Tradition and Individual Talent
By T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot in this Essay presents his conception of tradition and the meaning of both poet and poetry and the relationship between the two concepts. He contends that although we do not refer to any particular tradition or to the tradition of whatever, we have the tendency to give a remark on one’s poetry as something traditional. What he is trying to say is that, such remark should not be given to refer to the works of the writers, living or dead. The point is, every nation, race, culture so to speak has its own creativity and own way of expression of their craft but on the one hand, they too have their own critical turn of mind.
Eliot points out that we have the tendency to insist upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else and out from this work, we tend to find his individuality as well as the man’s peculiar essence. So what we do is to enjoy the poet’s peculiarity from his predecessors especially his immediate predecessors. Furthermore, Eliot argues that we exert efforts to find, for our own pleasure and enjoyment, something that is out-of-the-way in a particular work. Whereas, if we only approach a particular poet without this prejudices and biases, we shall find not only what is “the best” out of his work but also what is considered as the "the most individual parts of his (the poet) work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously."
Eliot posits that, tradition should be discouraged if it only consists in following the ways of the predecessors in full obedience and adherence to its successes. It thus, defeats the purpose of individuality. Tradition according to Eliot is of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited. Thus if you want it, you must labor to obtain it. It requires, however, the historical sense which is indispensable to anyone who would aspire to continue to become a poet in his lifetime. Historical sense for this matter, involves a perception of both the pastness of the past but also of the essence of its presence and the presence per se. Thus he claims that this "historical sense" is not only a resemblance to traditional works, but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry.
With this notion, Eliot argues that the term "tradition" in itself contains peculiar quality, that is, special and multifaceted quality. It symbolizes a definite fusion of past and present and that’s what he means by tradition, a historical timelessness, that is. Where there is fusion of the past and the present, the essence of present temporality, stands also the essence of continuum between the poets of the past, the present, and the future, so to speak. A poet must embody his and other’s works to everybody while, simultaneously, expressing his contemporary environment.
The English tradition generally maintains the principle that art advances through change that is, a separation from tradition but in the same juncture also upholds the belief that literary advancements are recognized only when they conform to the tradition. And as maintained in this statement below, Eliot posits a poet’s significance rules over his appreciation of his connection to the dead poets, his ancestors.
“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. That means that his significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison. Among the dead, I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical criticism.”
Eliot posits that the necessity that the poet shall conform and cohere, is not one sided because when a new work of art is created, it simultaneously applies to all the works of art which preceded it. This means, further, that when a poet at the present introduces a new art, it changes the structure of this existing order, and causes a readjustment of the old to have room for the new. Thus, the addition of the new art alters the way in which the past is perceived and everything that is attached to it. In Eliot’s own words: "What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it." And with this notion, the poet of the present shall be judged by the standards and bearings of the past.,
“The present poet shall be judged, not amputated by the standards of the past, not to be judged to be as good as or better or worse than, the dead but a judgment , a comparison in which two things are measured by each order….” And “to conform merely for the work is not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore be not a work of art.”
What Eliot is trying to point out is that, it doesn't mean that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but that its fitting in is a test of its value. Accordingly, the dead writers are remote from the present writers because the present know so much more than they are because, in fact, the dead writers are that which the present writers know. Eliot maintains his position by saying that what is supposed to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or obtain the awareness of the past and that he should maintain to build up this consciousness all throughout his lifetime.
What happens when the present writers integrate the essence of the past writers is a picture of surrender of him as he is at the moment to something which is more important. That is to prove that the advancement of an artist is a constant selflessness, a “continual extinction of personality”. Since the poet engages in a "continual surrender of himself" to the vast order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of depersonalization.
“There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be aid to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.”
Eliot in the last paragraph compares the poet to a medium in a chemical reaction, labeling reactants as feelings, and emotions that are fused to create an artistic image that will capture and relay these same feelings and emotions. What ascribes greatness to a work of art is not the feelings and emotions present, but the nature of the artistic process by which they are produced. It is by far, the power of fusion that attributes greatness to an artwork.
Lastly, for a comment and by-word, Eliot never actually directly mentions the word talent once. What we can observe in his essay is that he seems so focused exclusively on the "tradition" facet of it. This implies that the "Individual Talent" mentioned in the essay is not what is typically considered to be talent, but instead, in his definition, it is the ability to connect with tradition and create something which has the merit to become a part of it.
