Literature and History in ancient Celtic culture

Woven into the fabric of the following passage from Alwyn and Brinley Rees's book, Celtic Heritage, is an idea I first explored in an earlier post (Literature and History, 26 March 2010) and will likely keep addressing in order to assay the validity and value of this distinction:  what literature does best and most distinctly among the written genres is evoke for us another world in which we can empathize with the people who inhabit it. Literature brings that world alive for us, re-creates it in us, and through that experience we enlarge our selves and enable connections between those selves and others.  Whereas history helps explain these other worlds, literature finds artistic ways to embody or enact them.

In the following passage, note the part in bold.  Ancient Celtic story-telling masters carried audiences with them into the world they were re-creating, re-inhabiting.  As an aside, I cannot help but also notice the legal status enjoyed by these master-poets.  In the West we no longer have kings as did the ancient Celts, but wouldn't it be nice, and smart, to elevate master-poets in a modern fashion.  We have made a mild start with poets at Presidential inauguration ceremonies and the naming of national Poets Laureate.  Thank you, Kay Ryan, and congratulations, W.S. Merwin.  
For a brief commentary on Merwin's path, see Drew Brachter's "Capital Comment Blog" (01 July 2010).  For fuller treatment, see the always-rich Poetry Foundation site (William Stanley Merwin).

There is evidence from the Celtic countries and from India that the poets were also the official historians and the royal genealogists.  The poet's praises confirmed and sustained the king in his kingship, while his satire could blast both the king and his kingdom.  There was a tradition that the learned poets (filid) of Ireland were once judges.  They were certainly the experts on the prerogatives and duties of the kings, and a master-poet (ollam) was himself equal to a king before the law.  Such priestly functions as divination and prophecy also came within the province of these early Irish poets who, it may be added, wore cloaks of bird-feathers as do the shamans of Siberia when, through ritual and trance, they conduct their audiences on journeys to another world.  It was the initiates with this power and authority who had the custody of the original tales, and they recited them on auspicious occasions, even as the priests of other religions recite the scriptures.

Rees, Alwyn and Brinley.  Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales.  New York: Thames and Hudson, 1961. reprinted 1991. 17.

Ha Jin on evoking empathy

In and earlier post, Language Study #3: empathy, I wrote about empathy's allowing people, including students,  to work alongside each other successfully.  Literature exercises one's empathy.  It has the potential to do so more than other kinds of writing (see Literature and History).  Students, I hope, come out of each encounter with more ability to imagine and, therefore, to empathize.

In his essay collection, The Writer as Migrant, Ha Jin remarks on this literary capacity.  The excerpt below comes from the chapter called "The Spokesman and the Tribe," in which he criticizes Chinese novelist, Lin Yutang.  For now, I offer this excerpt without further comment--except for the parts I have put in bold to emphasize Ha Jin's descriptions of the difference between novels and essays, and between successfully and poorly imagined literature.

There are two other weaknesses that must have stemmed from Lin Yutang's vision of himself as a cultural spokesman of China.  First, the narrator tries too blatantly to present Chinese culture to a Western audience.  There are passages that read like miniessays about Chinese women's education, Chinese medicine, and Chinese belief in the balance of the Five Elements in making marriages.  These passages are not blended into the dramatic context, block the flow of narration, and result in prose that feels crude and unfinished.  Such crudeness is not merely a technical blunder.  It reveals the novelist's inadequate vision.  Just as a creative writer should aspire to be not a broker but a creator of culture, a great novel does not only present a culture but also makes a culture;  such a work does not only bring news of the world but also evokes the reader's empathy and reminds him of his own existential condition.  If a novel by which the ambitious author will stand or fall, he should imagine what kind of cultural order the book may enter into should it succeed.  Lin Yutang obviously did not entertain such a vision and indulged himself too much in explaining China.  Throughout Moment in Peking, the narrative reveals that the book was written only for a Western audience.

Jin, Ha.  The Writer as Migrant.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 17.

Language Study #5: "details" of language

Ideally, students learn to understand details of language well enough to shape it themselves and see how others shape it.

The "details of language" occur in words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, stanzas, pages and books.  They involve vocabulary, semantics, syntax and grammar.  The more students understand how to identify and use these details, the more they can shape language to their desired ends.  Important to instruction is recognizing both publicly and privately the satisfaction derived from such shaping.  That satisfaction does not come automatically, even in this particular sketch.  At times, the desired end or audience grows foggy and the writing gathers lines in a journal but little else.  Recognizing the trial-and-error, the drafting, the eventual nature of successful composition has become perhaps an even more important ingredient in today's writing instruction.  The fastfood/electronic/digital culture tends to reward instantaneous action.  The faster the better.  Writing, though, at least the kind that brings personal satisfaction to me, involves several stages of invention, re-invention and polish.  The shaping occurs over time.  Consider a book like John Wideman's novel, Philadelphia Fire, which sports across the page like one of its street ball stars on a West Philly basketball court.  Even such apparently free-wheeling approaches demand forethought, first runs at the basket, responses from fellow reader-writers, then a "tedious" return to the detailed choices about words, phrases and sentences.  What do you want to convey about the bombing of a West Philly neighborhood?  And to whom?  What style and arrangement of words will work?  What's available to me.

Language Study #4: be open to discovery

Ideally, through analysis and expression, students learn to appreciate the building blocks of individual and community health.

