NPPF Canto Two: Shade reflects

[David Morris]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> on 29/7/03 2:29 AM, David Morris wrote:
> 
> > Just following this dramatic announcement Shade abruptly (at line 181!)
breaks the poem’s tone and time.  He ZOOMS to the present and to the mundane
task of trimming his nails.
> 
> Only just catching up with the Canto Two stuff and rereading. Excellent notes
by the way, David; thanks.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

> I think that Shade's self-consciousness about composing in the present time
permeates the poem from the outset. The initial image in Canto One is framed in
the past tense, as I think you noted. As Shade looks out his bedroom window he
recalls this incident with the bird flying into the pane and now, in the
present time of the poem's composition, retrospectively appropriates the
incident to circumscribe his own life experience in its totality. It might be
interesting to predict what the moment of the bird's collison with the glass
was for Shade -- I suspect that Hazel's death is a contender, but there are
other possibilities too, such as his heart attack, or his first youthful
seizure.

> As the Canto proceeds it's as if he has walked out into the garden and down
to the lake (eg. "whilst now" line 43, "[i]t is now" line 54 etc), following
the familiar paths of his youth, almost as a deliberate stimulus to the poetic
composition. Hazel's swing is a "phantom" (57): he remembers the place where it
once was, but it is no longer there. Back indoors he walks from room to room in
the house and similarly allows the scenes and rooms to evoke the memories and
people of his youth, and uses these memories to prompt his current, poetic
interpretations and reflections.

Yes.  Time-sense permeates the poem.  He is constantly looking backwards and
then snapping back to the present.  In Canto One he does use present
observations of his house as a vehicle of remembrance.  Sometimes the
transitions are subtle and sometimes they are abrupt and clumsy.  But in Canto
Two at line 181 the transition happens suddenly and without any connection to
the previous verses.  It is almost as a hes is taking relief from his
examinations of the past.

He does it again, after examining Maud's demise, in a lament about his
inability “to translate / Into one’s private tongue a public fate,” thereby
stating the overall pupose of the poem, a ppurpose similar to his life's chosen
purpose.

And then again in the middle of his history of Hazel's suicide he jumps back to
his nails, and get's relief from the sound of Sybil upstairs.

David Morris

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