From Work to Text
By Roland Barthes
This essay talks about Barthes’ contention on the inseparability of a literary work and its text. At the onset of the essay he actually acknowledges the fact that change has taken place in our formation of language as well as of the literary work where accordingly, it is with language itself that literary work owes its phenomenal existence. This particular change is clearly connected with the current development of linguistics, anthropology, Marxism and psychoanalysis. What is new and which affects the idea of the work comes not necessarily from the internal recasting of each of these disciplines, but rather from their encounter in relation to an object which traditionally is the province of none of them.
Barthes argues that what history, our history allows us today is merely to slide, to vary, to exceed, to repudiate. Just as the theory of Albert Einstein on special relativity demands that the relativity of the farness of reference be included in the object studied, so the combined action of Marxism, Freudianism and Structuralism demands, in literature, the relativization of the relations of writer, reader and observer (critic). Against the traditional notion of the work, there is now the requirement of a new object, obtained by the sliding or overturning of former categories. That object is the TEXT.
According to Barthes, to understand TEXT further as a fashionable term word in itself, its is imperative that like him, we should be reminded of the principal propositions at the intersection of which TEXT can be seen there STANDING. Moreover, the word proposition had to be understood more in a grammatical than in a logical sense because the following propositions are not argumentations but enunciations, touches, approaches that consent to remain metaphorical. The following then is Barthes’ proposition which concern method, genre, signs, plurality, filiations, reading and pleasure.
According to Barthes, The text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed. So for a proposition that concerns Method, thus TEXT accordingly is methodological field where the work is seen as a reality while text is the “real” one. The work is displayed, the text is demonstrated; while the work or the literary piece can bee seen in a bookshop, for the text, it shows a process of demonstration according to certain rules; the work can be concretely held in the hand while text is held in language. Furthermore, the text is not the decomposition of the work, it is the work that is the imaginary tail of the text; or again, the text is experienced only in an activity of production and that it cannot stop for its constitutive movement is that of cutting across particularly it can cur across the work or several works.
In the same way, the TEXT does not stop at good literature. It cannot be contained in a hierarchy, even in a simple division of genres. According to Barthes, what constitutes the TEXT is, on the contrary, its subversive force in respect of the old classifications. The Text, for Barthes, is that which goes to the limit of the rules of enunciation (rationality, readability, etc. A text is not even a rhetorical idea, resorted to for some “heroic effect: the TEXT tries to place itself very exactly behind the limit of the doxa. To make it clear, the text functions as a subversive paradoxical force.
TEXT can be approached, experienced, in reaction to sign. Signs are identified as having two levels of meaning which are the literal and concealed, and is best moderately symbolic. While the work itself function as the general sign, the text can be approached and experienced in relation to sign, but the text, like language is disinterred and has no closure. The work closes on a signified. There are two modes of signification which can be attributed to this signified either it si claimed to be evident and the work, is then the object of a literal science, of philology, or else it is considered to be secret , ultimate, something, to be sought out and the work then falls under the scope of hermeneutics, of an interpretation;
In other words as Barthes points out, work itself functions as a general sign and it is normal that it should represent an institutional category of the civilization of the Sign. Its field is that of the TEXT in the contrary practices the infinite deferment of the signified dilatory; its field is that of the signifier and the signifier must to be conceived of as the first stage of meaning, its material vestibule, but in complete opposition to this, as its deferred action.
The text is radically symbolic; a work conceived. Perceived, received, in its integrally symbolic nature is a text. Thus the text is respired to language; like language, it is structured but off-centered, without closure.
The text is plural. As to plurality, the text unlike the work is plural. It accomplishes the very plurality of its meaning, (an irreducible plural), rather than just have several meanings. The meanings do not coexist, but instead can be seen as passages and overcrossing that cannot be interpreted. The TEXT is composed of a web of signification and intertextuality that has no origin or destination. The reader is faced with several disconnected, half-identifiable incidents that come from codes which are known but are combined in a unique manner. Ultimately, the text cannot be repeated and exists only in its difference. Plurality is not simply to say that it lids several meanings but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning.
