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| Edna St. Vincent Millay bathing (circa 1927). |
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| Blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughter by Eugène Delacroix (circa 1826). |
In emulation of Milton’s daughter, Miss Dickinson transcribed correctly line 344 of Book 1 of Paradise Lost, in countless editions falsely rendered thus:
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell
for she recognised, unlike most – if not all – Miltonian scholars, that this dictated masterpiece contains many homophones and bad angels for bade angels is surely an example of the grave pitfalls that lie in wait for orality in versification.
Even a fair reading of the transcript by Milton’s daughter would not necessarily have singled out the fault, however acute the blind task-master’s ear. And she . . . ? Well, Milton’s daughter – as Emily suspected – may have allowed the error to stand to colour this stern, forbidding, Epic Voice with her own mischievous girlish descant.
Blind Milton: The meaning’s not mistaken, child?
Meek Daughter: Bade angels, bade as bidden, Father.
Do you doubt Emily’s insights; those of a preeminent bardic practitioner? Consider Milton’s verses some forty lines earlier, a narrative in which Satan arises from the fiery deep to issue rousing orders, bidding his Fallen Angels in a call to arms.
On Hell’s. . .
. . . inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced . . .
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen . . .
. . . Yet to their general’s voice they soon obeyed
Innumerable. [In other words, Bade Angels.]
After all, for every Production Line worker (in this case, over 10,000 lines!) there are bound to be a few moments for a little idle diversion.
Empress of Calvary.
Though, it has to be added, anyone who personifies themselves as ‘Empress of Calvary’ is perhaps in an invidious position when presuming to find a bum note in one of Christendom’s authentic God-given masterpieces. Except, maybe, after all, an Empress of Calvary should command Bad Angels, for they would certainly deserve to be at her impious imperious bidding.
Or is that exactly what Emily meant?
Satan calling up his legions
by William Blake
(tempera and gold, circa 1800 - 1805)
For Great Dictators: Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Barbara Cartland, Edgar Wallace and Co. . . . see . . .
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2012/09/great-dictators-henry-james-joseph.html
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| Grisette de Fécamp |
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| The Fall of Man (1592, detail) by Cornelis van Haarlem (1562–1638) |
(Newspaper report, 17 October 2019) The true way for testing a ripe Cox’s Orange Pippin apple is to shake it. The pips should rattle in the core.
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| According to Dr. Yitzhaq Hayut-Man, scholar of Torah and Kabbalah, we should pay regard to the picture of Creation ‘. . . drawn by Rabbi Yitzḥaq of Acre (who lived in the 13-14th century, well before the late Physicist Stephen Hawking) . . . [for the medieval Rabbi] combined a Kabbalistic calculation: (1) as his predecessors already agreed there were six cycles of seven thousand years making 42,000 years; (2) this is multiplied by 1,000 “... for a thousand years in Thy sight are but like yesterday when it is past . . .” [Book of Psalms, 90:2] and (3) this, in turn, is multiplied by the 365 days in each divine year, yielding 15,330,000,000 of our years. Which accords with Hawking's estimate.’ |
The dreamer's embarrassment and the [dream] spectator’s indifference constitute a contradiction such as often occurs in dreams. It would be more in keeping with the dreamer’s feelings if the strangers were to look at him in astonishment, or were to laugh at him, or be outraged. I think, however, that this obnoxious feature has been displaced by wish-fulfilment, while the embarrassment is for some reason retained, so that the two components are not in agreement.That these words were written in the same century in which popular authors similarly reflected this subconscious wish-fulfilling displacement in their fictive narratives surely, then, lends substance to Freud’s theories of wish-fulfilment explored in Die Traumdeutung’s Chapter III, Der Traum ist eine Wunscherfüllung :
‘. . . in colloquial language the dream is predominantly the gracious fulfiller of wishes. “I should never have imagined that in my wildest dreams,” we exclaim in delight if we find that the reality surpasses our expectations.’
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| Captain John Good . . . he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye. It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it out except to wipe it . . . ‘How is it, O strangers,’ asked the old man solemnly, ‘that this man (pointing to Good, who was clad in nothing but boots and flannel shirt, and had only half finished his shaving) grows hair on one side of his sickly face and not on the other, and who wears one shining and transparent eye . . . ?’ |
He (Captain Good, the sidekick to the quest’s leader, Sir Henry Curtis) was broad, of medium height, dark, stout, and rather a curious man to look at. He was so very neat and so very clean-shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye. It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it out except to wipe it . . . He put it in his trousers pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth, of which he had two beautiful sets . . .‘Perfect order’ courts disaster . . .
There he [Captain Good) sat upon a leather bag, looking just as though he had come in from a comfortable day's shooting in a civilised country, absolutely clean, tidy, and well dressed. He wore a shooting suit of brown tweed, with a hat to match, and neat gaiters. As usual, he was beautifully shaved, his eye-glass and his false teeth appeared to be in perfect order, and altogether he looked the neatest man I ever had to do with in the wilderness. He even sported a collar, of which he had a supply, made of white gutta-percha . . . ‘You see, they weigh so little . . . and I always like to turn out like a gentleman.’Half-shaven, untoothed . . .
