c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron matrices pres.pdfAnd all complexities of mire or blood. ‗Byzantium‘ li. 15-24 Maintenant la durée : Yeats le maître des matrices,

c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron« C’est en lisant qu’on devient liseron. » Raymond Queneau

Maintenant la durée : Yeats le maitre des matrices, Samuel Trainor. Congrès international, « La voix et le masque dans l’oeuvre de W. B. Yeats : le théatre des identités », 6-7 septembre 2009, Université Lille 3.

from stater to stanza :money, monument and matrix in Saorstát Yeats


MatrixWombMotherMuseMnemosyneMaud Gonne

MonetaryMedalMetricalMetallicMasculine

Maths


Matrix : from muse to mint

1. local metaphors – coins, metallurgy and (Nietzsche’s) hammer

2. global metaphors – ‘utterances’ of symbols

3. local prosody – martellato metrics and ‘annealing’ assonance

4. global prosody – stanzaic form and metric matrices


1. local metaphors – coins, metallurgy and (Nietzsche’s) hammer

Can a coin – model of the drama of exchange – become emblem and embodiment of the unified vision of a people?

For senator W. B. Yeats, it could. His presidency of the

commision for the design of the saorstát coinage marked an artistic turning point...


That is no country for old men.


The young in one another’s arms,


birds in the trees,


those dying generations – at their song,


the salmon-falls,

the mackerel-crowded seas,


fish,

flesh,

or fowl,


“fish, flesh or fowl” ??


commend

all

summer

long


whatever is

begotten,

born,

and dies


Caught


in that sensual music, all neglect...


Monuments of unageing intellect.


Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through,

A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang

A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow;

A woman, and an arrow on a string;

A pierced boy, image of a star laid low.

That woman, the Great Mother imaging,

Cut out his heart. Some master of design

Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin.

―Parnell‘s Funeral I‖ li. 9-15


That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back,Those bodies from a picture or a coinNor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,

―Her Vision in the Wood‖ (A Woman Young and Old VIII) li. 25-28


What matter that no cannon had been turnedInto a ploughshare? Parliament and kingThought that unless a little powder burnedThe trumpeters might burst with trumpeting

―Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen I‖ li. 19-22

… and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more

Isaiah 2:4 (King James Version)


Gunmoney of James II

both shillings and to scale


the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like my heart‘s blood till better times, or till I am just ready to starve, and then I will buy as my father did the brass money, in K. James‘s time, I who could buy ten pound of it with a guinea.

Jonathan Swift, Drapier’s Letters I


Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths makeOf hammered gold …

―Sailing to Byzantium‖ li. 25-28


annealing striking

The golden smithies of the Emperor!


Hammering the Unity of Being : Yeats and Nietzsche

Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen—das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht*

Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), Vol. 12, p. 312.

* To impress the character of Being on Becoming – that is the highest will to power.

I hail the superhuman;I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,More miracle than bird or handiwork,Planted on the star-lit golden bough,Can like the cocks of Hades crow,Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloudIn glory of changeless metalCommon bird or petalAnd all complexities of mire or blood.

‗Byzantium‘ li. 15-24


Nietzsche : ‗eternal recurrence‘ and the Übermensch

The thought of eternal recurrence, Nietzsche says, is ‗like a hammer in the hand of the most powerful man‘

eternal recurrence = reproductive matrix = eternal currency

the form of hammered gold

in the glory of changeless metal

Matrix and matter of a monumental utterance… hammered into unity


Drafts of ‗Byzantium‘ III

―Yeats's Byzantium Poems: A Study of Their Development‖, Curtis Bradford : PMLA, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Mar., 1960), pp. 110-125

What the hand dare sieze the fire?…What the hammer? what the chain?In what furnace was thy brain?What the anvil?

William Blake ―The Tyger‖


Nietzsche‘s Hammer II

Götzendämmerung : Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert

The testing for ‗hollow idols‘ :

―The Statues‖,―A Bronze Head‖, Maud Gonne/Leda‘s ‗hollow cheeks‘ in ―Among School Children‖

No longer in Lethean foliage caughtBegin the preparation for your deathAnd from the fortieth winter by that thoughtTest every work of intellect or faith,And everything that your own hands have wroughtAnd call those works extravagance of breathThat are not suited for such men as comeProud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

―Vacillation III‖


2. global metaphors – ‘utterances’ of symbols


In a letter to Sturge Moore about the cover design of Four Plays for Dancers (1921) Yeats lists his ‗main symbols‘ as : ‗the hawk... the sun, the moon (in all its phases), Tower, Mask, Tree…‘

cit. Richard Ellman The Identity of Yeats (London, Faber 1964) p. 170

Symbolic Coinage

hawk sun moon tower mask tree


Byzantium

The unpurged images of day recede;The Emperor‘s drunken soldiery are abed;Night resonance recedes, night walkers‘ songAfter great cathedral gong;A starlit or a moonlit dome disdainsAll that man is,All mere complexities,The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,Shade more than man, more image than a shade;For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-clothMay unwind the winding path;A mouth that has no moisture and no breathBreathless mouths may summon;I hail the superhuman;I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.


Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,More miracle than bird or handiwork,Planted on the star-lit golden bough,Can like the cocks of Hades crow,Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloudIn glory of changeless metalCommon bird or petalAnd all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor‘s pavement flitFlames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,Where blood-begotten spirits comeAnd all complexities of fury leave,Dying into a dance,An agony of trance,An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.


Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.The golden smithies of the Emperor!Marbles of the dancing floorBreak bitter furies of complexity,Those images that yetFresh images beget,That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.