Furthermore, work is caught up in a process of filiations where it is identified by its relationship to its owner, the author while the text is not restricted by its relationship to an author. Literary science instructs the reader to respect the work and the author’s intentions, while the legal system imposes a direct connection of the author to his r her work. The text, on the other hand, is not restricted by its relationship to an author. There is no vital respect demanded by the TEXT because it functions as a network that can be broken and read with no consideration of the author. It does not necessarily mean that the author does not have relationship to the text but that he / she functions as a guest rather than an owner. This time, the author becomes a paper author where his life is no longer the origi9n contributing to his work”
Another proposition posed by Barthes states that the work is normally the object of consumption; no demagogy intended here is referring to the so-called consumer culture but it has to be recognized that today it is the ‘quality’ of the work and not the operation of the rereading itself which can differentiate between books: structurally there is no difference between cultured readings and casual readings in trains. In reading, the work is considered as a commodity wherein the reader consumes the work passively while the text escapes the trappings of consumption because of its relationship to play, activity, production, and practice. However, when one tries to consume the text in a traditional sense that it becomes unreadable and boring. As long as she the reader is able to produce the text, he / she will be satisfied.
The final approach to the TEXT is known as pleasure. Barthes points out that a reader can have pleasure in both reading and re-reading certain work but such pleasure is inextricably linked to consumption. The ability to reads the author ultimately means that the reader cannot rewrite the work but in contrast, the text is linked to pleasure without separation. The text is bound to jouissance (bliss or ecstasy) that it is to a pleasure without separation. Order of the signifier, the text participates in its own way in a social utopia; before History, the teach achieves, if not the transparence social relations, that at least of language relations: the TEXT is that space whereon language has a holdover any other, where languages circulate.
According to Barthes, the growing importance of interdisciplinary in literary and cultural analysis has changed our notion of language and the traditional notion of the literary work. The work has changed and a new object, the Text, has appeared. While Barthes does not want to limit the idea of the Text by providing an absolute definition, he posits that it is “that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in a position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder” (Barthes “From Work to Text,” 1475).
The Death of the Author
Roland Barthes
Barthes starts this essay with an implication that the traditional critical approach to literature raises a difficult problem: how can we perceive accurately what the writer intended? His answer is that we cannot.. When, in the passage, the character dotes over her perceived womanliness, Barthes challenges his own readers to determine who is speaking, and about what. "Is it Balzac the author professing 'literary' ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? … We can never know." Writing, "the destruction of every voice," defies adherence to a single interpretation or perspective. Barthes directly says that we shall never know the answers to these questions for a good reason that writing accordingly is the destruction of every voice, of every subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.
In this essay, he disapproves of the method of reading and criticism that is dependent on the author’s identity such as his viewpoints, political or religion, historical context, ethnicity, psychology or even his personal or biographical attributes, to condense and glean meaning from his work. It means that the experiences and biases of the author serve as a perfect "explanation" of the text. For Barthes, this method of reading may be apparently tidy and convenient but is actually sloppy and flawed: "To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."
But such act of criticism is not a new thing according to Barthes as “no doubt it has always been that way”, says Barthes referring to the kind of interpretation the reader makes in a certain work. Well, Barthes’s strong contention is that, readers must separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretive tyranny . This separation or disconnection of the literary work and its author occurs , the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.
Each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. In a well-known quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring that a "text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations," drawn from "innumerable centers of culture," rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator, "but in its destination," or its audience.
The removal of the author is not just a historical fact or an act of writing but it definitely transforms the modern text. The temporality is different. Unlike the tradition notion, Barthes greatly opposes that the author is sued to believe in as that it concessive of as the past of his own book. This contention is explained that no longer the focus of creative influence, the author is merely a "scriptoria" (a word Barthes uses expressly to disrupt the traditional continuity of power between the terms "author" and "authority").The author is thought of to nourish the book, meaning, he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it is in equal position and relationship to his work as a father to his child. Moreover, the latter is contrasted by Barthes with the contention that the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text. There is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now, with each re-reading, because the "origin" of meaning lies exclusively in "language itself" and its impressions on the reader. Having buried the author, the modern scriptor can thus no longer believe s according to the pathetic view of his predecessor, that this hand is too slow for his thought and passion.
Finally, in the last paragraph, Barthes challenges everyone to answer the question posed in the first paragraph of the essay and the answer would be “ no one”, no person says it: its source, its voice, is not the true place of these writing, which is reading. And gives a concluding line that says, “we know that to give writings its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth f other reader must be at the cost of the death of the death of the author.
On Grammatology
Jacques Derrida
This essay begins with a triple exergue (French), or epigraph (English) which serves as a heading or an inscription of what the essay is really all about. The exergue are as follow: 1) The one who will shine in the science of writing will shine like the sun; 2) these three ways of writing correspond almost exactly to three different stages according to which one can consider men gathered into action and these are: a) the depicting of objects is appropriate to a savage people; b) signs of words and of propositions, to a barbaric people and; c) the alphabet to civilized people and; 3) lastly, alphabet script in itself and for itself the most intelligent.
