Textualities 2015: a mini-conference story

A mini-conference. How can such a ‘mini’ name convey so much? So much stress and sleepless nights, so many nervous students ready to faint before stepping on stage and perform their 6’40 show, such a great deal of work and research involved in this ‘mini’ project, so much energy spent on rehearsing again, and again, and again, (and again) so that it will be perfect when the day comes – but don’t be silly, it won’t of course – and the tireless efforts of your other half, who keeps repeating you that your presentation is fantastic, that you are doing a great job, that all you say is absolutely fascinating, that your oral skills can’t be denied by anyone… Hard to follow? Well, that’s really how it went and the pace we had to keep up with for a few weeks. And I say ‘we’ because it was the hell of a teamwork indeed: Elaine H. organised the event, Valentina set up a Twitter page, Ciarán created a website, Elaine M. printed out the programmes and the posters Sean designed… It was a vampiric undertaking that lobotomised us and left us exhausted – but relieved and proud! We made it!

First, intense but so enriching research. We knew we had to deliver a talk about something, but what? Choose a topic that suits you, that you enjoy discussing and about which you may already know a few things. It has to be linked to my end-of-year thesis, doesn’t it? Alright, I’ll be dealing with Thomas Hardy then. But that’s too broad. I must narrow it down if I want it to be doable for me to expose a clear and structured argument in six minutes and forty seconds. What about how his books were received? – since it was a kind of disaster towards the end when he released Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure – don’t forget he stopped writing fiction as a result. Yes, let’s dig about the reception of the last one, for I would really like to work on this one for my thesis. It might be short enough to be an approachable subject in less than seven minutes, and it’s entertaining – the term funny would show some disrespect for the late author, poor him, as he was truly put out about all that had been said – and I assume not many would know about Hardy and his works, if anyone does. I myself don’t know the whole story lying behind the publication of the book. What? A bishop burnt the book after reading it?…

Powerpoint, Emaze, Prezi, Keynote, we did all we could to enhance our creation. 20 slides of 20 seconds each: a PechaKucha presentation. Make some research, structure your work, find telling pictures that would illustrate your point accordingly, time your speech. Okay, now I have everything ready to start rehearsing. Let’s play it. Wait! I haven’t yet finished with my first part and the time is already up? I have to handle it all over again then. Rewind, rework, press play again. Stop! The third slide has gone too fast, I’m not done quoting here!…

This is how it went until the whole thing had been polished, refined, almost exquisitely executed. And finally the D-Day. First a little detour by the UCC Campus radio for a little talk about Textualities15, just to warm us up! Then enter the intimidating Council room in the Main Quad, UCC, February 27, 2015. Breathe in, breathe out. Here we go! … Is it over yet? It went as quickly as the wait was endlessly tense. What I will remember of it all is an incredible human experience, a blend of knowledge, an engaging range of concerns (poetry, film, drama, fiction, history), a constantly focused attention for our inexhaustibly entertained pleasure. It was worth a never-ending anguish, recurrent stomach cramps, a stubborn headache, weird dreams at night, etc. Although I am obviously glad it’s all over, I would very much like to do it again, because it was more than a useful exercise for me; to me it somehow sounded like the beginning of my career – I know these are big words but that’s how I felt on the spot and still do in hindsight. Simply accept what comes to you. Open your arms. Embrace opportunities. A unique experience we will all remember for sure.

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Thank you all very much for coming, staying, performing, listening, reacting, taking pictures…

Be Hardy!

I am currently making some research on Thomas Hardy’s works and I recently did a presentation on the reception of the novel Jude the Obscure. As it is a rather entertaining story, so I am going to tell it to you. Here it goes…

The Simpletons – and later Hearts Insurgent – was written in 1894 and was serialised in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine from December 1894 to November 1895, and was eventually published as a book under the title Jude the Obscure this very same month.

It was very badly received indeed. The Pall Mall Gazette retitled the novel “Jude the Obscene;” the book was described as being ‘a shameful nightmare’ or ‘a titanically bad book;’ the author was labelled ‘Hardy the Degenerate.’ Then we have W.H. Smith, a well-known British chain of railway bookstalls, that wouldn’t sell any more of the books, and finally – last but not least – even his (first) wife, Emma, didn’t approve of the book and wished it had never been published. I suppose the most incredible consequence of the publication of the book was the event with the Bishop of Wakefield, who threw his copy of the book into the fire being reputedly disgusted by the content of the novel. That is a rather extreme reaction, to which Hardy responded in an ironic manner in his Postscript of the 1912 edition of Jude the Obscure saying that the ‘conflagratory bishop’ – so he called him then – acted ‘probably in his despair at not being able to burn me.’ (ix)

More thoughtful though crude analyses of the novel were made available with the release of some critics’ reviews in the newspapers. A review in The Morning Post in November 1895 reads that no good could come out of ‘such farrago of miscellaneous miseries as is contained within the pages of this volume.’ The reviewer adds that ‘[t]he style of the book is disjointed and graceless’, that ‘[t]he whole tone of the book is morbid and unreal’ and that ‘[i]f we did not know from other of his efforts that he was a novelist of attractive gifts we certainly should not discover it here.’ This is a great deal of criticism for the review of one book! Yet there is more to come.

