably not meant so. The Lady of Shalott basically sits around in her tower all day and watches the world through her magic mirror so she can record things on a tapestry. She isn't allowed to look out of the window at all or a curse will come upon her because . . . ummm . . . because it's a poem. Shut up. Well, one day, who should happen by, happy singing a tune, but Sir friggin' Lancelot himself. The Lady spots him in the mirror, runs over and gazes upon him out of the window as he gallops off on his merry way (followed, no doubt, by a strange-looking fellow clapping ends of a coconut together).
The mirror cracks from side to side, the tapestry flies out the window, and things just generally suck. The Lady of Shalott, being (as Moore would say) exceptionally crafty, goes down and paints her name on the prow of a boat, then lays herself down in it, clad in far more white than is good for her. She then proceeds to float down the river, lying disconsolately in the bottom of the boat, singing her own funeral dirge, like a right-morbid watery old tart. And so she dies, which kind of sucks for her, I suppose. Then again, she was basically spending all of her time sitting in a tower and sewing while she watched soaps. Personally, I think she wins. So then we get to the irony. Her boat shows up at Camelot, where they are having a party. And everyone shuts up real fast and everyone is very sad. And Lancelot sits and gazes upon the fair lady, and wishes God's mercy on her . . . because she's pretty, (presumably he wouldn't be so charitable, otherwise). And that's how it ends, and Lancelot has no idea that he was the cause of all this. It's incredibly sappy, but I've been in incredibly sappy moods before, so I won't say that it totally sucks. It's rather good poetry . . . very relaxing rythm to it and so forth.
So that's Tennyson and his focus on death in Arthurian legend. Next came Tennyson writing about death in the events of his day. I didn't even bother to try explaining the Crimean War, for obvious reasons. That's gotta be the most confusing war ever. Basically it boils down to France, England, and Turkey ganging up on Russia because France and Russia both want religious rights of one sort or another in Jerusalem. And they all run over and fight each other on the Crimean Peninsula, which, it turns out, is not technically in France, England, Russia, Turkey, or anywhere near Jerusalem. It's kind of a sad little war, in any case. Three years, three major battles . . . But the second one was rather interesting, and Tennyson wrote a poem about a piece of it.
Actually, the Battle of Balaklava was loaded with heroic holdings of the line, heroic charges, heroic last stands, and so forth . . . The Charge of the Light Brigade was the most monumentally stupid of them all, and the most costly . . . which makes it the most heroic, almost by default. So Tennyson wrote about it, because he was into that whole "dead hero" thing.
If you don't know the real story, it's a pretty good one, and I had a good time telling it in class, with various pictures to assist. Balaklava is a particularly hilly region and it is being held by the . . . non-Russians. A massive Russian force sweeps in and chases the Turks away from some artillery that they have set up, and they run off to warn the British. *insert various heroic actions here* As the battle progresses, the officers down on the ground can see very little of what is going on except in certain directions, while the generals up above have a pretty good grasp of the big picture. The commanding general spots the Russians moving in to remove the guns that they have captured from the Turks and decides that he doesn't want them doing that. He sends down a message to the Light Brigade ordering them to "prevent the removal of the guns."
The Light Brigade says to itself, "Self, I wonder which guns he means. Hmmm . . . I only see those guns down there. He must mean those. Rather odd. That's a lot of guns. This seems a bit suicidal. Oh, well. Charge!!!"
Tennyson's "Jaws of Death" is a very accurate description. 673 light cavalry go barreling down the valley in two waves, directly into massive cannon fire, and caught in a deadly crossfire from both sides of them as well. The first wave reaches the guns, and the Russians who were too stupid to get out of the way get mowed down, and the first wave continues forward, plowing into a significantly larger mass of Russian cavalry that is waiting (a bit dumbstruck at this move by the British). Meanwhile, the second wave goes flying by the guns, kills more hapless Russian gunners, and plows into the first wave, which is retreating from much-too-large mass of cavalry that they had so recently attacked. So they're all kind of milling about in the spot, stuck between the Russian guns and the Russian cavalry, and before long it is decided that leaving is just generally a good idea. Unfortunately, the Russian lancers waiting in the wings have moved around in front to cut them off. However, as the British begin to run, the lancers step aside with just a few perfunctory pokes to make sure they keep going. No one is really certain why they did this. I suspect they just didn't want to risk themselves against an enemy that was obviously broken and not coming back.