According to Derrida, this exergue intends to focus not only on ethnocentrism, nor on logocentricism, but in the most powerful ethnocentrism. To be able to further understand the essay, Derrida defines and describes each terminology as used in the essay. Ethnocentrism, he describes as everywhere and always had controlled the notion of writing. Logocentricism, he says, refers to the metaphysics of phonetic writing, which was fundamentally - for enigmatic reasons that are inaccessible to a simple historical relativism.
Derrida asserts that his intention for this essay is nothing but the most original and powerful ethnocentrism, where in the process of imposing itself upon the world, controlling in one and the same order. And this order had something to do with writing.
In this essay, the order that the author mentions points out the concept of writing in the human race where phoneticization of writing must hide or disguise its own history as it is formed. Another part of this order involves the history of metaphysics which accordingly in spite of all the diversity not only from different philosophers but also beyond, always assigned the foundation of truth in general to the logos such as: the history of truth, of the truth of truth, has always been, except for a metaphysical
This also means the concept of science or the scientificity of science. This has always been determined as logic- a concept that has always been a philosophical concept even if the practice of science has constantly challenged its imperialism of the logos for example by invoking non phonetic writing from the beginning.
Based on the essay, the science of grammatology simply categorizes the different ways by which writing corresponds to 3 different ways: the depicting of objects is appropriate to a savage people; signs of words and of propositions, to a barbaric people; the alphabet, to the civilized people. This means that science of grammatology has already existed a long time ago. This was intelligibly understood by people in their particular time. Derrida explained why the speech / writing hierarchy can and must be reversed. In other words, he argues for the redefining of the term writing that will allow him to assert that writing is actually a precondition for and prior to speech.
The Interpretations of Dreams
Sigmund Freud
Dream is such an unexplainable and complicated reality of man although psychology and psychoanalytic theories would try to explain the nature of it. In such manner, here, in this essay, Freud gives his notion about dreams and the interpretation of it.
In this essay he talks about dream especially at the very beginning how dreams could be very affecting to once emotion. He explains it further by showing the three (3) division of the brain where the id, ego and the superego are part of it. Each part of the brain actually plays a very significant role in the working of the human mind. These are described or attributed as the conscious, subconscious and the unconscious part of man’s brain. Now as Freud puts it, no matter how much one part of his brain suppresses his id, the ego would suppress his id by telling it that he should behave according to the convention of the society. Man’s pleasure is indeed sometimes suppressed.
So Freud based on the psychoanalytic theory tries to present his idea about Oedipus Complex, this unusual attachment of a boy or extreme love of a child to one of his / her parents. Freud here talks about how this complex came into existence. This actually comes from the story of a boy who was prophesied to bring about death to his own father and would marry his own mother. So as he left home to evade from that oracle, he met along the way King Laius, whom he didn't know he was his real father, then killed him in their fight. Then he came to the place of Thebes where the people at that time were disturbed by the trouble – causing Sphinx. Whoever gets to answer correctly the monster’s riddle, he shall be given the queen for his wife. Oedipus, being wise and cunning was indeed ale to answer the riddle and so he married Queen Jocasta, without knowing it was his real mother.
After years of marriage and bearing children with the queen, his mother, the plague came to disturb the people gain. The only way the plague would stop is to drive the king’s murderer out of the land. So this is where the tragedy begins. It was during this time that Oedipus blinded himself by plucking his eyes out for not finding out the truth.
The lesson of this according to Freud is that man being given the freedom is not actually bound to follow what is fated or prophesized about him. He can still survive if he wills. Accordingly “the deeply moved spectator should learn from the tragedy that contrasts his examples.
The story of Oedipus is the reaction of the two dreams, the dreamer’s father to be dead and sexual relation with the mother. So that when these dreams are dreamt by adults are accompanied by feelings of repulsion so that this legend will include horror and punishment.
Here in the story of Oedipus, we will see the repulsion of man, the act of the will to evade the unpleasant situations in life that are out of the convention of the society. As society dictates what a man should do and how he should behave. But in the case of Oedipus, after what he has gone through have realized he has done such despicable behavior the reason why he blinded himself. However, despite that act wasn’t an act of the will, but the unconscious part of the mind of a person lurks in him and stores data that probably trigger the unconscious mind to have hat dream which Oedipus had and eventually led him to kills his father and marry his own mother. It wasn’t deliberate but he had the part of himself that dictates him on whether he should do the act or not regardless of truth.