At last he succeeded in getting the hair off the right side of his face and chin, when suddenly I, who was watching, became conscious of a flash of light [a hostile spear] that passed just by his head. Good sprang up with a profane exclamation (if it had not been a safety razor he would certainly have cut his throat) . . . ‘I see that ye are spirits,’ [the Kukuana warrior] said falteringly, ‘did ever man born of woman have hair on one side of his face and not on the other, or a round and transparent eye, or teeth which moved and melted away and grew again?’Infantile paranoia of nakedness . . .
‘Look here, Good,’ said Sir Henry; ‘you have appeared in this country in a certain character, and you must live up to it. It will never do for you to put on trousers again. Henceforth you must exist in a flannel shirt, a pair of boots, and an eye-glass.’ . . . ‘. . . and with whiskers on one side of your face and not on the other.’Imperial wish-fulfilment, thanks to Greenwich . . .
‘I think that I have it,’ said Good exultingly; ‘ask them to give us a moment to think.’ I did so, and the chiefs withdrew. So soon as they had gone Good went to the little box where he kept his medicines, unlocked it, and took out a note-book, in the fly-leaves of which was an almanack. ‘Now look here, you fellows, isn’t tomorrow the 4th of June?’ he said. ‘Very good; then here we have it — 4 June, total eclipse of the moon commences at 8.15 Greenwich time . . . Tell them we will darken the moon to-morrow night.’Synthesis of component symbols . . .
Slowly the penumbra, the shadow of a shadow, crept on over the bright surface, and as it crept I heard deep gasps of fear rising from the multitude around. ‘The light of the transparent eye of him with the half-haired face shall destroy you . . . Now tell me, can any mortal man put out that moon before her hour of setting, and bring the curtain of black night down upon the land?’ . . . Now to my intense joy and relief [I] saw that we—or rather the almanack—had made no mistake. On the edge of the great orb lay a faint rim of shadow, while a smoky hue grew and gathered upon its bright surface . . . The great pale orb seemed to draw near and to grow in size. . . . ‘The moon is dying—the white wizards have killed the moon,’ yelled (the Pretender King] at last. ‘We shall all perish in the dark . . .’
We have already become acquainted with the rule of interpretation that every element of the dream may be interpreted by its opposite, as well as by itself. One can never tell at the outset whether to set down the one or the other; only the connection can decide this point. A suspicion of this state of affairs has evidently got into popular consciousness; dream books very often proceed according to the principle of contraries in their interpretation.And Freud continues . . .
Such transformation into opposites is made possible by the intimate concatenation of associations, which in our thoughts finds the idea of a thing in that of its opposite. Like every other displacement this serves the purposes of the censor, but it is also often the work of the wish-fulfilment, for wish-fulfilment consists precisely in this substitution of an unwelcome thing by its opposite. The emotions of the dream thoughts may appear in the dream transformed into their opposites just as well as the ideas, and it is probable that this inversion of emotions is usually brought about by the dream censor.
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| We have before stated how disfigured the countenance of poor Mr Jolliffe had been by the smallpox . . . |
. . . Mr Jolliffe, the master’s mate, who had fixed his eye upon Jack, and to whom Jack returned the compliment. The first thing that Jack observed was, that Mr Jolliffe was very deeply pockmarked, and that he had but one eye, and that was a piercer; it appeared like a little ball of fire, and as if it reflected more light from the solitary candle than the candle gave. ‘I don’t like your looks,’ thought Jack—‘we shall never be friends.’ But here Jack fell into the common error of judging by appearances, as will be proved hereafter.The appearance of Jolliffe is disturbing to the young midshipman . . .
[Jolliffe] had suffered martyrdom with the small-pox, which probably had contracted his lineaments: his face was not only deeply pitted, but scarred, with this cruel disorder. One eye had been lost, and all eyebrows had disappeared—and the contrast between the dull, sightless opaque orb on one side of his face, and the brilliant, piercing little ball on the other, was almost terrifying. His nose had been eaten away by the disease till it formed a sharp but irregular point: part of the muscles of the chin were contracted, and it was drawn in with unnatural seams and puckers. He was tall, gaunt, and thin, seldom smiled, and when he did, the smile produced a still further distortion. Mr Jolliffe was the son of a warrant officer. He did not contract this disease until he had been sent out to the West Indies, where it swept away hundreds.A shipboard ammunition chest blows up and the master’s mate is saved . . .
. . . when of a sudden a tremendous explosion took place on the deck of the vessel, and bodies and fragments were hurled up in the air. Our hero went up to examine, and to assist . . . in disengaging the body from a heap of ropes and half-burned tarpaulins with which it was entangled . . . it was poor Jolliffe, whose face was burned as black as a coal by the explosion. He had also lost three fingers of the left hand, but as soon as he was brought out on the deck he appeared to recover, and pointed to his mouth for water, which was instantly procured.Transformation into opposites . . .
