Lyrical Prose Research Articles

On Autobiographical Filmmaking

Jutta Brückner's autobiographical essay traces her own development from early attempts to write the text of her "female subjectivity" in the language of prose to her discovery of how much more suited the medium of film was for establishing an immediate relationship to her material. Arguing that autobiography is a desire, not an accomplishment, she locates the beginning of that desire in the mother, whose images have to be reconstructed in order to free the self. The dialectic of history and biography, loss of language and loss of body, is played out in the struggle between mother and daughter in the films of the body-less author. Losses that cannot be recovered via the written word can be shown in the images of film. In trying to locate the place that women can actually occupy in the cultural scripting of history and identity, Brückner traces two lines of autobiographic approach: a semiotic one in which the daughter separates from the body of the mother and a symbolic one that concentrates on the language and culture defining the autobiographical line of the father. (PH)

Finding the Way: Chuang Hua's Crossings and Chinese Literary Tradition

One evening she visited Dyadya and found in his study a magazine sent from China. On the first page was a poorly reproduced photograph of a farmer's house built up of mud and rushes and roofed in tile standing in the middle of a neatly tilled field. A tree clung by the wall of the house, a line of mountains beyond the fields. With a shock she recognized the landscape, could smell the tilled soil, felt the embrace of the house, climbed the mountains. Unguarded, a seizure of loss struck her. For an instant she could not breathe.... (Chuang Hua 124) The literary style of Crossings like Dyadya's magazine: it transports us China. As Amy Ling observes in foreword the novel, Chuang Hua's fragmented narrative is a collage of dream, nightmare, autobiography, and fantasy. Its prose often elegantly spare, its punctuation and syntax often unconventional. Quotation marks may be omitted; fragments and run-on sentences abound, and characters are referred only by pronoun. Spatial and temporal settings are unspecified, and chronological leaps may occur, even within a single paragraph (1-2). Crossings, Ling argues, America's first modernist (2). Ling suggests that the formal fragmentation of the novel mirrors the fragmentation of Fourth Jane's anguished and rootless existence, an existence redeemed by an coherence of and Jane's acknowledgment of the small but crucial proofs of love, exemplified in the simple tasks of daily -mundane memories of good times spent with Dyadya, and continual engagement in the arts of suitcase-packing, travelling, and cooking (Between Worlds 110). But I want push Ling's suggestions further, investigate whether Chuang Hua's fragmented images are ever meant achieve any coherence, or whether Fourth Jane's remembering, packing, travelling and cooking might be part of a distinctly Chinese tradition and spirituality which Fourth Jane and family, in departing China, have not completely abandoned. Crossings, in a strangely silent and poignant way, full of China. It not only speaks of Asian American dislocation or modernist fragmentation but also whispers of a Chinese literary and philosophical heritage North American readers may initially fail discern. The lyrical prose style of Crossings, its oddly laconic syntactical forms, its parallelisms and juxtaposed images, its Taoist balances of natural progression and regression, of life and death, and its teleological, yet circular disjointed narrative structure - all are characteristics reminiscent of Chinese traditions which sustain Fourth Jane, and which were begun approximately three thousand years before American modernism. I would like examine some of the implications of looking at Crossings exclusively as a modernist text. If Chuang Hua adhering the tenets of modernism as proposed by Euro-American initiators like Flaubert, Eliot, or Pound, must we then regard Crossings as a strictly formalist work? As modernist art frequently claims, does it transcend real - that largely pessimistic realm of meaningless-ness and fragmentation in which the Chinese-American emigre lives? Must it be structured so that a certain artistic coherence or unity, as well as a universally shared (Western?) mythical consciousness prevails over paradox or disunity? Crossings certainly demonstrates the type of disinterested and dispassionate detachment with which the modernists wrote, that quality which T. S. Eliot would have termed the objective correlative. We must constantly remind ourselves of the tremendous emotional pain that Fourth Jane experiences, a pain we seldom glimpse in its rawness, but which takes breath away when, unguarded, a seizure of loss struck her (124). Jane's dashing to the door, so happy be alive, simply greet a complete stranger she met earlier at a Paris bus stop seems, again, suggest isolation and loneliness. Is Chuang Hua's work, then, primarily a formalist commentary on this Asian American sense of displacement in America? …