The Rise of English
by Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton in this essay suggests the interconnectedness of literature and ideology. Accordingly, they are not separated. However, when we look at the meaning of literature itself, it is described as an ideology itself. The “Rise of English” was because of the failure of religion.
Terry Eagleton’s essay on “The Rise of English” in the early 20th century posits that indeed its growth was due to the failure of religion itself. Religion is capable of operating at any social levels meaning from the elite intellectuals, to the middle-class and the liberal and theological intellectuals. Religion does not only address the need of the ordinary masses but also the elite. Religion is said to address doctrinal inflection among the elite and the intellectuals. It encompasses the different social classes during that time, from the pious peasant, the enlightened middle-class and the theological intellectual. In this sense, Eagleton was trying to point out the significance of the rise of English studies at that time because it served as no less than the channel by which literature and ideologies were being carried out. It was further pointed out that literature works not by particular concepts or doctrines but mores by images, symbols, ritualistic practices, and mythology and that while religion slowly was diminishing and starting to stop to provide social bonds and values a society needs to come together, English is constructed to carry ideologies on throughout time.
In this essay, Eagleton maintains that as religion progressively ceases to provide the social ‘cement’ or something that serves as the foundation in the society, affective values and basic mythologies by which a socially turbulent class society can be welded together. She asserts that ‘English is constructed as a subject to carry this ideological burden from the Victorian Period onwards but it took a long while before such growth was really achieved. Accordingly, English Literature rode to power on the back of wartime nationalism, but at the same time it also served as a moment of epiphany on the part of the English ruling class whose identity had been profoundly shaken.
What Is Literature?
Jean-Paul Sartre
There can be so many definitions of literature but as based on Jean Sartre’s definition, literature is something that is associated with writing. With that point, Sartre asks the question “why write?” for so many reasons, one write probably out of passion, others for artistic inclination and to some writing would mean, it is conquering. To conquer is to dominate and be above others. Writing basically allows exploration and escapade. It enables one to travel and explore the world and hi9s very ideas. Self – expression is one good reason why one writes.
This essay revolves around the existentialist notion that “man is the mean by which things are manifested.” Sartre, indicates that the individual discloses or reveals being. So by introducing relationships and order, and such imposition of unity on the vast differences amongst people in the world, he / she directs being. He further argues that the reader brings to life the literary object which can exist only in peculiar top which exists only in movement. It is the reader who completes what has been begun by the writer. Sartre views the relationship between reader and writer as sharing the collaboration of freedom. The writers like all other artists, aim to provide aesthetic satisfaction to his readers.
Meanwhile the center of the essay talks about the relationship between the writers and their readers and ends with a chapter on the role of the writer. According to Sartre, the writer, a free man addressing freemen, has only one subject and that is freedom. Of course, one does not write for slaves. It is actually a great way of releasing desire and a certain way of wanting freedom. To write will not only stop up to defending those who are enslaves through one’s pen because Sartre believes that in time, literature would trigger awakening and call for revolt and battle, thus each one can defend and fight for his own freedom. But still, whatever be one’s reason is to write, Sartre asserts that one will ask another question as to for whom does one write?
The Second Sex: MYTH AND REALITY
by Simone de Beauvoir
The myth about woman plays a considerable part in literature. However, its importance to life, its effect to individual’s customs and conducts is questioned. So according to the author, it is better to look into reality while scrutinizing the myths there are about woman.
The author mentioned that there are different kinds of myths. One of these is the myth of woman redirecting an unchangeable aspect of the human condition which the division of humanity into two classes, man and woman. It projects a reality that is directly experienced or is conceptualized which for her a static myth but indisputable. It is endowed with absolute truth.
Beauvoir contends that man is unable to penetrate her (woman) special experience of the quality of a woman’s erotic pleasure, the discomfort of menstruation and the pains of childbirth for these experiences are only but experienced by a woman. She further posits that there is mystery in both man and woman but man himself has established a universal truth based from his point of view. He has a misconception of reciprocity between man and woman.
According to Beauvoir, the mystery in woman is not on its subjective solitude of the self but it is on the level of communication; that the word has its true meaning and to assert that woman is mystery is to say, not that she is silent but that her language is not understood; she is there but hidden behind veils. That she exists beyond these uncertain appearances.
