tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post8243643435142785193..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Half Outside the Tribe (John Gay: from The Beggar's Opera)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-28952179519496466302012-10-03T16:30:51.853-07:002012-10-03T16:30:51.853-07:00O teacher, o little lamb teacher
public school tea...O teacher, o little lamb teacher<br />public school teacher<br />fluffed up for the slaughter<br /><br />for the sacrifice<br />of the test<br />that everyone cheats on--<br /><br />are you now in your<br />little bunker<br />waiting for the end?<br /><br />I see the mini-fridge<br />you desired <br />thought of in your widowhood<br />and the plug-in kettle<br />for java<br />who could not do without<br />these modern conveniences<br />in a modern classroom<br />as you wait<br />for the final bell<br />like a comfortable mummy<br />all wrapped up<br />in a cozy cardigan<br />despite the heat<br />reading about your husband<br />Mr. Franz Kafka.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-85724317006095017162012-10-03T16:20:03.646-07:002012-10-03T16:20:03.646-07:00Venn Diagram: Kafka vs. Hitler
In the middle
Is...Venn Diagram: Kafka vs. Hitler <br /><br />In the middle<br />Is the need for shelter<br />From the surreal body<br />One moves outside the circle<br />Against the rules<br />One moves closer<br />To the middle <br />Of his circle the edge<br />Too mossy and fertile<br />Human humiliating<br /><br />One keeps disappearing <br />Like he was not there<br />Anonymous<br />They both wanted<br />The mundane to be left alone<br />At the end. To do whatever.<br /><br />We cannot stop thinking about them<br />About their fears<br /><br />One was Ferdinand the Bull<br />One pretended to be<br /><br />One dreamed of moss<br />One of modern convenience<br />Of which he was used<br />Mundane chores<br /><br />Both were already in the future<br />About the paradox—<br /><br />One left the diagram<br />Completely<br />Forced into<br />The number lineSusan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-15091184106035021782012-10-03T15:42:50.460-07:002012-10-03T15:42:50.460-07:00Teachers are beggars in the Opera
often the only o...Teachers are beggars in the Opera<br />often the only ones in town<br />with jobs<br />from the state<br />theater of middle management<br />too much time<br />too much blood<br />on hands<br />wringing out<br />the results <br />from the newest<br />newly-laundered<br />exam <br />instead of strangling <br />little necks<br />as would seem proper<br />given this ongoing<br />paradox.<br /><br />Sing it out, teachers<br />make the song loud<br />make it endless.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12679325973251560232012-10-03T00:02:53.445-07:002012-10-03T00:02:53.445-07:00RHETORICAL QUESTION
Rapier skills as in rapier wi...RHETORICAL QUESTION<br /><br />Rapier skills as in rapier wit?<br />Alas, no point in asking<br /><br />If parried by dullard, <br />Fencesitting dimwits.<br />vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47992614819928038092012-10-02T16:05:14.363-07:002012-10-02T16:05:14.363-07:00By the by, it's long seemed to me that a small...By the by, it's long seemed to me that a small bit of characteristically disarming self-memorializing Gay left behind to be remembered by might well serve equally for many a much less gifted writer:<br /><br />My own Epitaph<br /><br />Life is a jest; and all things show it,<br />I thought so once; but now I know it.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35453688029439573192012-10-02T15:34:30.562-07:002012-10-02T15:34:30.562-07:00Artemisia,
Sorry to have missed yours till I'...Artemisia,<br /><br />Sorry to have missed yours till I'd replied to the previous. But yes, Swift is certainly relevant here. It's thought he planted the idea for the Opera in Gay's mind; that would make sense; and in the end there came a brilliant harvest.<br /><br />These days there is little taste for writers with these rapier skills; indeed, these days, the exercise of such skills would surely prove career-threatening; and skills that are not used can never have been developed; which is unfortunate, for we live in a society that at times seems to beg to be addressed not with kid-gloves fondness but upon the tines of a barbecue fork.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50807487041810296492012-10-02T15:24:00.604-07:002012-10-02T15:24:00.604-07:00WB,