A Way of Seeing

Left on the bookshelves to collect dust on their yellowing pages, the literary works of political activists are often forgotten to history. Rarely are they taken seriously, but rather, are seen as quaint relics of the author's past. We have done ourselves, as well as these individuals, a great disservice. For writers of the African diaspora in particular, literary work is often the form in which political ideas and analyses appear first. These writers have often, in the words of St. Clair Drake, transmuted sociological data into lyrical prose and turned controlled observations and more casual impressions into convincing generalization and perceptive predictions (Johnson, 1941). We must learn, as have these writers, to understand ourselves and our history through an appreciation of the ordinary. We must see in everyday life the manifestations not simply of exploitation, but of the struggle for authenticity among ordinary men and women. The culture of the masses of people can tell us much about historical events if we learn to see clearly that which surrounds us daily. This article takes a closer look at the literary works of C.L.R. James as the first expression of the sensitive social observation that forms the basis for much of his political and historical analysis. His early work must be seen as instruction in the use of the method that James employs to analyze history. He gives us a real sense of how ordinary people make extraordinary history. The social sciences have not been able to present us with an adequate picture of everyday life and popular culture. They fall

Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems ed. by Eugene England and Dennis Clark

74 Western American Literature The Harvest: Short Stories by Tomás Rivera. By Tomás Rivera. Edited by Julián Olivares. (Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 1989. 135 pages, $8.50.) This bilingual edition of Tomás Rivera’s complete short stories, edited by Julián Olivares, is a welcome addition to the increasing number of available creative works by Mexican-American authors. Well-known in the field for his popular novel, ... y no se lo tragó la tierra/. . . and. the earth did not part (1971), which examines the experiences of migrant Chicano farmworkers as seen through the consciousness of a young boy, Rivera possessesthat rare ability in writers to convert everyday episodes in the lives of ordinary people into small masterpieces of sparse yet often lyrical prose. The Harvest: Short Stories by Tomás Rivera. By Tomá Rivera. Edited by and “Eva and Daniel,” were originally intended as part of ... y no se lo tragó la tierra. The editor explains that the former was excluded because the repre­ sentation of the protagonist “did not conform to the romanticized portrayal of the pachuco as the rebellious Chicano hero that was appearing in this forma­ tive period of Chicano literature” (75). As a result of this somewhat question­ able editorial decision, “Pete Fonseca” was later published in several popular anthologies and became one of Rivera’s best known short stories. While it is true that Pete Fonseca is an unsavory rogue, he is a memorable creation whose evil influence, temporarily cloaked in good will, draws everyone into his net of deceit so that the final betrayal of his unsuspecting bride seems all the more heinous. The other excluded story, “Eva and Daniel,” told in the same narrative style as an event which has become part of the collective memory of the community, is less successful but characteristically Rivera in its focus on the small private tragedy of a young man whose wife dies in childbirth. The previously unpublished “The Harvest” and “Zoo Island” explore the same themes as Rivera’s novel. “The Salamanders” introduces biblical imagery in the endless rain which floods the beet fields, while “Looking for Borges” is a complete departure from previous themes in a brief parody of the Argentine writer. “Inside the Window” is of interest because it represents the only available extract of Rivera’s second novel, La casa grande del pueblo, which was cut short at the author’s premature death in 1984. PATRICIA DE LA FUENTE University of Texas-Pan American Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems. Edited by Eugene England and Dennis Clark. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989. 316 pages, $14.95.) Both Mormon and non-Mormon readers will be pleased and challenged by what they find here: over two hundred poems and fourteen hymns (most written between 1970 and 1989) by sixty-nine Mormon poets. But both groups of potential readers must first put aside any misconceptions engendered by the Reviews 75 title, which can be accomplished by opening the book anywhere and reading a few poems. Mormon readers who expect to find inspiration, doctrinally sound, even sentimental meditations suitable for church, home, and school will be surprised and perhaps dismayed by the challenging, insightful, and often unsettling poems that explore doubt as well as faith, death as well as life, and pain as often as joy. While the hymns and a few of the poems, “Prophet,” “To Kevin, Newly A Missionary,” and “Driving My Daughter to Moose Jaw for her Patriarchal Blessing,” speak directly to the Mormon’s religious life, all the poems seem to have been carefully chosen to provide material for mature reflection by thoughtful poetry readers, whether or not they are Mormon or even particularly interested in “religion.” Non-Mormon readers expecting exclusive Mormon language and theology will find varied poems that never preach, but often eloquently speak of uni­ versal human experiences of birth, growth, death, God, and the spirit, often expressed through symbols and metaphors drawn from the land, the changing seasons, early migrations to Utah, and love of spouse and children. Poems such as “To a Dying Girl,” “An Early Frost,” and “Coming Apart Together” explore what it means to be a seeker, a doubter, a...