She posits that she would be embarrassed to decide what she is but not because the hidden truth is too vague to be discerned; it is ALL because in this domain there is no truth. An existent is nothing other than what he does.
She posed a challenge about many women who did nothing and eventually failed to make themselves anything. She said that for women to be asking what they should have become is simply a vain question.
Beauvoir asserts that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the 'immanence' to which they were previously resigned and reaching 'transcendence', a position in which one takes responsibility.
According to her, if man fails to discover that secret essence of femininity, it is SIMPLY because it does not exist. Her strong contention is that woman could not be objectively defined through this world and that her mystery conceals nothing but EMPTINESS.
Beauvoir argued that women have historically been considered deviant, abnormal. She said that even Mary Wollstonecraft considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire.
Beauvoir said that this attitude limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they were a deviation from the normal, and were always outsiders attempting to emulate "normality". She believed that for feminism to move forward, this assumption must be set aside.
Lastly, these are the concepts that Beauvoir posits in her essay:
The feminine mystery would be mystery in itself from the fact that it would be a Mystery for itself. It would be absolute Mystery.
Mystery is no more than a mirage that vanishes as we draw near to look at it.
the myth of a woman is a luxury but along with luxury there was utility. These dreams were irresistibly guided by interests.
the myth is one of those snares of false objectivity into which the man who depends on ready-made valuations rushes headlong.
to recognize in woman a human being is not to impoverish man’s experience; this would lose not of its diversity, its richness, or its intensity
According to Beauvoir, to discard the myths is not to destroy all dramatic RELATION BETWEEN THE SEXES. It is not to deny the significance authentically revealed to man through feminine reality. It is not to do away with poetry, love, adventure, happiness or dreaming. IT IS SIMPLY TO ASK THAT BEHAVIOR, SENTIMENT, PASSION BE FOUNDED UPON TRUTH, that truth about men which according to her, the men of today show a certain duplicity of attitude which is painfully lacerating to women.
They are willing on the whole to accept woman as a fellow being; BUT they still require her to remain as the inessential.
For her, these two destinies are incompatible. In this paragraph, Beauvoir compares man and woman in terms of attitude towards destiny and life itself. For woman, destinies are incompatible. With man, there is no break between public and private life whereas woman’s independent successes are in contradiction with her femininity since the true woman is required to make herself object, to be the other.
The second to the last paragraph is de Beauvoir's presentation of the feminine body: that is should be flesh, but with discretion and so fort and so on (p.189-190)
The last paragraph concludes the essay in a subtle but emphatic way about how women should regain “her place in humanity”. To quote” then she will be a full human being “ when” to quote a letter of Rimbaud, “the infinite bondage of woman is broken, when she will live in and for herself, man – hitherto detestable - HAVING LET HER GO FREE.”
Compulsory Heterosexulaity and Lesbian Existence
Adrienne Rich
At the onset of the essay Rich shared the conception of “compulsory heterosexuality” and the context, meaning, the place, the time and milieu in which people nowadays are living. He argues that heterosexuality is a violent political institution making way for the "male right of physical, economical, and emotional access" to women. She challenges women to put their focus towards other women rather than men, and shows lesbianism as an extension of feminism. Rich challenges the notion of women's dependence on men as social and economic supports, as well as for adult sexuality and psychological completion. She calls for what she describes as a greater understanding of lesbian experience, and believes all these will eventually be felt and explained through experiencing the "erotic" in female terms.
Rich claims that women may not have a preference toward heterosexuality, but may find it imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by society. Society has historically described lesbians as deviant. Rich claims that the moment women perceives lesbian existence as more than mere sexuality, it is more likely that more forms of "primary intensity" between and among women will be embraced.
Rich argues that part of the lesbian experience is an act of resistance to patriarchal role and the male right to women. She writes that lesbians have been deprived of continuity of their personal and political history, and that when included in history, they have been simply the female versions of male homosexuals, with no individuality. Rich asserts that to treat the lesbian experience as a version of male homosexuality is to discard it, denying the female experience and the realities it brings, falsifying lesbian history.
Rich holds that compulsory heterosexuality denies women of their own sexuality and comfortability in exploring their bodies and those of others. That serves to imply that only a man can sexually satisfy a woman (by delivering a vaginal orgasm), and hence that serves to prevent women from having relationships with other women.
