So .. here is an essay i wrote once, on uni experience. It morphs a discussion topic into a reflection on the common experience, subverting the subversion. I was a little older than the students in the course, having returned to a Dip Ed, and a bit of English literature, after a few years working in science. It seems rather bleak now, and i long to think one can attain the generous note at the end. But in sharing it at the time, others resonated with the stark note of protest; in many places the ideological battle really is this hard line and explicit; a reverse fundamentalism, intellectually complex enough to convey authority, yet quite militant and partisan, is at work in these cultures. My Indian tutor of English Literature had enough grace to acknowledge the line of thought; maybe had enough cultural distance to see what I meant; and to initiate a group discussion of underlying ideas. Maybe it can still provoke that discussion somewhere.
Incidentally, a sonnet was also needed for that task. Its included at the end.
PART B
A piece "which clearly relate(s) to the content of the course either in form or content" addressing "thematic issues raised in the course such as constructions of gender, power relations, revenge ... etc" or " ... various poetic genres, narrative etc." (1) (italics added)
ABSTRACT
Instead of viewing the course as a window upon seventeenth century literary production, this article is concerned with some of the peculiar attributes of the window itself, the common views and distortions which it impresses upon those who crowd around it. There is a deliberate shift of focus away from the nominal literary and critical content of the course, and a refocussing upon the reception and reaction of this material in the minds and hearts of those receiving it - the student. Just as Hamlet instructed the Players performing the Mousetrap to hold a "mirror up to nature", so this fragment of work presumes "to show the very age and body of the time his own form and pressure" (2). The mandate to make connections with the thematic concerns of the course is applied at the point of delivery; the "wider literary historical and theoretical work of the course" (3) is considered in terms of the course's function as part of the undergraduate experience. Thus this piece is largely a critique of the concepts and ideologies which begin to lodge in the minds of students, almost by default, within the contemporary academic environment, as exemplified by this initial contact with a university course in literature. If it is deemed necessary to justify the writing of a piece which may seem to lie outside the terms of the question, then it is submitted that the question is amenable to an interpretation of this type, and that the outline of this piece is strictly in keeping with the written requirements. It is only one more shift of critical viewpoint that generates this perspective.
Simultaneous to the consideration of genre within seventeenth century literature, the student of such matters is also confronted at another level with the contemporary genre of academic discourse. While historical contexts to literature are being discussed, the prevailing atmosphere of the current intellectual environment begins to impress itself upon receptive minds. The attempt to reconstruct power relations in English society of four hundred years ago, for example, is itself shaped by modern ideology which actively confers status and prestiege upon certain viewpoints and modes of thought. The multiplicity of critical approaches which the course begins to introduce as being representative of the diversity of contemporary criticism, masks a uniformity of experience in the mind of the student. Let us consider what glowing letters may constitute the very words "Literature ... Poetry ... Philosophy" in the minds of the budding scholar, and what hallowed associations may cling to the very concept of "University". It is against this background; and I suggest that it is ubiquitous in the mass of incoming students, that the inroads of the dominant philosophies are best read, and the fate of "Th'expectancy and rose of the fair state" (4) is seen. In brief, we may summarise some of the common strands of these philosophies: God is dead or missing, the Muse is dead, the prosaic stands over the poetic, argument substitutes for perception of truth, criticism is exalted to a primary position (this is a shock to the uninitiated), conventional morality is somewhat ridiculous, feminism is lauded in every corner, and sexual interpretation becomes one of the few standards and benchmarks that stand. In broad and sweeping terms, these are the "theoretical underpinnings", the working paradigm, which accompany the inchoate study of literature. These elements are first encountered as an impression of what is already established or presupposed in the current order of things, rather than as matters of explicit debate. They break across the untutored consciousness like waters rising over dry ground; the turning tide "eats not the flats with more impiteous haste" (5) than these theses are recognised and replicated as dominant principles. They constitute a basic set of philosophical assumptions which are intuitively appreciated to be the "approved" formulation and perspective; although some sense an omission, a betrayal, a feeling of "noble and most sovereign reason/Like sweet bells jangled/Out of time and harsh" (6).
(A brief qualification is needed at this point: the validity of literary criticism, feminism, and sexual readings are not disputed. It is only, as Coleridge lamented, that "what suits the part now infects the whole/and now is almost grown the habit of my soul" (7). I am concerned to describe by what means partial truths are pushed out of proportion until they infect the whole, and what habits of soul follow.)