Effects of concreteness and task context on recall of prose among bilingual and monolingual speakers

The presence of concreteness effects on recall of prose paragraphs was shown to depend on the language experience of the subjects, the nature of the task, and whether subjects were given both concrete and abstract passages. In Experiment 1, monolingual and bilingual subjects recalled both abstract and concrete English paragraphs following comprehension instructions. Although no overall difference in recall was found, monolinguals showed a large concreteness effect but bilinguals showed only a marginal one. In Experiment 2, the concreteness effect for monolinguals was eliminated by presenting only abstract or concrete paragraphs to a given subject. In Experiment 3, after rating the imageability of individual sentences within abstract and concrete paragraphs, both language groups showed a large concreteness effect in recall. Concreteness effects can thus be obtained in recall of prose, tied not to differences in how abstract and concrete words are represented, but to how the prose is both encoded and retrieved. It is suggested that for bilinguals, the language of prose can act as a context specifier.

Automatic differentiation using almost any language

F. W. Pfeiffer [1] has recently indicated that automatic partial differentiation of functions can be easily accomplished using the PROSE language. Other authors have implemented these techniques in other special purpose languages which allow user defined operators[2]. It is relatively easy to implement these capabilities in any language which has a minimum of data structure representation. Additionally, it is not difficult to extend the method to deliver numerical values for any order derivative desired.

Brevity in Pushkin’s Prose

(1987). Brevity in Pushkin’s Prose. Canadian Slavonic Papers: Vol. 29, No. 2-3, pp. 152-164.

Slippered Feet aboard "The African Queen"

Milner Ball's essay, and all of his work, ring with hope; that is, both with his clear-sighted, scholar's interest in finding and telling truth, and with optimism that comes of his belief that chaos has been overcome.1 His thought is an inspiration; and his lyrical prose is, for all of its somber truth, a joy to read. In spirit he brings to his work, I suggest that Hebraic religious tradition contains a richer theological basis for claim that is a medium (or, perhaps more modestly, a conversation) than he seems to allow for;2 and I suggest that there is perhaps more hope to be found in human relationships in a lawyer's professional life than there is in institutional forms provided by governmentmore in office than in administrative apparatus that Professor Ball prefers to invoke for examples of medium.3 With those suggestions out of way, I want to argue that Professor Ball's characterization of property ownership as the apparatus of bulwark law is premature. I want to suggest that bulwark-like

Wind in the willows:Lyric prose into music

(1982). Wind in the willows: Lyric prose into music. Literature in Performance: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 64-68.

Comedia and Trauerspiel: On Benjamin and Calderón

COMPAEATIYE drama 1 Volume 16 Spring 1982 Number 1 Comedia and Trauerspiel: On Benjamin and Calderon Anthony J. Cascardi Nowhere but in Calderon could the perfect baroque Trauerspiel be studied. Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin’s Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama) is a dense and difficult book. “Conceived,” as its dedication evasively states, in 1916, written in 1925, and published three years later, the work is the single full-length book by a critic whom Frank Kermode could hail as “matchless in intuitive power.”l Benjamin specialized in aphorisms, essays, and, as one translated collection calls itself, “reflections.” These are widely known to a broad segment of readers. His essays on Proust and Baudelaire are masterpieces of lyrical prose; his study of Karl Kraus is a trenchant analysis of modem narrative. His essays on photography, as all his work, are marked by a deep vein of philosophic concern. Indeed, none was as philosophical as the Ursprung, a book Benjamin sub­ mitted as his University Habilitationsschrift, the rough equivalent ANTHONY J. CASCARDI is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. 1 2 Comparative Drama of a dissertation. Rejected by various departments as inappro­ priate or incomprehensible, the text remains among the lesserknown of Benjamin’s writings. On the one hand, it deals with relatively arcane materials, with the Trauerspiel (the term is significant) of the German Baroque—the work of Gryphius, Opitz, Sigmund von Birken—with late seventeenth-century collections of heraldic emblems, with occultist tracts and odd word lists; on the other, it is grounded in a philosophy strongly flavored by German Romanticism (there are major debts to Schopenhauer, Novalis, Nietzsche), yet directly anticipating the dialectical materialism of the so-called Frankfurt School to which Benjamin would later be tangentially related. It was, in fact, the opening section of the Ursprung that proved seminal in the development of Theodor Adorno’s thought. Walter Benjamin is also a thinker in a long line of Germans with a profound admiration for and interest in the Spanish comedia. On these grounds, Benjamin warrants comparison to Schlegel, Goethe, and Tieck. The Ursprung is to be sure not the only text in which he trained his powers of thought on the Spanish Baroque theatre. The essay “ ‘El mayor monstruo, los celos’ von Calderón und ‘Herodes und Mariamne’ von Hebbel” is a characteristic investigation of what Benjamin called the “melodrama of fate,” the Schicksalsdrama. As in the Trauerspiel book, Benjamin focuses intensely on the privileged function of objects and on the workings of fate in the Herod plays. Through­ out his work, he finds that the German plays are particularly poignant, but circumscribed in their range of sadness and melancholia. In comparison, the Spanish court and martyr plays of Lope, Tirso, and Calderón are superior in sheer poetic effect, in delicacy of motive, in intricacy of execution. Stylistic features like these are worth noting because Benjamin is a staunchly aesthetic thinker; convinced that there is a significance to the inner hollowness of the Baroque world, he turns consistently to what seem superficial aspects of style. But in addition, Ben­ jamin’s own style is of a density and syntactic weld that could only be matched by the supremely ordered verse of a Calderón. In Susan Sontag’s words, Benjamin’s style of thinking and writing is like “freeze-frame baroque. . . . It was as if each sentence had to say everything, before the inward gaze of total concentration dissolved the subject before his eyes.”2 Why the concern with Trauerspiel and not tragedy? The Anthony J. Cascardi 3 distinction is crucial to an understanding of whatever special variations on the tragic pattern of feeling that the Spanish comedia and late Renaissance and Baroque drama may, on the whole, contain. The first distinctions are categorical. Tragedy deals with myth. Its metaphysical foundation is that of ritualistic and heroic sacrifice. It is transcendental in thrust. Not so the Trauerspiel. As its name signifies, the Trauerspiel opens onto a realm of sadness and mourning rather than to the devastating wretchedness of painful destruction felt in ancient tragedy. Its action works in and through history, not myth (“The...