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
by Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist and short story writer who contends that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is so blatantly racist that it should not be considered art. He maintains that Conrad dehumanized Africans and portrays the Congo as an uncivilized place in contrast to his civilized England. Achebe sees little hope for improved attitudes as long as Conrad’s novel remains prescribed reading in literature curses, and the media continues to marginalize African culture.
Now, Achebe looks at how Conrad created the image of Africans. Conrad mentioned that the most interesting and revealing passages in Heart of Darkness are, about people. These people are actually the Africans; he belongs to this kinship that he calls ugly and made horrid faces. Here, the Africans were described poorly and very embarrassingly as if humiliating or belittling his own kind.
Another point that Achebe has given attention to in his essay is on Marlow’s Attitude which accordingly reflects Conrad’s attitude. Achebe points out that Conrad, in his story, has a narrator behind a narrator whose primary narrator is Marlow but his story was just also narrated by another narrator, the shadowy person. According to Achebe, Marlow enjoys the confidence of Conrad which feeling was obviously reinforced by the very close similarities between their careers. Evidently, the character of Marlow played as a witness of truth and one who kept advanced and humane views.
The general point that Achebe is driving out is that Conrad is a racist. And that his racism dehumanizes Africans but that at the end of his essay, Achebe is optimistic about “change” to come. No matter how Africans were looked down and being dehumanized by Conrad, time will come that Western culture will also look at the accomplishments of an African man. That time has actually come indeed.
On National Culture
By Frantz Fanon
In this essay, Fanon straightforwardly contends that colonial domination very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a cultured people and this cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women. He posits that in the colonial situation, dynamism is fairly quickly replaced by the force of the colonizing power. He further implies that the area of culture and national identity have been marked off by fences and signposts which suggests that once a country is colonized, it absorbs the colonizer’s power and culture thus making the latter’s own culture vanished, if not replaced by the colonizer’s culture.
He further contends that certainly after centuries of colonization a nation will suffer from emaciation of the stock of natural culture. It becomes, as he maintains, a set of automatic habits, like some traditions of dress, and a few broken-down institutions. If this happens, what can be seen is a very stagnant way of life, if not, unmoving culture. Growth among the remnants of this culture is affected. There is no real creativity and no overflowing of life. What we will actually see is both extremes. Inhibition of culture is not different from poverty of the people and national oppression. According to him, after a century of colonial domination, we find a culture which is rigid in the extreme, or the dregs of culture. This implies that after centuries of colonization, a nation’s original culture may not be totally vanished but somehow, is likened to sediments that are retrieved after years of colonization as the culture is already combined and mixed up with the colonizers’ cultures.
Fanon posits the importance of culture in man’s growth and freedom as he said that the withering away of the reality of the nation and the death pangs of the national culture are linked to each other in mutual dependence. This is where his contentions are grounded upon as he maintains that the reason why it is of capital importance to follow the evolution of these relations during a struggle or national freedom.
According to Fanon, the nation which is colonized faces struggles as exploitations aggravates and poverty cause them to drive And resort to revolution. These movements in a colonized nation which were taboos come to existence. The rise of national consciousness come to life thus encourages the masses to revolt against colonialism. Along with it rise the intelligentsias (the intellectuals) who at the beginning or during the period of repressions, belong to consuming public and, later became producers. He says that literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style but later on novels, shorts stories and essays are attempted. Themes in literature were altered, in fact, as he puts it; we find it less and less of bitter and hopeless recrimination as well as of that violent, resounding and florid writing which in a way serves to reassure the occupying power.
Literary works awaken the people’s national consciousness as these contain works that talk about one’s culture, characteristics, ideals, and not to forget the oral tradition, stories, epics, and songs of the people which were filed away are now beginning to change. However, that situation can only be transitory. This transition of literary works helps the nation progresses in its national consciousness. It modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. In reality, it only functions as a springboard to the real revolution. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go further than his cry for protest. The lament first makes the indictment; and then it makes an appeal
He also mentions about the literary allusion as being widely used by then where the old formula “this all happened long ago” is substituted with that of “ what are we going to speak of what happened somewhere else, but it might well happened here today, and it might happen tomorrow.
Fanon adds that it is only from that moment of literary shift that we can speak of a national literature. Here there is the level of literary creation, the taking up and clarification of themes which are typically nationalist. This may be properly called a literature of combat in the sense that it calls on the people to stand and fight for their existence as a nation and molds the national consciousness, giving it the creativity it needs, the forms and contours and flinging open before it new and boundless perspectives; as well as assumes responsibility. It is indeed a literature of combat because it is the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space. There is that experience of new rhythm of life and forgetting of the muscular tensions and develops the imagination. So from literature, creativity flows to other aspects of humanity even in its crafts. The repercussion of the rising revolution indeed not only influenced literature but the entire nation, its national culture and people.
