Wednesday Poetry: "The Fool," by Hugh MacDiarmid

I found myself thinking about MacDiarmid's poetry recently, in part because of a book I blogged about recently--Irvine Welsh's The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs. At several points throughout the novel, Welsh's protagonist, Danny Skinner, thinks about a collection of MacDiarmid's poetry that he has been intending to read. Skinner thinks to himself, though, that it's a bit difficult to trust somebody who has changed his name.

Hugh MacDiarmid is the pseudonym for the Scottish, modernist poet Christopher Murray Grieve (1892-1978). In this short poem, "The Fool," MacDiarmid forces us to reconsider delusions. There's a "fool" who believes he's God, and the narrator possess a similar touch of insanity, which we see in the poem's final lines--a suggestion that the narrator believes himself capable of killing God.

So at the poem's end, who is the fool? The man who believes he's God, or the narrator hoping to be a God-killer, who leaves a body in a pool?

"The Fool"

He said that he was God.
'We are well met,' I cried.
'I've always hoped I should
Meet God before I died.'

I slew him then and cast
His corpse into a pool,
--But how I wish he had
Indeed been God, the fool!

It's Been a While, and Still Some Things Don't Ever Change

Long time, no see. America is drowning from a recent tea party (btw, totally symbolically boycotted tea on Election Day and got all of my caffeine from coffee, despite my preference for tea!), and in the world of fictional narratives, maybe nothing's different. Despite national turmoil.

Right now, I'm teaching a section of freshman comp in the Rutgers-Newark Writing Program, and we're moving into a unit on heroes. We've started with part of the introduction to Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which Campbell argues for what he calls the "monomyth": It's very Jungian, in that Campbell posits that there are archetypes that recur throughout cultures. And we've basically been dealing with the same kinds of stories. It's the context that's different, the names and faces and particular quirks of characters that are unique.

That seems to be a popular opinion in what I've been reading as of late. In A Short Story Writer's Companion, Tom Bailey argues that it's characters that make stories different and meaningful. This is not unlike Campbell's monomyth, which has been appropriated by modern tale tellers like George Lucas.

How'd I get on this tangent? The most recent update to Kate Beaton's webcomic Hark! A Vagrant! Beaton lampoons Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in a series of strips that place Friday as the more intelligent, sophisticated of the two. The purpose behind Beaton's comic is to mock a recurring film archetype that she read about in the Bright Lights Film Journal, in which Frederick Zackel argues that we've been seeing Robinson Crusoe's master-slave/white-black dialectic played for years. And it's everywhere. Yet we've been overlooking it in to address other concerns. Zackel writes,

For instance, we all remember the brouhaha about whether the 1993 movie Rising Sun actually represented Japan-bashing. Yet none of us seemed to have noticed that the two male leads in that movie, Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, were busy reenacting (or maybe "perpetuating" is a better word) one of the oldest fictional partnerships in our Western culture.

Englishman Connery played the part of Robinson Crusoe, while Snipes, a descendant of slaves, played his Man Friday. Not that those were their characters' names, of course. Not that either man realized what they were reenacting, either. Nor can either man be blamed for his part in perpetuating the myth.

First of all, I take offense to his referring to Sean Connery as an "Englishman," but his point is that Connery's and Snipes's characters are reenacting/perpetuating (his words) the Robinson Crusoe/Friday model. And it's not just Rising Sun; other movies, like Men in Black, have the older, wiser, patriarchal white male figure overseeing, guiding, and correcting a black counterpart (Tommy Lee Jones with Will Smith, for instance).

But seriously--Sean Connery is a Scot. Mr. Zackel is perpetuating his own stereotype--that Scots are happily English. But just as the rise of the Scottish parliament speaks towards Scotland's move toward freedom, so too should we try to craft into our fictions a move away from the Crusoe/Friday paradigm (first African American president, anybody?). Otherwise, nothing will ever change.

Wednesday Poetry: "To a Mouse," by Robert Burns

First of all, sorry for the lack of a Monday update; I tried to post something while I was visiting Rutgers-Newark, but apparently you can only connect to the Internet there with a student ID and a password. (No guest wifi? Balderdash!)

Today's poem is by Robert Burns (1759-1796), the national poet of Scotland. During his 37 years, he was a prolific poet and songwriter, and he also led an interesting life outside of that. I first learned of Burns in December 2008 when I visited Edinburgh, Scotland, the UNESCO World City of Literature. Burns, especially in America, gets overlooked, but his poetry is a brand of heartfelt romanticism that presages that of Wordsworth and Coleridge. In many ways, Burns was a more sincere romanticist than Wordsworth because, instead of just praising and lauding the working classes, Burns actually wrote in their dialect and worked that commonplace language into elegant poetic forms.

I've also selected this particular poem because it's the origin of a common cliché, which you'll notice as soon as you get to that stanza. Try imagining this read in a Scottish brogue; it helps immensely.

To a Mouse
On turning her up in her Nest with the Plough. November 1785.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae haesty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin' wi the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin',
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell--
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me;
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!