The novelist Margaret Oliphant in the article “The Anti-Marriage League” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in January 1896 wrote that the book contained ‘grossness, indecency, and horror’ and that ‘[i]t would be curious to compare in this unsavoury traffic how much of the sickening essence of his story Mr Hardy has thought his first public could stomach.’ Compared to the first account, this one is not too harsh. But still, she considered the book ‘an assault on the stronghold of marriage, which is now beleaguered on every side.’

Edmund Gosse, with whom Hardy corresponded frequently and who would usually go easy on his friend’s works, asks in Cosmopolis in January 1896: ‘What has Providence done to Mr. Hardy that he should rise up in the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?’ Here the critic is rather struck by astonishment than by awe or strict repulsion. Yet Gosse confesses that ‘[w]e may wish – and I for my part cordially wish – that more pleasing, more charming plots than this could take his fancy.’

What is funny enough here is that because these terrible comments were published in the newspapers and advertised the book as exposing crude elements, some readers, probably eager ones of Gothic literature, were subsequently deceived and thus unhappy not being able to find more frightful scenes and gory details. The reviewer of The Morning Post stated that ‘[a]s for the lovers of sensations, the book is a sad disappointment for them.’ Hardy himself narrates in his Postscript of the 1912 edition of the novel that some readers would throw the book at the wall in the middle of their reading because it was too boring for them since they were looking for unmoral characters with offensive behaviours. Meanwhile everyone agreed that Hardy, despite his recurrent tendency to get on Victorian people’s nerves, was nonetheless a Master of the end of the nineteenth century’s literary landscape.

So all this fuss to see the book and the writer’s talent redeemed at the end?! We should not forget that Thomas Hardy actually stopped writing fiction after the disastrous reception of his last novel, and that he had some time to think it over before that since he initially wanted to drop writing fiction as a result of the harsh criticisms he received about Tess of the d’Urbervilles, published in 1891. But what’s comforting is that he was then able to spend all his time writing poetry, which was his first interest after all. Did the readers make him a favour in that way? Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

 

William Hatherell’s twelve plates to illustrate Jude the Obscure in Harper’s Monthly Magazine:

Jude meeting Arabella. December 1895.

Arabella. January 1895.

Phillotson, Jude, and Sue

Jude in the bar. March 1895.

Phillotson with Sue. April 1895.

Sue calling Jude. May 1895.

Sue after throwing herself out of the window. June 1895.

Jude sick visited by Sue. July 1895.

The marriage curse. August 1895.

Sue and Little Father Time. September 1895.

Sue after the death of her children. October 1895.

Jude at the mile-stone. November 1895.

Stepping in the familiar unknown

SHE AT HIS FUNERAL

They bear him to his resting-place —

In slow procession sweeping by ;

I follow at a stranger’s space ;

His kindred they, his sweetheart I.

Unchanged my gown of garish dye,

Though sable-sad is their attire ;

But they stand round with greenflies eye,

Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

(The Works of Thomas Hardy, 10.)

When I came across this poem, I immediately realised how I underestimated Thomas Hardy’s poetry. I have always known him through his prose – Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure – and so his poetic talent hit me with full force. Chronologically I am still right since, although he started writing poetry before wiring fiction and has always considered himself a poet, he nevertheless monthly published his stories before dedicated the rest of his life to his first passion. The reason he eventually did so is because he got so cross with reviews of his last two books afore mentioned that he decided never to write novels again and consecrated his ill-appreciated talent to writing poems. Have his poems been so powerful and significantly brilliant if he had continued writing prose at the same time? I am not sure of the answer even if I sincerely doubt anything could have hindered his enlightened path as a man of letters and of genius.