Fanon is careful to point out that these attempts at recovering national continuity throughout history are often contrived and ultimately self-defeating. He explains that "national identity" only carries meaning insofar as it reflects the combined revolutionary efforts of an oppressed people aiming at collective liberation. He explains that national consciousness is not nationalism but it is the only thing that will give a nation an international dimension. It is said that national culture is not folklore, not an abstract populism that believes it can discover the people's true nature. It is not made up of the inert dregs of gratuitous actions, that is to say actions which are less and less attached to the ever-present reality of the people. A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.
Lastly, in the last paragraph, fanon emphasized the urgency to build up his nation as a challenge to man, being known for his acts. This building up of a nation is a necessity accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalizing values. Then he concludes that it is national liberation which lead s nation to play its part on the stage of history. It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows. National consciousness then preserves a culture and in the same way when culture sustains national consciousness. In short, they are inseparable. They are intertwined and must go together always. Fanon ends his essay which goes; this two-fold emerging is ultimately only the source of all culture.
Aspects of Literary Stylistics: Reality, Language, the Individual
Anne Cluysenaar
This essay talks about aspects of literary stylistics which focuses on reality, language and the individual. Anne Cluysenaar discusses in this essay that before going through the ordeal of discussing in details the study of language, it is very wise to ask whether language is worth of much attention. The answer is yes. In the previous essays read, literature and history should be intertwined or should go together. In the way, language should go with literature and vice versa. In the very first place, literature uses language in the expression of man’s ideas, thoughts emotion and feelings. In the same way, language enhances literature so that literature becomes more appealing and attractive to readers. It is in this point of view that Cluysenaar brings up stylistics as far as language is concerned so as to give justice to the use of language in literature and employing language in enjoying the beauty of literature. In this essay, Anne Cluysenaar mentions three aspects, reality, language and individuality. What do these aspects have to do with stylistics then?
Reality, as Anne Cluysenaar points out, speaks of that which is hidden, or that is revealed by language – thus making and assumption and where it is not only independent of our perception of it but also independently observable. In other words, it is that which we can associate with words, so that in effect we can check the degree of accuracy with which language relates to it, thus we match our perceptions or our pictures with the real thing. Language is in a fundamental sense creative and which creativity is that kind to which both the writer and the reader are sensitive, and the merely the “creation” of a world. The writer must therefore, use the conventions of his own language, the Blue guitar being, that is referring to the language.
Lastly, the individuality as mentioned by Cluysenaar has something to do with the uniqueness of the writer himself. The problem that faces the creative writer is what is commonly facing all other writers. It means that we have to use our “blue guitar”, our language, to express things exactly as they are and not copy others language. Otherwise, we become not our very selves but others.
ORALITY AND LITERACY: THE TECHNOLOGIZING OF THE WORLD
Walter Ong
The essay, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World, a written by Walter Ong talks about the shift in verbal art from orality to literacy which involves lyric, narrative, descriptive, discourse, oratory to television, philosophical, scientific works, historiography ad biography and many more. And among these genres that is most studied according to the author, in terms of orality – literacy shift is narrative.
Ong posits that narrative is everywhere a major genre of verbal art, which is present from oral cultures into high literacy and electronic information processing. In a sense narrative is paramount among all vernal art forms because of the way it underlies so maybe other forms often even the most abstract and this is to say that knowledge and discourse come out of human experience and that the elemental way to process out verbally out of the said experience is to give an account of it more or less as it really comes into existence as imbedded in the flow of time.
Although narrative is found in all cultures, it is in certain ways more widely functional in primary oral cultures than in others. As Havelock pointed out in 1978, “Knowledge cannot be managed in elaborate, more or less scientifically abstract categories.
Generally, oral cultures generate quite substantial narrative or series of narratives such as the Trojan was of the Greek Myth because of their sixe and complexity scenes and actions, narratives of this sort are often the roomiest repositories of an oral culture’s fore.
Narrative itself has a history, says Ong and it has to do with temporal sequence of events that is why in all kinds of narratives there is a certain story line. In effect, the situation at the end is subsequent to what it was at the beginning, nevertheless memory, as it guides the oral poet, often has little to do with strict linear presentation of events in temporal sequence.