"Je manque de mots": Limits of self-expression in the lyrical prose of Valéry's Cahiers

"Je manque de mots": Limits of self-expression in the lyrical prose of Valéry's <i>Cahiers</i>

Breidablik

by RODNEY NELSON 12 Breidablik* ANDREW son, who Hogenson had built Breidablik. was the son Andrew of John had Hogen- been son, who had built Breidablik. Andrew had been seventeen in the summer. Peter Malmlund had no father at home. He would be seventeen in the winter. Andrew was lean and studious. He had crow-black hair and the gift of craftsmanship. When teachers looked at him, they would wag their pencils approvingly: "Just ^e J°hn-" Peter was round and red-cheeked. He had the fingers of a surgeon and the nature of a violinist. His mothers brothers never looked at him: "Too much like his old man." They had made friends over poetry.« # « They drove out from Red River early on the first morning of October. Red River, their home, was a prairie town governed by south wind in summer and north wind in winter; flowerless autumn was a good time on the prairie. "I see you brought some books," said Peter. "That I did," said the driver. "I see you've got some." * Abode of the Norse god Balder. Mr. Nelson's story is a "lyric prose eclogue of the friendship ... of two American boys [whose] grandparents were Norwegian [and who] retained, subliminally, a great deal of old-country culture." 229 Rodney Nelson Long Lake was in the hills at the edge of the prairie. It was here that John Hogenson had built his cottage and named it Breidablik. The wood had been so cunningly fitted that people who saw Breidablik held their breath in admiration , but not many were invited. John Hogenson himself came down rarely; the lake was for loafing and there wasn't time to waste. They drove up the first hill and came into the first valley. The groves would be turning soon; the leaves were splotched and wrinkled. Autumn mist hung over the lakes. Bone-white tree trunks stuck like spears out of the water. The morning sun was copper and the hills a burnt green. "We ought to split up until noon," said Andrew. "Yes, we should." They left the car at Breidablik and walked out in separate directions. Vacation had ended for most of the cottagers. Fall was the best time on Long Lake. * # # Andrew sat on a stump cleaning his glasses. Maybe it would be better without them. He was high enough to see the far end of the lake. The woods between had been cut back by farmers' fields. There was the pasture he had climbed up through: the sheep-dung was dry. Two flecks of white . . . Andrew put on his glasses. . . . Ploughgulls. He uncorked the canteen and put it to his mouth. The cider was warm; it didn't do the trick. The sun was too hot for October. He placed the clipboard on his knee and turned his back to the light. Well, how about a poem? No? He could write something; he had to write something. It was ten percent inspiration and ninety percent sweat. Think 230 BREIDABLIK of Ulysses and War and Peace; those books didn't happen in your spare time. Think of a girl's legs. Andrew socked himself on the forehead. But he had to have something to show for this walk. What about this walk? He thought of the slough with cattails; that had been a beautiful place. Should he mention it to Peter? Well, he could do better than mention it. He lowered his pen to the clipboard and began writing something about the slough with cattails. # a « Peter sank down in the welcoming shade of a big elm. The roots were exposed where the lake was touching them. The branches threw a shadow on the water. The lake was so quiet and friendly. Peter wondered where the shore would lead him. It might go in, it might jut out; there might be a flashing bay with an island and a river. He snapped a twig in half and bit his teeth into it. The other half he tossed in the lake. If only he could keep on walking. But he still had a weight in his throat. His mother had kicked him out of home; it was the...