Jolliffe and the wounded men were taken on board, and all of them recovered. We have before stated how disfigured the countenance of poor Mr Jolliffe had been by the smallpox—so severely was it burned that the whole of the countenance came off in three weeks like a mask, and every one declared that, seamed as it still was, Mr Jolliffe was better looking than he was before. It may be as well here to state that Mr Jolliffe not only obtained his promotion, but a pension for his wounds, and retired from the service. He was still very plain, but as it was known that he had been blown up, the loss of his eye as well as the scars on his face were all put down to the same accident, and he excited interest as a gallant and maimed officer. He married, and lived contented and happy to a good old age.Note: For a further extract, describing Midshipman Easy’s Three-Cornered Duel, see . . .
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| The valet Passepartout and his master Phineas Fogg depicted by L. Benett, Around the World in Eighty Days, first Fully Illustrated Edition, 1873. |
Just as the train was whirling through Sydenham, Passepartout
suddenly uttered a cry of despair.
‘What's the matter?’ asked Mr. Fogg.
‘Alas! In my hurry—I—I forgot—’
‘What?’
To turn off the gas in my room!’
‘Very well, young man,’ returned Mr. Fogg, coolly, ‘it will burn—
at your expense.’
On their return to London, Fogg is in despair, believing ‘He had lost the wager!’ . . .
Knowing that Englishmen governed by a fixed idea sometimes resort
to the desperate expedient of suicide, Passepartout kept a narrow watch
upon his master, though he carefully concealed the appearance of so doing.
First of all, the worthy fellow had gone up to his room, and had
extinguished the gas burner, which had been burning for eighty days.
He had found in the letter-box a bill from the gas company, and he
thought it more than time to put a stop to this expense, which he
had been doomed to bear.
The absurd banality of finicky household budgetary details, following the exotica of Fogg’s headlong globe-trotting jaunt, contrasts strikingly with the final plight of this eccentric specimen of ‘Anglais monomanes’ in mortal danger under ‘la pression d’une idée fixe’, which, as we can see, also substitutes the fixation of a new anxiety to conveniently displace the pain of defeat . . . thus demonstrating, in the terms of Freud’s own paradox, how ‘a psychic process developing anxiety may still be a wish-fulfilment . . .’
However – these three time-honoured ‘dream-books’ apart – for an application of Freud’s ‘classical’ interpretation of psycho-sexual neuroses, coloured by the wisdom of archetypes drawn from Greek mythology, we need look no further than Jane Eyre for the last word . . . a dream-book whose publication (1847) pre-dates the Freudian era by a decade.
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| Repressed passion . . . . the many faces of orphaned Jane Eyre in her formative years from childhood though her schooldays to adulthood make her the favourite heroine of Eng. Lit. doctors for literary psychoanalytical studies of ambivalent and self-denying emotional complexes. |
[Jane Eyre at its] core is the Oedipus situation, with Mr Rochester playing father-figure. The marriage of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester is foiled at the very altar by the impediment which prevents every little girl from marrying her father, namely that he is married already. (Such a tiresome impediment, mama — mad, of course, and dangerously incendiary.) Mrs Q. D. Leavis [literary critic], the author of that introduction which asserts Jane Eyre’s superiority to Dickens and George Eliot, records that ‘Mr Rochester has been the object of a good deal of derision’ and grants ‘Unfortunately, unlike Jane Austen, who was immune to the vulgarization of the Romantic movement represented by Byronism, the Brontës’ daydreams had clearly been formed on Byronic lines.’ (If Mrs Leavis’s syntax is to be taken seriously, she is stating that Jane Austen was not formed on Byronic lines, but it may be safer to guess she intends to speak of Jane Austen’s daydreams.) It is more to the point, however, that Charlotte Brontë’s daydreams had clearly been formed by the Oedipal stress. The little girl can escape the guilt of her erotic relation to her father if her father is castrated : before Jane Eyre can marry her father-figure, he is mutilated in the fire that destroys his house. He loses an arm and almost all his sight — an emphatic symbolic castration, betokened twice over, by the direct loss of a limb and by the blinding that is the symbol used in the Oedipus story itself. (Mr Rochester is phallicized and castrated yet again by being likened to a tree — whose blasting by lightning forecasts, according to Mrs Leavis, his mutilation.) . . . the fire which, by maiming him, has removed the psychological impediment to their marriage, has conveniently destroyed also the legal impediment, his wife.These words are from the excoriating Fifty Works of English Literature we could do without, which displays the unsheathed claws of Brigid Brophy’s feline wit to full advantage (this 1967 demolition job on English and American classics has contributions from BB and Michael Levey and Charles Osborne). I assume this passage is by BB as it seems characteristic of her insights but, please note, all fifty hatchet jobs have no byelines.