Long story short, the Light Brigade is down to about 100 men with horses, the British *sort of* win the battle of Balaklava, and the Russians (who had initially thought that the British were just drunk) gain a healthy respect for the light cavalry. Which doesn't actually matter because they are pretty much broken and are unable to play a significant role for the rest of the war.
At this point in my presentation, we listened to the recording of Tennyson reading a portion of his poem. You couldn't actually understand what he was saying at all unless you were reading along. It just sounded like a rythmic, "BLA bla blabla blabla, BLA bla blabla blabla" for a little over a minute. Strangely, if you knew what he was saying, you could very clearly hear him say it.
"Creepy," says I, when it was over (because it kinda was). Then, as I'm about to continue the slide show, the CD continues on into some sort of classical music selection. Heh. "Stopping this would probably be a good idea," I conjectured as I moved the stupid cursor up to take care of it. I suppose I could have turned it down a bit and left it playing, but . . . nah.
I moved on to shaky ground . . . the poem "In Memoriam" written about Tennyson's friend Arthur Hallam when he died at the age of 22. I was more than a bit disturbed, and also most affected, by this poem. It's crazy long, and they don't even include the entire thing in Norton (which drives me up the wall). Tennyson wrote it over a seventeen year period . . . He spent 20% of his life getting over the death of this friend. The work contains 133 separate poems, and all the ones that I read were really good. The thing is loaded with famous quotes, including, "It is better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all." (#27)
Dr. Watson wanted clarification (having told me before class that he wasn't particularly familiar with this one): "Now, this is written about a guy?"
"Yes, yes it is."
The thing can be divided into four sections by the chief emotions expressed in each section: Despair, Doubt, Hope, and Faith. So it becomes less depressing, but no less emotional, as you move forward in it. The turning point into each section is written at Christmas time, #s 28, 78, and 104. 9-15 and 19 were all written as he accompanied the body back to England on a ship, these are especially poignant. Also, 54-56 express some very intense anger at and/or doubt in God. But ultimately the best ones are in the last section where he contemplates the afterlife quite a bit, and has dreams of meeting his friend after he dies.
This poem made Tennyson famous when it was finally published in 1950. He was able to marry the girl that he couldn't marry before because he was too poor. He was declared Poet Laureate of England. And he became by far the most popular poet of his age. A dying gift from a friend . . . but he'd rather have had the friend, I think.
I vacillate between being genuinely disturbed at the prospect of a seventeen-year period of mourning and the obsessive writing of poetry throughout all that time, and being deeply affected by the signs of a rather amazing friendship. I tend more towards the latter, because I think I kind of understand just a fraction of a minute portion of the way he felt . . . Maybe.
Finally, I talked about what Tennyson wrote of his own death. "Crossing the Bar" was written three years before he died, and he directed that it be placed at the end of every collection of his works (as far as I understand, it has been). When he died, it was put to music and sung at his funeral, and I am told that you can still find it some hymnals . . . although I have no idea what sort. At this point in the presentation, Yearsley came up and read the poem . . . which is rather a good poem (and so I shall post it).
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
It's hard to know when to risk trying to affect your audience, and when to just keep it light (which is considerably easier), but Yearsley did a good job of reading the poem in a very quiet, moving tone. So I went for both, and ended the presentation thusly:
"So, lot's of death and sadness . . . Have a good cry." (This last being something I think Watson might say, and said with my best impression of Watson.)
I got quiet chuckles and a lot of staring off into space. Haha!!!
Wait, nevermind . . . they just weren't paying attention. Ah, well . . . we can't all aspire to the lofty post of English Major, now can we?
I don't know what all the contributing factors were, but we got a 92 (the choice of Psalm was rather prophetic, I suppose . . . Logan should have chosen Psalm 150 . . . drat). That was pretty cool, because it was only about 20 minutes long, and the syllabus calls for 30-35. w00t.
And then we finished watching Frankenstein. *sniggers* Talk about a change of pace . . .
Hmmm . . . time to get work done.
Posted by Jared at February 16, 2004 10:30 PM | TrackBack