four quartets

The central theme is the union of the flux of time with the stillness of eternity (grover, 253)

Burnt Norton
Rose Garden--air--vision
How do you find the timelessness inside of time?
the first (garden)world is Eden, innocence
freezing time



Section 2
garlic/sapphires organic
stars, dancing, not as much movement, suspension, zen state, life within death as opposed to death in life as in Hollow Men, moment of incarnation, epiphany as personal awareness of the moment of suspension, release from desire, ends in the rose garden

Section 3
distraction, disaffection, descent
not soul-purifying darkness however but a negative suspension, negation of imagery, the nothing


Read east coker for next week
East Coker--earth--first attempt to reclaim/answer the vision

section2 seasons and stars
stars, dancers/dancing
different times in the cycle

section 3
dark, vacant
church/christ in east coker, place where Eliot's remains are interred,





Dry Salvages--water--going down into the darkness for the transformation


Little Gidding--fire--short; the Transformation that leads to communication with divine reality

How to find stuff for research paper

1. online
2. check for full text (online)
3. e-journal--see if we have it on as an e-journal article
4. walk over to library and get journal and xerox article or send it digitally to email for free
5. ILL

to the lighthouse

Time Passes chapter
10 years pass as the house deteriorates and there is a radical shift of perspective
People die and the living move on
in Dalloway, there is only one day of things happening, dilated time, so much going on and everyone interacting and playing with time because the text goes back into the character's histories,
but Lighthouse is expansive and takes longer
Dalloway--flashing, quick scenes, contracted time
Lighthouse--recreating moments of being simultaneously inserting the events surrounding the special times

(back to) time passes--lights dim on characters of those who die, Lily's light is on? And Mr. Charmichael's lamp, and the darkness descends during the ten years of the war
Mrs. Ramsay's death occurs, words create pictures, read it like poetry
part 1 is set in summer, moving on to autumn, forwarding into winter and the darkness of a world at war
the Light has gone out of the World because Mrs. Ramsay dies, leaving Mr. Ramsay lost
Lily takes over but she doesn't have the same 'mythic' qualities as Mrs. Ramsay, the fullness of giving her all for those she loved; Lily is the 'road not taken' and sorta like Elizabeth Dalloway in that she has new opportunities more than she's a 'new woman'
Mr Ramsay imposes himself on everyone like the doctors who impose themselves on Septimus and Lily cannot paint because of him, rather his impositions
Mrs Ramsay made herself happy by doing for others, by fulfilling other's wishes and needs; Lily does not find happiness by doing for others and Mr Ramsay doesn't get it, doesn't understand why things are the way they are
All he needed was her to say something anything nice--she compliments his boots as a last resort and bam! their relationship is healed

Ash Wednesday

a feminine form of writing, seems like a woman wrote this.
But Eliot has escaped the 'prison of the self' and joined the Holy Mother Church and perhaps found peace with something greater than himself, surrendered his individual talent to the tradition.

desiring this man's gift (not art! b/c he has the art but not the gift of inspiration) and that man's scope
and no longer strive to strive towards such things--perhaps he found his gift with his conversion? since the aged eagle stretched it's wings (in keeping with the bird reference from the Shakespearean sonnet) however this bird is not a lark singing praise but an old eagle mourning
selfish desires; no longer burdened by the opinions of others; no longer cares what others think he's given up on people (since he's an eagle) and the (now vanished) power of the usual reign is what held Prufrock back.

