Pseudo-Borges . . . the Academy of Silence and their Oracular Urn

There existed in ancient Greece a curious association called the Academy of Silence. It was composed of 100 members, each one pledged to suppress all unnecessary sound as far as possible. 

 

All the meetings were carried on in silence, ideas being conveyed by signs. One day a stranger appeared at their council, signifying that he wished to join the society. The one in charge, in order to indicate to the would-be member that there was no vacancy in the Academy, showed him an urn so filled with water that not a drop could be added without causing the contents to overflow. The applicant, understanding what was meant, bowed low and started to withdraw, then hesitated and returned. The assembled members were curious to know the meaning of his action but it was made clear to them when the applicant, picking up a rose-leaf, deposited it so lightly and deftly upon the water in the urn that not a drop was displaced. His acuity of thought was rewarded. The Academy of Silence was at once enlarged to include an extra member.

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“Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.” ― Jorge Luis Borges

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The rather Borgesian double urn is suggestive of the onion-skin unlayering of meaning in the fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, while the Parable of the Silent Ballot is to be found in the Catholic Digest, New York, 1938. (Image: Watercolour by Giovanni Battista Lusieri, A Greek Double Urn, circa 1804, National Gallery of Scotland. The urn was excavated from a burial mound outside Athens. The outer vase was made of white marble and had been damaged by the weight of the tomb. The bronze inner vase contained some burnt bones and a sprig of myrtle* made of gold.)  

*Myrtle, a symbol of love, was a plant sacred to the goddess Aphrodite.

See also more Borgesian fables: I Have a Rendezvous with Dread at Destination Echoville.

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-have-rendezvous-with-dread-at.html

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Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2014)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

At Grass, the Blinking Stars ... Doctored Art?

I'm certain I recall reading in Andrew Motion's biography of Larkin (Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, Faber and Faber, 1993) that, though he much admired Larkin's well known poem about racehorses put out to grass, he was disturbed by the inaccuracy of the final line of the final stanza ...

Only the groom, and the groom's boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

Motion feels that racehorses 'At Grass', taken by grooms to their stables, by implication, would be led by 'halters'.  The line, then, should read:

Only the groom, and the groom's boy,
With halters in the evening come.

Motion is absolutely right here. The bridles suggest horses equipped for a race, which is quite the opposite of the poem's mood of 'Veterans at Rest' and 'Triumphs Past'.

This brings me to the heretical idea that works of art, conceivably, could be tweaked and doctored to engage more empathetically with latter-day sensibilities. Do I mean bowdlerisation? No! Of course not!

I mean that some modern meanings of certain words can torpedo the effects the lyricist intended.  Shall I ever forget the ripple of laughter at the Royal Festival Hall when that splendid Toulonnais, Gilbert Becaud, sang an English translation of one of his songs: 'The blinking stars are dancing ...'  He simply could not understand the Londoners' (not unkind) laughter.

My sensibilities are also disturbed by the jarring appearance of 'free lances' in Louis MacNeice's classically perfect 'The Sunlight on the Garden', even though I know very well the meaning MacNeice intended, and its pathos. It's just that so many other contemporary – and dullish - associations are now conjured up by the term. That is why I have presumed, for my own private delectation, to doctor the poem so my attention does not waver at the beginning of the second stanza.

A massive presumption, yes! (To loosely change: Our freedom as free lances/Advances towards its end;/The earth compels ...) N.B. The iron 'Siren' neither reflects the Spanish Civil War nor the London Blitz of WW2 since this prophetic poem was completed in the mid 1930s. The dictators who wreaked havoc in both those conflicts I now dub, specifically, the 'unanswerable rogues' who never answered for their actions.

The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

We know the rogue who answers
Unanswerably at the end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful, too,
For sunlight on the garden. 

 

 

 

The Eve of Saint Agnes

I confess I stumble, too, at a padded fourth line of Keats and, in my mind, as I read, I presume to instil what I consider a greater sense of apprehensiveness into its blandness : ‘And silent was the flock in woolly fold . . .’

Why Oh why is its wooliness so apparent in a critical scene-setting opening stanza one wonders when the true mood of the text – female sexual repression under narrow confines – could have been aptly conveyed by a meaningful tweak :

 

‘And silent was the flock in bidden fold’