So glad you liked this; reading the Opera aga...WB,<br /><br />So glad you liked this; reading the Opera again lately, I found it quite wonderful, and was left dazzled by its genre-bending qualities, its merciless skewering of hypocrisy, avariciousnes and pomposity at all levels and in all nooks and crannies of the human "spectacle".<br /><br />There is a great -- and obviously deliberate, this is the art of the thing -- blurring of borders in the Opera, as though that invisible wire fence between the classes had become tangled, so that the frontier between "high" and "low" moral and political values becomes impossibly (and hilariously) confused, and everything that is said seems to imply something else, quite often its opposite. Some of the period satire involves politics (the Whig PM, Walpole, paired with a comparable arch-manipulator, Peachum) and style (the rage in London for Handelian operatics, which the play exposes), but these references appear now to comprise the furniture of the piece, topical bits of joke overlaid upon its underlying structure. <br /><br />Parallels between the opposed social classes are often presented in ways that would have seemed sharp, even embarrassing to some at the time. This shock effect along with the exuberant fun of the thing combined to make the play so successful that Handel was driven off the London stage for a whole season by Gay's triumph.<br /><br />All these centuries later however the thrust and point of the play remain unblunted. To show that roguery reigns equally on both sides of the social no man's land, with the most powerful rogues on either side enjoying their successes at the expense of everybody else -- and only those of the "low" side ever getting caught out, due to something (something, we are shown, about human nature) built permanently into this terrible equation -- this achievement of Gay's seems at least as pertinent in 2012 as it would have in 1728. <br /><br />The Beggar's Opera was the first of the ballad operas to hold the stage beyond the end of the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth it developed into musical comedy. Some at the time thought Gay had got the idea from Addison's curious production Rosamund (1707). But Bonamy Dobrée, who was a close scholar of the period, wrote in 1959 as follows:<br /><br />"...'Whether this new drama [of Gay's] was the product of judgement or of luck' as Dr Johnson was to comment, 'the praise of it must be given to its inventor'. And it had in it, as recent revivals suggest, the elements of permanence, because although human value are reversed, they exist by implication, and serve as a basis for the apparently careless grace and wit of the whole enchanting and virile performance. How far play-goers can be aware of what Gay is actually doing with them is doubtful: the 'double-irony' method, out of which the jokes are constructed, is inherent in the whole movement of the story', as Professor Empson analyses it in his brilliant study, and the method takes a little time to penetrate; the actors seem to say one thing while actually implying its contrary; delightful shocks are administered to moral sensibility; Macheath can come out with such a Senecan 'sentence' as<br /><br />A moment of time may make us unhappy for ever;<br /><br />and the underlying grimness itself stimulates the gaiety, which is sometimes of a weighty order. It is a serious criticism of society delivered as a light-hearted jest."TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-46335227196003213642012-10-02T14:47:04.878-07:002012-10-02T14:47:04.878-07:00Swift’s perspicacity and rapier wit has, in my opi...Swift’s perspicacity and rapier wit has, in my opinion, no parallel today. He cuts to the heart of meanings and intentions that perhaps, only Plato/Socrates could reveal, meaning by meaning as to the whys and uses of the various archetypes found in theater and literature. Swift’s plumbing of art as a social and political safety net adds to the what lies behind bread and circus’s, how the status quo can be preserved, have its toxic blood let, yet entertain and for the discerning, educate and transcend amusement. <br /><br />A dose of Swift is marvelous for the brain…Thank you TC.<br />Artemesiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06120821017998835883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74297668340691420432012-10-02T10:33:39.856-07:002012-10-02T10:33:39.856-07:00We're never wholly done with class over here (...We're never wholly done with class over here (for all Tony Blair's sentimental chatter): it's our great rich seam and our curse.<br /><br />The reprieve gives me great pleasure:<br />"All this we must do, to comply with the Taste of the Town"<br /><br />Empson is spot on. The true critic must always tread delicately along the wire fence at the border.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-71580160739496311122012-10-01T23:52:52.957-07:002012-10-01T23:52:52.957-07:00The Beggar's Opera: Air LXVII ("Since law...<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx8-T7GiYPc&feature=related" rel="nofollow">The Beggar's Opera: Air LXVII ("Since laws were made")</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com