Commentary
'Bats blinking in the dark wings...'
Obviously, the image in the opening lines of the
poem is theatrical. The 'dark wings' are the wings of a theatre, the moths
are players, that is, actors, playing in the theatrical lighting. 'Playing'
also has overtones of heedless enjoyment - but the moths are threatened
by the bats.
The moon is 'swung' as it passes in its apparent
orbit in the night sky. It's 'a' moon which, like all the other moons
in the solar system, is known to us, but there must be moons too which
are not known to us outside our solar system
The inner life of the moths that flutter and the
bats that flitter isn't known in the same way. They are 'others,' whose
inner life we can only imagine. As for the consciousness of bats, I had
in mind the essay of the philosopher Thomas Nagel, 'What is it like to
be a bat?' The essay, though, is not about the mysterious otherness of
bats but an anti-reductionist viewpoint in the philosophy of mind according
to which consciousness, subjective experience, can't be reduced to neurophysiology.
I share this viewpoint.
Bats, of course, emit sounds which can't be heard
by us. The 'unheard shrieking' of people gives a linkage with the opening
of Rilke's First Duino Elegy, 'Who if I cried out , would hear me among
the angels'/hierarchies?'
'Shrieking' suggests something unpleasant. I oppose
views of human life which reduce it to something completely unpleasant,
without denying that there are unpleasant aspects and that 'shrieking'
or similar responses are part of life. I give some other responses: 'shouting,'
that is, the shouting of defiance as well as the shouting of anger and
argument, 'saying,' expressing states which are not intense, such as normal
human conversation, and 'singing,' the creation of beauty. The viewpoint
of the poem is anti-reductionist in a wider sense.
The bats and moths are the first two players on the
world's stage in this particular drama. Humanity is the third player,
and the most important one, although instead of the 'major third,' the
interval in music, we have the 'majority third,' an ironic comment on
the power now of majorities.
They are gone...
Each of the short lines has 3 syllables.This kind
of syllabic verse I call 'syllabic unit poetry.' In concrete unit poetry.
(See the examples in the region 'Concrete poetry') there's complete control
of the letters, punctuation marks and spaces so as to shape the poem.
In syllabic unit poetry there's complete control over the number of unit-syllables.
The lines are iambic monometers to begin with but the monometers are varied.
War, the holocaust and
the troubles in Northern Ireland
The views which underlie this section are these.
I regard war as one of the greatest scourges of humanity but as not always
avoidable. So my perspective isn't a pacifist one. I think that the armed
forces of this country are one of its greatest assets, their dedication
and sacrifices at present cause for pride, like their dedication in the
past and the sacrifices they made in the past. The phrase 'wear your poppy
with pride' is one in which I believe strongly. I have a strong interest
in the rules of war, the international legislation which has restricted
the savagery of war and protected non-combatants and those who have surrendered
and are no longer combatants. But my admiration certainly extends, and
very much so, to the crews of bomber command who attacked German cities.
The area campaign was wrong but the crews who risked their lives were
not wrong.
A comment on the poetry of vaster conflicts and much
smaller, if very bloody, conflicts: the quality of the poetry has no linkage
with the size of the conflict. A striking comment by Daniel Albright,
the editor of Yeats: 'The Poems:' 'W. H. Auden, attempting to account
for the fact that a better poem had been written about a small Irish uprising
in 1916 than any about the whole of World War II...'
She licks it into
shape...
Inscape. Collins English Dictionary
has 'the essential inner nature of a person, object etc.' as expressed
in literary or artistic works.' The word was introduced by Gerard Manley
Hopkins. He makes significant use of it in his Journal, eg.1871: 'End
of March and beginning of April - This is the time to study inscape in
the spraying of trees, for the swelling buds carry them to a pitch which
the eye could not else gather - for out of much much more, out of little
not much, out of nothing nothing: in these sprays at all events there
is a new world of inscape.'
A poem isn't the place for a systematic and exhaustive
discussion of anything, the poem 'she licks it into shape...' included.