People see roles and identities for themselves.  For example, in NYC this summer [2002] with an unusually high number of guests, my natural interest in the city's transportation systems has blossomed into a heavy flower sometimes bending the stem of sociability.  I see my role as primary street guide who can scout and propose routes routes that, especially in this heat, will produce the least wear and tear on the group.  Knowing which bus or subway goes nearest which location saves people physical and psychological energy they can use to watch people, explore buildings or just enjoy the rhythms of the city.  As with most compounded interests, these led me to take my role and identity into unrelated arenas.  Here personality and its general inclinations overlapped with my perceived role this summer and my year-round identity as responsible one.  Ann's speaking to me about being "teacherly" served as a primary catalyst to seeing the guide-gone-awry phenomenon.  My own willingness and ability to consider my actions complement her expression.  These, then, are the building blocks of individual and community (i.e., family) health.  In schools, where students and teachers  enter a  prescribed learning environment, appreciating such dynamics allows the educational relationship to grow in healthy directions.  An openness to discovery characterizes genuine learning.  Teenagers face the challenge of recognizing this while forming their roles and identities.

mystery and metaphor: Anne Michaels's novel about grief, poetry and healing

A Greek Jewish stevedore from Salonika tells Jakob's father that "the great mystery of wood is not that it burns, but that it floats."

For now, let's just say I am grateful for having discovered Michaels's 1996 novel, Fugitive Pieces.

Jakob Beers is a young Jewish boy who buried himself to escape the fate of his sister and parents during the Nazi violation of Poland.

He is uncovered, discovered and recovered with the help of Athos, a Greek geologist, who teaches him love and poetry.

After having finished the novel, I told my wife that I would like to start reading it again right away.  During the first reading, I had to balance savoring with progressing; I could easily return, but want to let the images, lines and intuitions settle before I do.

Literature and History

     People schooled and practiced in history, look at artifacts and listen to contemporary accounts, in order to learn about present and past human activity.  From these specifics, historians develop general descriptions and theories.  For example, they ask, “What patterns are emerging from this study?”  Their answers help everyone see the past, understand the present and navigate the future.
    People trained and experienced in literature, encounter stories, poems and other forms of literary art—in order to understand the individual human.  From these literary expressions, students build knowledge of our common experience.  For example, they ask, “Who is this person?” and “What does it feel like to be this person in this world?”  While using the artist’s guidance to answer such questions, literature students need to imagine precisely.
    In some literary circles, people discuss artistic merit.  Through scholarly debate, they try to establish the better or best story.  For example, they may claim a story has too much unnecessary detail or is too predictable. How elegantly, in other words, does the author sew together the various artistic threads?
    Such literary debate, however, has its limitations.  The more enduring value comes from conjuring, comprehending and appreciating the lives of individuals—for example, Gogol in Jhumpra Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake.  Although this first generation Bengali-American is named for the Russian author of “The Overcoat,” not until the final moments of the novel does Gogol begin reading this short story.  It has taken him thirty years to open the book—the book given to him by his father, the book that saved his father’s life, the book that gave him his name.  Lahiri’s novel helps readers understand why it took Gogol so long to turn to page one, and how his experiences mirror those of other individuals struggling to make a new home in a new country like the United States.

Poetic Interlude: Du Fu

reflecting on friends and form


When an understanding deepens, reflect on its origin.  Some days ago, I found comfort in the form practiced by Du Fu, the renowned 8th c. poet from China.  He practiced a traditional form which, in one rendering, uses a total of eight lines.  Two lines set the scene, the middle four advance the poem and the last two conclude.  I find peace in the structure, not unlike Wordsworth’s “Nuns Who Fret Not” find peace in their confinement.  This Chinese form depends heavily on concrete images, as well as on syntactical and semantic parallels.

In this peace, I remembered the friend who introduced me to Du Fu’s poetry.  This friend had recently returned from China.  From his visit to Du Fu’s house, he brought me a book of poems.  He also gave me small commemorative plates, each with its own wooden tripod-stand.  Atop our poetry bookcase at home, we have put the larger plate and its portrait of Du Fu in the center—flanked by two smaller ones that contain the original text of a famous poem.  The comfort and energy I draw from Du Fu’s poetry make me want to regularly remember the friend who introduced me to this glorious gift.

For now, without comment or historical context, I offer one translation of Du Fu’s poem that appears on the commemorative plates.  Afterwards, I include one of mine.  I have helped students write these, too.  They follow a series of steps, starting with a grid into which they insert individual words or phrases, trying as best they can to capture the English equivalent of a Chinese character.  This exercise particularly suits the more visual learners.


Gazing in Springtime


The empire is shattered but rivers and peaks remain.
Spring drowns the city in wild grass and trees.
A time so bad, even the flowers rain tears.
I hate this separation, yet birds startle my heart.
The signal fires have burned three months;
I’d give ten thousand gold coins for one letter.
I scratch my head and my white hair thins
Till it can’t even hold a pin.

                    Du Fu
                                c.757 C.E.



Barnstone, T. and C. Ping. Eds. The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to
    Contemporary, The Full 3000-Year Tradition.  NY: Anchor, 2005.



While Waiting for the Storm   

Deep blue-gray clouds hover far away.
A gleaming school building, white as clean, weathered bone, sits contentedly atop the neighborhood hill.
Students stand and wait, while trucks rumble past.
Sometime in the future, a bus will be arriving, stuffed with people holding on.
A soft, salmon pink appears on the eastern edge
of clouds directly overhead, accompanied by a quiet, still song.
Canadian geese nibble grass by my feet, so close that I can touch them.
The Golden Gate Bridge burns bright orange, reflecting this morning’s sun.

                        Bill Brown
                                       December 2007