9. The last paragraphs of the Ithaca episode of James Joyces’ Ulysses
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“He rests. He has travelled.
With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
When?
Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.
Where?”
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This is my favorite passage from Ulysses. Leopold Bloom has finally gone to bed.
These lines are the final words of the Ithaca episode, the last section before the word “Yes” that begins Molly Bloom’s long affirmation of human existence.
Ulysses happened to me when I was sixteen, for the next eight years the book was always with me. Then life happened. I put the book aside but so much of it remained inside my head that I think I may have always processed language using Joyce’s model. Reading Joyce, I re-learned language.
Pun, rhyme, image - there is music in a word. Joyce makes words-music. Any word, all words. He jams them together, misspells them, rhyme layers of meaning into sentences that are meant to never end. “Auks and rocs” and “roc’ auk’s egg” have a sea rhythm for Sinbad to sail on and a cradle rhythm - Leopold Bloom is going to bed. How many times have I laid down in my bed as Finbad the Failer or the mystical Xinbad the Phthailer?
10.
Shakespeare — Epilogue from the Tempest
Prospero:
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
This happened to me - watching The Tempest I decided to let go of the work that had occupied my time and substance for forty-some years and retire from teaching. At that moment I shared Prospero’s plea to the audience to release him:
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
,“what strength I have's mine own,/ Which is most faint”
This is one of Shakespeare’s last plays and I think must reflect his own thoughts about his work. Heard aloud, it is a long breath, a long, quiet, sigh at the end of a task.
These final lines end the Tempest, which taken as a whole is in my opinion is the most beautiful and profound nature poem ever written. No writer has described man’s position in nature as completely as Shakespeare. All the of issues of our relationship with the natural world are dealt with so subtilely that we hardly notice that the magic Shakespeare enchants us with is actually the rise of science, the rend between nature and man was already clear to him four hundred years before global warming.
Prospero has found his place in nature and can retire to rest.
11.
Elizabeth Bishop -The Fish
This poem happened to me as I was preparing lesson plans for a ninth grade class. I decided to include the poem in the weeks lessons. It was simple, easy to read and would interest any students who were fishermen or women. That week I taught the poem, reading it aloud five times —I had five classes— and hearing it read by ten, maybe fifth-teen during the day, I realized that it was an extraordinary piece of craftsmanship.
Long slender lines, designed to guide the breath of the reader reads.
The simple report of what the poet’s I can see. Imagery that is so clear plain stated similes— wallpaper, a peony, tinfoil, a beard… This is like that is enough and we see the fish as if we were holding in our own hand.
The poem is a lesson in seeing, in visual literacy, that which is once seen with Bishop eyes, we are capable of seeing again.
Finally, there is the echo of Shakespeare in the last lines, “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow/and I let the fish go.” My favorite poems are the poems that bring me back to my place in nature. Bishop has caught the fish, and the fish has caught her, the circle is closed again.
12.
Henry David Thoreau —
(This is the song Thoreau sang as he built his cabin on Walden pond.)
“So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, —
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings --
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.”
Throughout my life, whenever I am discouraged by the actions of my fellow Americans, when I am in dark despair for my country’s soul, I remember that Henry David Thoreau is my countryman and will be my great-great-grandchildren’s countryman long after the disgrace that is today’s Republican party is a footnote in history and Ronald Reagan’s stature is removed from the Capital and recycled for dog food cans.
Thoreau and David Hume would have gotten along very well, at least in philosophical conversations. This little song has essentially the same message Hume’s most famous quote, “Apart from mathematics we know nothing for certain. But we have to live: and to live is to act. All actions have to be based on assumptions about reality. We can only deal in hopeful probabilities.”
Thoreau was a man of millions of words and thousands of famous opinions. Yet, no one who knows his work well would disagree that he never claimed certainty for his thoughts. They were his observations of the world, well and cleverly expressed, just common sense. There is a poetry in common sense that can be found no where else. At the end of the day, great poetry guides us back to our place in nature.
“The wind that blows/Is all that any body knows.”
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