6/3 "Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession," Malcolm Lowry, Keats and Negative Capability

1) About Malcolm Lowry

"No silk cushion youth for me."

Lowry's epitaph, which he wrote himself:

Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,
And died playing the ukulele.

Documentary

2) About "Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession"

 Lowry on the character of Sigbjorn Wilderness:

“Essentially a humble fellow, he has tried his hardest all his life to understand (though maybe still not hard enough) so that his room is full of Partisan Reviews, Kenyon Reviews, Minotaurs, Poetry mags, Horizons, even old Dials, of whose contents he is able to make out precisely nothing, save where an occasional contribution of his own, years and years ago, rings a faint bell in his mind, a bell that is growing even fainter, because to tell the truth he can no longer understand his own early work either.”

 How the story lives on in new ways...

3) Things to remember about "useful objects," which are usually:

• portable (smaller than a breadbox)
• inanimate
• tangible
• without explicit symbolic meaning

(with thanks to Michael Byers for the definition)

The "Significant Objects" project, and a story about a choirboy figurine.

How to make useful objects work in a story:

Write about an object that means something to a character.  Mention it briefly at first, nearly as an aside, then proceed with the primary conflict of your story.  Come to the object again, later, perhaps embedded in some sort of memory.  And in the end, when you're wrapping up the story, let that object take a final bow, and somehow, somehow, reveal its fullness of meaning to the character.

4) About "Negative Capability"

Keats' coining of the term "negative capability"--

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

 Beth Rushing, Dean at St. Mary's College in Maryland:

"...hope, and truth, and beauty [can be achieved] in the practice of negative capability, in listening patiently, having a certain level of comfort with uncertainty, and in recognizing that what appears to be given, is not necessarily so."

John Keats. 1795–1821

625. Ode on a Grecian Urn

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape	5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?	10
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave	15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!	20
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!	25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.	30
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,	35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.	40
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!	45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

5) Practicing Negative Capability

Strange comforts afforded by....

Jeremy Bentham?!

Info on Bentham, whom you can go visit. 0_o

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Jeremy Bentham: After Death, Make

of me the Auto-Icon

--Ashley Parsons

A friend, a physician, shall do it.

Father-in-law to my brother

and a close family friend

even unto death and beyond

shall our relationship last.

Physician, see me

Open up my innermost heart

the workings of my tired body

gain from the husk of me

what use you can.

Then render me to nothing.

Bone, the scaffolding of my flesh,

skeleton exposed and all that remains

of me – save the head.

My head, could it be mummified?

If you can. Shrink it, draw the skin

taut over dry bone. A vessel

of desiccated tissue, the brain within,

nestled like the infant Moses

knocking in the reeds – my skull the basket.

Take me forward, ancients, with your

arcane skill, upon the vast barge

of this place in time, pacing us down

the Nile, river’s flow becomes

the past, mummification,

preservation – stems the tide.

Save me a place on the barge.

Keep me a place in your time.

Yes, if you can, mummify my head.

Then clothe me in wool

and silk – not gaudy – useful.

My own clothes over matchstick bones,

And stuff all with straw.

Kindle me a shape. Breathe on it.

Fire me to semblance of myself. Straw man,

And put my mummified head o’er all.

Wearing my own hair and my hat.

My walking stick beside me.  

In a cabinet shall I reside, leave me

not to the cold and the earth.

House me here. My scarecrow

my self-image. Call it my Auto-Icon.

Renaming is power. Not my remains,

but Jeremy Bentham’s Auto-Icon.

In the cabinet shall my Auto-Icon go

forward, so shall I look forward,

and not reside in the Palace of Regret,

the past, focusing on my failures

and the botched projects and

clumsy courships, broken hearts,

unfulfilled dreamings. No, lead me not

into the past, I entreat you.

Take me forward. Place me there

facing outwards. Make some small

use of me, of my body, and preserve

some part of who I have been.

On Thursday, we'll be going to the British Library to get in some quiet writing time, and take in some "strange comforts" among the literary treasures there. Please bring your notebooks/laptops and drafts of your short story to work on. And do peruse the British Library's website and get a sense of what you'd like to see.

Highlights of the British Library