A few remarks about the place of sexuality in human nature (obviously
a very big and important topic. Not only is it impossible to do justice
to it here, it's impossible to do justice to it anywhere.)
D H Lawrence would surely have accepted Nietzsche's
claim 'The degree and kind of a person's sexuality reaches up into the
topmost summit of his spirit.' (Beyond Good and Evil 75, translated by
R J Hollingdale. I don't accept this claim. I'm sure that Nietzsche liked
the sound of this claim but it's isolated in his writings, the rest of
his writings do nothing to support it or reinforce it and there's no evidence
that Nietzsche was anything other than sexually ignorant, far more so
than D H Lawrence - who, in the interesting account by Martin Seymour
Lawrence was 'a would-be sex-mage whose practical grasp of his subject
was notably imperfect.'
The Jaws of Borrowdale,
Derwentwater
The poem may be straightforward but the linked poem
and image show dissonance. The poem makes the claim that
the scene is so compelling, it presents itself with such directness, that
it is reality, without the difficulties we face whenever we concentrate
upon appearances, the deceptiveness of appearances, the unreliability
of our senses. The image which is linked with the poem is, though, very
much a distortion of reality. The mound in the centre represents Castle
Crag without undue distortion. The fells on the left and right are very
much distorted. Our senses impose {adjustment} and so do our memories.
For a photograph, showing the Jaws of Borrowdale and Derwentwater from
Friar's Crag (the scene that John Ruskin valued so highly):
http://flickr.com/photos/22557397@N03/2175747263/
Lincolnshire,
asleep, Turin, wide awake
This poem was suggested by a passage in Jack Currie's
'Lancaster Target:' 'At Modane, the railway ran from Grenoble to Turin,
deep under the Graian Alps...Our task...was to block the tunnel...We arrived
early in the target area, and circled high among the Alpine peaks, gazing
at magnificent Mont Blanc, towering massive in the moonlight, with our
target to the south and Lake Geneva to the north.' However, there was
no collision in Jack Currie's account and the poem is mainly fictional.
'felt a bump.' Collins English Dictionary for 'bumping
race:' '(esp.at Oxford and Cambridge) a race in which rowing eights start
an equal distance one behind the other and each tries to bump the boat
in front.' Collins English Dictionary for 'bump ball,' 'Cricket. a
ball that bounces into the air after being hit directly into the ground
by the batsman.'
The poem reflects, of course, the social background,
including the sports they played, of a significant proportion of the English
who lost their lives in the Second World War, as in other wars. King's
College is the Cambridge College and Balliol is the Oxford College.
Doubles
In this poem, I imagine two conscience-stricken machine
gunners from two opposing armies. The reality is that the vast majority
of machine-gunners have never been as sensitive as in the poem. The harsh
reality is that they could not have allowed any sensitivity to influence
their actions. Failure to fire on the advancing troops would have most
likely led within a short time to their being shot or bayoneted.
Since writing the poem, though, I've been very impressed
to find in 'The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915 -
1918' by Mark Thompson - a magnificent book - descriptions of the action
of very sensitive machine-gunners. These were gunners of the Austro-Hungarian
army confronting troops of the Italian army, trained, led and equipped
to a catastrophically bad standard. On something like half a dozen occasions,
occasions probably unique in the First World War or any other mechanized
war, the machine-gunners refused to fire on the advancing Italians. "Stop,
go back!" one of them shouted on one of these occasions, "We
won't shoot any more. Do you want everyone to die?"
Grass shooting
'Does He still garden:' an allusion to the parable which the atheist
philosopher Anthony Flew wrote to illustrate 'theology and falsification.
It's given on the page:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/flew_falsification.html#see
95
Very often, a poem can give only one aspect, not a balanced or comprehensive
view. I'd emphasize the obvious fact that not all 95 year olds have this
degree of impairment and that whether they do or not, their lives may
well make admiration the overwhelmingly important response.
Concrete poetry