The first of these conditions - God is dead or absent - is the generator of the others. A dubious, absent or dead First Cause, throws everything else into either rebellion, darkness or chaos, and promotes otherwise worthy causes to the status of idols. Failure to acknowledge and reverence the Uncreated source of power, the Creator of relationships, corrupts all other power relations; in a multitude of ways, things will fail to work if the Ground of reality is ignored. It would need a Milton to chronicle all the subsequent losses and corruptions that follow from this original coup, and the relating would produce another epic. It may be put baldly, that a realm of spiritual darkness enshrouds an academic subculture that has specialised in "words, words, words" (8) and does not acknowledge the Word of God as such. This darkness works as an unseen agency that overshadows much of the corporate life of the campus; I sketch it's effects below, and here only mention in passing the flat dullness seen in so many eyes, and the unnatural heat that seeps into addictive, vindictive argument. I remember, as a seventeen year old, newly walking the grounds of the university, and sensing from the very pit of my stomach a corruption in the atmosphere of the place, a sickening and violent tearing down and destruction of boundaries. I intuitively knew that the sexuality and morality of the student body were implicated. That moment, and similar sensations in those initial weeks, soon passed into the background, but I have since come to perceive that the very geography of the area is imbued with a grimy and heavy spiritual atmosphere, is even overshadowed by "black Clouds/ with Heav'n's Artillery fraught" (9). If we allow Donne to be heard without obscuring his meaning with our own preconceptions, we find him speaking into this situation: "our old subtle foe so tempteth me/That not one hour can I myself sustain;/Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art" (10). The "default" paradigm does not admit such things as satanic foes to attain to the status of simple reality - the approved technique is to classify and dissect any literary specimens, as though personally never "brusht with the hiss of rustling wings" (11); we are not exempted from his "subtle art" for being so blinded.
Thus I argue that "This realm dismantled was/Of Jove himself; and now reigns here/A very, very - peacock" (12) and that the glowing letters of promise slowly fade for many. If this is our predicament, and the reigning ideologies are militant against spiritual truth (the doctrines of sin and salvation certainly do not fare well in this environment), then we may proceed to examine some of the further consequences of this state of affairs. The term "ideology" has been used so far in a non-technical sense to refer to a general tenor of thought, rather than the details of any specific system. This loose usage is in keeping with the reflective intention to "show the very age and body of the time his own form and pressure" - a more appropriate term is perhaps the "spirit of the age", as this more readily suggests the interdependence of theoretical ideology, social praxis and unseen spiritual powers. I propose that the spirit of the age takes two predominate forms - both of which have already been touched upon - which exert pressure upon a realm dismantled of Jove. The first of these is sterile intellectualism, the second is sexual transgression.
These two phenomena walk, if I may put it so, hand in hand. When the well springs of inspiration are blocked, and the love of intellectual Truth and Beauty is obscured, then Eros may attain a godlike role in the scheme of things. The mind that is adjusting to an environment that does little to nurture and steady the hearts intuitions, but fosters a purely cerebral development (this fault being particularly troublesome in the "humanities") , is doubly prone to see romantic love as supplying the meaning to life. In a terrain where the "Heav'nly Muse" (13) is not invited to brood over the workings of the mind and so impart life and light , then sexual desire may appear as the brightest flower in a lacklustre field. The bodily writhings upon the South Lawns strike me as casualties on a central battlefield: their prone figures giving mute testimony of the forces arrayed against them. The sight of amorous couples availing themselves of green grass and sunshine may seem to need no further explanation, but I read the scene with the same ambiguity as Fortinbras surveying the carnage in the royal court: "Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss" (14). I cannot help but be aware that this love has a desperate subtext: "And if I press ever deeper into the arms that embrace me, perhaps a miracle may happen." The young man who wrote that also spoke of the collective disillusionment that had first brought him to this point, the betrayal of hope: "we were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces .... the first explosion burst in our hearts". The military metaphors capture something of the violence encountered in the unseen terrain of the heart and mind, the shocks and numbing blows, as the spirit of the age asserts it's muscle. I was forcibly impressed with these and similar quotations when I was first an undergraduate. They were resonant with my own experience and were instrumental in persuading me that we are involved in an actual, if invisible, warfare; for although the quotations dovetail neatly enough into this analysis, they are in fact taken from
All Quiet on the Western Front. (15) The psychological experiences of that young soldier bore sufficient parallel with my own that I was more readily persuaded of the doctrine that tells of a warfare against immaterial opponents, against "the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places".(16)
There are casualties in war, and an observer who recognises the contours of this battle, must wince at the losses that are silently inflicted upon those "who, even if they may have escaped it's shells, were destroyed by the war" (17). I propose that a playwright attempting to create a universal work that expressed these dynamics, that held a mirror up to the common experience, would find that the individual stories could be fitted, at least in part, into the genre of tragedy. If we look for the figure of the Revenger to complete the parallel, let us take Milton seriously when he tells of the fallen Lucifer being "inflam'd with rage .. To wreak on innocent frail man his loss" (18), and his attempt ("with thoughts inflamed of highest design" (19) to strike back at God by marring His creaturely image.