3. local prosody – martellato metrics and ‘annealing’ assonance


Mr. Yeats - … What more … can I do on this occasion than express our admiration and thank you for the beautiful visions you have revealed to us from the Emerald Isle? We have delighted in listening to the tales of the fairies and elves, with which you have made us acquainted. We have been especially charmed by your poem about the little ―silver trout‖.

Einar Lönnberg, President of the Swedish Academy of Sciences to Yeats during the award ceremony for the Nobel Prize, Dec 10th 1923

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, ed. Horst Frenz, Elsevier , Amsterdam, 1969


Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes

The Muse Erato(clearly identifiable with kithara and crown of roses) dictating to an enchanted young poet.

A classic muse-matrix model of inspiration of love poetry.

The Nobel Medal for Literature by Erik Lindberg


Muse-Matrix prosody…

Yeats‘s ―The Symbolism of Poetry‖ :

‗those wavering, meditative, organic rhythms, which are the embodiment of the imagination... as subtle, as complex, as full of mysterious life as the body of a flower or a woman.‘


Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating stillAbove the staggering girl, her thighs caressedBy the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers pushThe feathered glory from her loosening thighs?And how can body, laid in that white rush,But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air,Did she put on his knowledge with his powerBefore the indifferent beak could let her drop?

martellato phrases:

great wings beatingdark websnape caughtvague fingerswhite rushstrange heart beatingso caught upbrute blood

elided dactyl phrases(‗terrified vague fingers‘):

staggering girlloosening thighs

(before the indifferent)


Michelangelo 1530, British Museum Antonio Abondio 1550s, National Gallery of Australia


When I had laid it on the floorI went to blow the fire aflame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hairWho called me by my name and ranAnd faded through the brightening air.

―The Song of Wandering Aengus‖ li. 9-16

martellato phrases:

[none]

elided dactyl phrases(sapphic?) :

glimmering girlbrightening air

‗those wavering, meditative, organic rhythms, which are the embodiment of the imagination... as subtle, as complex, as full of mysterious life as the body of a flower or a woman.‘

―The Symbolism of Poetry‖


But this may be well concluded that the male provides the form and the principle of motion and the female provides the body and the matter just as the example of curding milk. Here the body is the milk and the fig juice contains the principle that makes it curdle

[Galen quoting Aristotle, G.A. 729a 10; Kühn IV, 516-517]

Aristotelean Reproductive Matrix

Mat[t]ernity Pat[t]ernity

matrix

infant


Martellato as verbal repetition … marteler

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come. „Sailing to Byzantium‟ IV

At midnight on the Emperor‟s pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,

Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,

Where blood-begotten spirits come

And all complexities of fury leave,

Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. „Byzantium‟ IV


Annealing Assonance I : vowel letter frequency analysis – ‗Sailing to Byzantium‘ III and IV

O sages standing in God‘s holy fireAs in the gold mosaic of a wall,Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,And be the singing-masters of my soul.Consume my heart away; sick with desireAnd fastened to a dying animalIt knows not what it is; and gather meInto the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths makeOf hammered gold and gold enamellingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come.

Frequency

o = 44 = 9.6%a = 44 = 9.6%e = 44 = 9.6%

Expected Frequency

e = 12.7%a = 8.1%o = 7.4%


Annealing Assonance II : ‗hot‘ vowel assonance : ‗Among School Children‘ VII and VIII

Both nuns and mothers worship images,But those the candles light are not as thoseThat animate a mother‘s reveries,But keep a marble or a bronze repose.And yet they too break hearts – O PresencesThat passion, piety or affection knows,And that all heavenly glory symbolise –O self-born mockers of man‘s enterprise;

Labour is blossoming or dancing whereThe body is not bruised to pleasure soul.Nor beauty born out of its own despair,Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Annealing Assonance

plus

Martellato metre

=

orgasmic prosodyof self-engenderingüberphallic‗artifice of eternity‘


4. global prosody – stanzaic form and metric matrices


Draft of ‗Byzantium‘ III

“Yeats's Byzantium Poems: A Study of Their Development”,

Curtis Bradford : PMLA, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Mar., 1960), pp. 110-125

Miracle, bird, or golden handiwork,More miracle than bird or handiworkMutters on a starlit golden boughAll that the cocks of Hades crowOr by the moon embittered scorn aloudIn glory of measured metalLiving leaf or petalAnd Man‘s measureless imagery of mire and blood

From stater to stanza...

A connection betweenthe coin and the octave?

measured metal = changeless metal

circumscribed artifice of eternity...

scorns measureless mire and blood


Another emblem there! That stormy whiteBut seems a concentration of the sky;And, like the soul, it sails into the sightAnd in the morning‘s gone, no man knows why;And is so lovely that it sets to rightWhat knowledge or its lack had set awry,So arrogantly pure, a child might thinkIt can be murdered with a spot of ink.

―Coole and Ballylee, 1931‖ li. 17-24

Measured Gold

Mnemonic effects replacing Mnemosyne Go not to Lethe...


Coda : irony (of) keeping the drowsy Emperor awake

The collapse of the étalon-or and the Steinach Operation

Those masterful images because completeGrew in pure mind, but out of what began?A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slutWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder‘s gone,I must lie down where all the ladders startIn the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

―The Circus Animals‘ Desertion‖ III


What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power;

coins which have lost their pictures and now matter

only as metal, no longer as coins.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne) Trans. Walter Kaufmann. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking Penguin Inc, 1976.

The Truthfulness of Firing Blanks


All is change … utterly


Documents

c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron matrices pres.pdfAnd all complexities of mire or blood. ‗Byzantium‘ li. 15-24 Maintenant la durée : Yeats le maître des matrices,