Unlike Prufrock, where he stays in the dreamworld (...till human voices wake us and we drown) and the Waste Land, staying in the dry lands and hearing the thunder but never reaching the rain, and Hollow Men who never cross the river to death's other kingdom, Ash Wednesday's liminality(?) allows the author to cross the boundaries, cross the threshold from frustration towards relief: he's moving up, spiraling up towards heaven instead of circling around the same level of hell.
Has to stop torturing himself in order to allow God a place in his heart

2nd stanza--cleansing and crossing the threshold to climb the stair in 3rd stanza

possible paper topics

hmm...
madness and writing
Prufrock and Clarissa or Elizabeth or Septimus

Mrs Dalloway

I'm still laughing at the thoughts Clarissa has about her parties, how they are 'life' to her in an intangible, almost inexplicable way. It's a timeless emotion: I love having parties myself, as do most of my female friends, so we can just catch up with each other all at once and stay on top of things. How do you help your friends out if you don't know what's going on in their lives? Each social circle, no matter how high up the 'social scale' one finds oneself within, has it's elite and it's bores.
Miss Killman harbors resentment for her state in life, her low rung on the social ladder, and her resentment keeps her from advancing beyond her state. She's become a monster, the monster she projects on to Clarissa really comes from within herself. Woolf chose her words well when she described Miss Killman as the monster within her "lost her malignity...and became...merely Miss Killman, whom Heaven knows Clarissa would have liked to help"(p 190). Clarissa seems superficial, and she has no idea where or what the equator is (p 185), so she's pitifully uneducated, and the opposite of Miss Killman because she is everything Miss Killman is not. While Miss Killman prides herself on her suffering to bring her knowledge (p 196) and her education to sustain herself financially, Clarissa gains knowledge through observation of what goes on around her and is sustained by her husband's income. Clarissa has no need to know where or what the equator is but is aware of her surroundings; Miss Killman has no need to know what's going on with the world now but teaching history puts food in her mouth and money in her pockets to survive. Each is educated in the way she needs, to get her through her day and make it to another; neither would survive in the other's world.
Clarissa reminds me of my best friend because she can throw the best parties, always has the right food and the right amount (I do the cooking, she just tells me how many people and a vague idea of each of their lives so I can plan the menu; she can't cook and I can't keep up with that many people), and I'm sad because she and Miss Killman could be good together if they were able to use each other's strengths to surpass each other's weaknesses (or at least get along for Elizabeth's sake).

Oct. 6 Class

Friday, Oct 24

Topic Due! for final paper

Mrs. Dalloway

Uses stream of conciousness to delve deeply into each character, including the history that brought them into the scene during the time the book takes place.

Themes:

How does Mrs. Dalloway fit in to Ms. Woolf's life and works?

One single day in the life of...the whole world?

Uses personal allusions about each person, back in time, around in space but a very small space; very defined and constrained by time and space but vast in characters.

Time is a major theme, hooking parts together

original name of the manuscript was 'the hours' (but it was stolen by another writer!?) and 'Mrs. Dalloway', as a title, helps the reader focus on the characters instead of the time frame.

tensions between public and private living (p.59)"...thinking it was outrageous to be disturbed at 11 o'clock on a day she was giving a party..."

flowers

seperateness and autonomy vs. feeling a part of things

Peter's walk eclipses Clarissa's on the east (he's been in the east, associated with colonization-ness, military, military statues on his walk, east is the lower class part of London)

Richard's touches Clarissa's path but on the west, the upscale part of London

Septimus picks up Clarissa's path and continues along it

According to Virginia herself, the characters of Septimus and Clarissa are as continuous as the paths they walk, two halves of the same whole, opposites containing a bit of each other

Wrote the experience with her own madness into the character of Septimus

***Stone=14 pounds so 11stone6 is his weight, a unit of measure no longer used (154+6?)

themes from What the Thunder said

The then-current decay of European society because people had lost compassion and charity and these things are required for the proverbial grail-knight to arise, for the year-king to return and ensure a good harvest year. The water is gone from the waste land because people have lost self-control and their fiery lust burns away the moisture, creating and enlarging the waste land of Europe. Rocks, and no water. Even if the grail were found, there was nothing to put in it to rejuvenate the land.

I must admit, though, that I didn't see much in the words Eliot wrote and extrapolated this from several sites.