A further qualification may be needed at this point; I do not see the failings of individuals and institutions, in themselves, as working a deliberate plot of destruction; it is only when they are fitted into a spiritual context that "this/ Like to a murdering piece, in many places/ Gives me superfluous death". (20)
I conclude with a personal glimpse of my own story, a few notes jotted over the years, in which I first reflected on how the "form and content of the course" of my own studies, was linked with the "form and pressure" of the "very age and body of the time". The contention I have been arguing is that the explicit "thematic concerns" of a course such as
Reading Writing are conditioned by the spiritual environment of the day, and that "the wider literary and theoretical work" of such a course of literature includes the propagation and replication, albeit unwittingly, of a mindset peculiar to that environment. The relationship between these factors is the subject of the following notes:
There are several blindnesses inculcated by the course, apart from the specialisation of subject matter. The failure to criticise .... their effect on us. To see their broader shape in faculty politics; middle aged academics ... teaching a mass of young undergraduates. ("treading water in an eternally changing river of youth" (21)
Belief or criticism as the final authority: to switch from one to the other is well described as conversion.
I thought about that ground, where the arts faculty stands ..... I sensed the flavour of the place, felt it's faults, it's limitations in knowing .. living religion.
Literature. Poetry. Religion. I was drawn to these things by the promise and the life that seemed to go with them. Certainly much of it seemed to be systematically missing the point but ..... it was here, by luck or grace, that I often turned.
Real belief gives meaning, ... deep purpose, and this prevents reasoning powers being bruised... Surrogate beliefs trying to fill the void, or becoming an obsession, lead to irritable, unbalanced reasoning. The initial image or semblance of salvation and freedom that the belief (ideology) may bring, depending on it's correctness when it's place, is swamped as the belief becomes an idol, and the more the part is mistaken for the whole, the greater the burden and entanglement. (Hence dominant secular ideologies - feminism, Marxism (until recently) - locate an oppressor - patriachy, capitalism - and make them the primary source of society's problems. The partial truth of this must inevitably be distorted out of it's real proportions if the spiritual backdrop of rebellion and redemption is ignored; the ideology gives a faulty worldview if it's tenets are idolised.) 1/90
"This has become apparent to me recently, a correct way to look back over the years. For it has not all been cumulative; a steady growth in spirituality and corresponding self image. No. The journals I burnt : I am sure that they contained subtle and reflective self expression. The problem there is the fragmentation of the life at the time. Wisdom gleaned and words honed on a page were almost the brightest thread in a life which stumbled, and so they must misrepresent the time .
"one dimensional rational thought gives way to poetic and philosophical reflections. Requires the prophetic edge, the song of life."
"I feel God awaken, kindle a flame in me. He drew me - I felt His hand upon me - to pray in a lunch hour. Kneeling, surrendered, a series of reflections are poured into me.
... leave after an hour , knowing God has been there ... seeds emplanted, excitement running in me, vision, purpose." 6/93
He who finds me (wisdom), finds life, and obtains favour from the LORD.
12/93 (Proverbs)
I meditate on a map of the uni; it is a meditation in the spirit - I am shown the nature of the place - I can map in all the various departments and fields of knowledge. Can trace all the paths I have taken here. Any one of these sciences could still interest me, but I cannot desire the gleaning of technical wisdom as a primary ambition. Not now. It is time to build into the lives of others. I know the ways I am being directed into.
God says to me, "I am intimately interested in your thoughts" as I cross the concrete lawns at midnight. It is a beautiful way of saying I love you.
I meditate on a photograph of the university when there was a lake.
Somehow the grandeur of the stonework intimidates me, who stumbled and was sidelined at that place.
But I keep there, until I feel the goodness of the meditation, see it filled with goodness and laughter and study.
And then my focus changes, and reflected in the A-frame notice-board of the wind tunnel, I see a cross-beam; the foundation stone of the university. I saw something similar the night of the college re-union; the stone cross on Newman chapel representing the undergirding goodness and strength of the place, which I had forgotten - the benevolent atmosphere and original foundations.
--0 --
And that sonnet, that says the same thing, in another way.
I love more the short spring and autumn days,
When the sky vault's trembling fragile beauty,
Rests a gentle blessing, above the ways
And paths of learning, so lending duty
This ennobled richness, as flowing time
River threads green lands thick with their fruited
Branches lifted sunward in favoured clime:
Fields of knowledge where fair youth be tutored.
The very spaces of detailed grounds are
Felt as icons of layered thought where fine
Precept is added on precept and star
Rises early, gleaming as night poured wine.
Poetry hangs in air of such seasons;
Harvested not by realm of dry reasons.
( I didn't mean to protest the mode and mood of discursive analysis per se - i'd studied a lot of science after all - but something of a former or possible nobility in the university seemed blasted, shot through, laced with darker things, against a sense of what could be recovered, restored.)