Unlike what we may think, poetry has to do with physicality, not with intelligence. In other words, it is about what we can see, hear, feel, smell. In fact, poetry is everywhere within us and outside in the external world; and actually, poetry is how we feel, it is what we can or can’t see, it is what we would like to hear, it is the memory of that smell we had forgotten until now. As Leanne O’Sullivan keeps reminding us in our poetry workshops on Wednesday afternoons, ‘poetry operates from the neck down.’ And even if our senses and gateways are located in the upper part of our body, the true work begins down there, in our guts, our hearts, our goose-bumped limbs… I understood that when I started reading The Works of Thomas Hardy, and I fully grasped the meaning of those words when, turning the tenth page, I fell on ‘She At His Funeral.’ What is said (I definitely don’t affectionate this kind of straight-forward dull terms) in this poem is so completely relevant, and true, and sincere, and pure (one should really consider staying silent in front of poetry)…

Once again I know I am rambling on this again but art for art’s sake CAN be good, and I think poetry should be dealt with in this way only, although applying guidelines to imagination sounds rather restrictive. But I maintain my point and I’m sure everyone remembers answering silly questions about a text you just read like: « What is the author trying to say? » As if the writer attempted to tell you something and failed, or as if ALL he/she expresses in his/her writing could be summed up in a few sentences – or even summed up at all! Can’t we just taste the melody of the words, the symphony of the sentences put together in a stanza or scattered in free verse? Can’t we simply feel in our bones the strong hold of the poet’s talent as he confronts us with his fancy? Can’t we see the lively images, the speaking similes the hand of the writer put down on paper for us to contemplate?

Of course poetry is vast and sublime – in every sense of the term –  and we want to climb the mighty mountain using tools we have used before and which we know will help us reach the top without falling. But does risk always have to be a negative undertaking? Why should we always want to understand and analyse? For example in the poem above, what we are familiar with is the pattern: short verses of eight syllables, very metric rhythm, crossed rhymes… These are a comforting presence, reassuring you by admitting that you are not climbing on your own, barehanded, or swimming in the middle of an ocean you don’t know the boundaries of, never hinting at when you will reach the shore – if you ever reach it. But listen to the lamenting voice of the poem, feel the distress of the speaker, watch all these people similarly dressed in black… Isn’t it wonderful to let our senses wander unfettered? Our lives are inevitably ruled by codes; those we fittingly create for ourselves to comply with and those dictated by the environment we live in. Therefore don’t let any more poison our sight, regulate our ideas, bias our judgement; sometimes simply allow yourself to feel with no ulterior motive. Just breathe, be there, enjoy! I know that sounds like instructions for mindfulness practice but maybe, yes, maybe we should learn to be mindful at times – and learn not to be at others.

What Is Love?

I suppose we have all experienced the same situation: you are with your partner, fighting for you can’t even remember what, and you think: ‘Wow, we actually ARE different!’

This is not because you are a female talking to a male or vice versa. It is more complicated than that. How many times have you taken for granted the indisputable differences between man and woman to explain one another’s (weird) behaviour? But this question also comes up in same-sex relationships and so becomes irrelevant, the real interrogation being: what is LOVE?

And when I say love, I think of living together and sharing tender moments, of not being ready to lose the loved one, of loving and hating the same person at the same time, of saying you are on the verge of leaving but deeply knowing that you will never be able to do so… All this is love to me. But others may say it isn’t and they will probably be right! Because love is both personal and about sharing, it is giving and receiving often on an unequal basis (or so it seems to us sometimes). Love is attraction; it is a spell, a magic trick, an inheritance from ancient rituals, an uncontrolled and uncontrollable power. And as we can’t comprehend it, we spend our lives trying to explain what it means. But what if it had no sense?

We find this confusing element at the centre of many artistic works – not to say in all of them. William Shakespeare, of course, wrote about love, and he was discredited for mixing the genres, i.e. tragedy and comedy that should be separated and not encountered in a single play. But Shakespeare was right: love is not just about being cheerful and merry. We can be sadly, tragically in love…

The Romantics too tried to define love in their own terms – Wordsworth, Byron, P.B. Shelley, Keats – with the sublime aesthetic, through mythological figures, and involving despair, death, dedication…

The Victorians codified and canonised love: they rather associated love with marriage and conventions, and condemned passion for its devilish and wild nature. The Brontës, Gaskell, Eliot, Hardy can be easily referred to when we think of categorising emotions.

Then we have the twentieth century with its extending culture: films, books, plays, photographs… In the modern period, we tend to do whatever hasn’t been done so far, and love is a first-rate topic, for it can always be considered as old as new. I recently came across D.H. Lawrence’s works and he seems to have dedicated his life to writing about love. Passion, destruction, powerlessness, devotion can be found throughout his works and then we realise that they are all part of the game; they all mean LOVE.

Since no one has yet found the key to this locked door and that nobody is capable of telling what exactly lies behind it, we just have to let our imagination wander and picture in our minds what love may be. What’s more, it seems that love consists in standing behind either side of the locked door, talking and listening to each other through the key hole since the key isn’t to be found (yet?). ‘What is love?’ will remain the unanswered question only art – and feelings – can explore as an endless source of pain, bliss, frustration, incomprehension, tension, pleasure, mysticism, fancy…