Jörg Steiner: Lyrical Prose from the Swiss Jura

Jörg Steiner: Lyrical Prose from the Swiss Jura

Pound, Ford and ‘Prose’: The Making of a Modern Poet

‘I believe’, Swinburne wrote in 1875, ‘you know my theory that nothing which can possibly be as well said in prose ought ever to be said in verse’. The clarity of the distinction between prose and verse, though in practice a little wobbly, was felt to be actual in Victorian critical thought. It was not the long narrative poems (Maud, The Ring and the Book, Sordello, The Idylls of the King, The Prelude, Amours de Voyage) which undermined the distinction, but the exquisite poëmes en prose of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé. To blur the lines between die different kinds of art one wrote poems titled ‘Symphony in Yellow’ (Wilde), ‘Pastel’ (Symons), ‘Prose pour des Esseintes’ (Mallarmé), titled paintings ‘Nocturne’ (Whistler), or created an art form designed to absorb and surpass all others (Wagner). In Marius the Epicurean Walter Pater proved that there was no viable distinction between the language of poetry and language of prose, and in so doing created a language which was richly and grotesquely unique. To talk of poetry in terms of dance, music and painting was to neutralize the pressure of moral judgement, but this did not efface the idea of the ‘poetic’ as something, in some sense, distinct from prose. Though the lines between the two were softened, they did not disappear, becoming, for the following generation, an increasingly problematic aspect of their own art.

Style and Proportion: The Language of Prose and Poetry

Style and Proportion: The Language of Prose and Poetry

Style and Proportion: The Language of Prose and Poetry

Style and Proportion: The Language of Prose and Poetry

De Quincey on Wordsworth's Theory of Diction

Thomas de Quincey is one of the few prose stylists whose work is inevitably tagged with that vague suggestion of mélange des genres, “prose poetry.” Such a label, prompted by the rich “poetic” quality of his diction as well as the beautiful orbicularity of hit rhythmical periods, is enough to encourage the question, “What was the position of such a wielder of words on the controversy of his contemporaries over the language of poetry and the language of prose?” The answer takes on more interest when we recall his close association with the giants of that argument. “Like one of our own Family,” he tramped the dales of Grasmere with Wordsworth, who roundly asserted, “There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.” He was, however, also a disciple and sacrificial benefactor of Coleridge, who called vital parts of Wordsworth's theory “useless, if not injurious,” and declared that “in every import of the word essential, which would not here involve a mere truism, there may be, is, and ought to be, an essential difference between the language of prose and of metrical composition.” Some of this disagreement may have been more apparent than real, and it is likely that if confusions of meaning had been cleared up, the two poets would have found themselves close together in their basic concept of poetry. Probably by “language” Wordsworth intended only “diction,” whereas Coleridge used the word more in the sense of “style.” Wordsworth's context, however, admits the broader interpretation and Coleridge's includes the narrower, so that on this issue there appears clear-cut disagreement. De Quincey thought that an “unfathomable chasm of chaotic schism opened between them.” Where, then, between these “mighty opposites” did De Quincey himself stand on poetic diction?

Colloquial Expressions in Euripides

The language of Greek Tragedy can be considered as a whole by virtue of the characteristics which distinguish it from that of other branches of Greek literature, and the resemblance between the three tragedians in this respect is more noticeable than the differences. Still, if we compare Aeschylus and Euripides it is impossible not to feel a marked change of tone, in λ⋯ξις as in δι⋯νοια and ἤθη. As in E. the familiar legends are frequently set in a more everyday atmosphere and the characters cast in a less heroic mould, it is natural that the tone of the language should be lowered, partly by the frequent use of distinctively prosaic expressions and partly by the introduction of what appear to be colloquialisms. This change of tone in language was at once noted by Aristophanes and is referred to by Aristotle as an innovation of E. On the other hand E.'s style presents a certain anomaly, since while deliberately securing a closer approximation to the language of prose and ordinary conversation he also shows a poetic and archaizing tendency in the use of Aeschylean and Homeric words and forms not found in Sophocles. This may be due to a reluctance to depart too far from the poetic tradition of Greek tragedy, and possibly to a scholar's interest in the language of Aeschylus and Homer, in a minor degree a foreshadowing of the learned archaism of the Alexandrian poets.