Two hebdoxemplary readings

Two weeks ago, Steph (314) wrote an analysis of rememory in Beloved that gives an excellent demonstration of how we can connect concrete character readings (Sethe) to broader textual themes (rememory) to giant literary problems (postmodernism). Although the restraints of the essay didn't allow Steph to read the text too closely, it's easy to see how a longer version of this argument would incorporate a variety of close readings to help nuance this argument.

Toni Morrison plays with a concept called “rememory” in her novel Beloved. This idea is somewhat different from a simple memory. Rememory is the idea that the way we act now is due to the actions that changed us in the past. Rather than just simply remembering something that happened in the past (a memory), rememory gets in the way of what we would normally do with our lives. This theory can be related to many aspects of literature. From the broad to the specific, rememory is actually more applicable to life than it may seem.

This can all be paralleled to the broader picture of the postmodern movement in literature. This movement wouldn’t even be around if modernist writers hadn’t set the framework for it. Postmodern writers can’t escape their past, which is modern writing. The idea that history is all around us is exemplified in this sense. Postmodern writers built off of what modern writers did. Therefore when we are reading postmodern literature, like Morrison’s Beloved, we are seeing the modern undertones that she stemmed off of.

Going a little more specific, rememory further relates to Toni Morrison’s main theme of the novel. She wanted this to be a reference for slave life. Considering that there wasn’t anything in 1987 that really examined the lives of slaves, she wanted this book to do that. Through all the characters we are able to see the horrifying truth of what slave life was like. Morrison is building off of the modern concept of miscommunication with this novel as well. Obviously, the communication barrier between slaves and non-slaves was huge. With this story she is bridging the gap that so many modern writers talk about. Working off of the modern concept that miscommunication is all around us—including in our history—she tries to make slave life come alive for her audience. The audience is in a sense getting a history lesson through the bodies of these characters. These characters relive their horrible past through Morrison’s concept of rememory.

Rememory can be even more specifically related to Sethe. She has a big problem with her memory and rememory. She doesn’t want to remember what happened in her past, but ironically can’t help but be affected by it. She even goes as far as to warn Denver about memories getting in the way of your functioning. In her first reference to rememory, Sethe says to Denver, “you can’t never go there” (page 36) where the “there” she is referring to is the place where rememory takes control. This is another part of the history lesson Morrison is conveying. Although slavery isn’t around today, former slaves are still affected by their past which is one of the main points that Morrison is trying to make by writing this novel. This rememory idea that she is giving her audience really relates to many aspects of her type of literature—postmodernism.

If Steph gives us a strong sense of how we might write concretely even about broad course themes, Leanne (314) models ways in which a comparison across texts can be rooted deeply in a close reading but can take that close reading to analytical heights. Observe in particular the way Leanne quotes Heaney and Hacker: she cites only a few words at a time, and she follows each quotation with extensive analysis and discussion across the two poems. This is an extremely sophisticated approach to literature, and is no different than the way professors and scholars ground their arguments in text.

The problem, which is at the center of “Come to the Bower,” is coping with feelings of temptation and desire of an unattainable or “forbidden” female object. If the poem “Come to the Bower” were an answer to a question, the question would be: How does one create an aesthetic work to adequately convey the poetic strategies used to cope with feelings of desire for an unattainable sexual encounter with another person? Both Seamus Heaney’s “Come to the Bower,” and Marilyn Hacker’s “Lacoste 1,” form similar answers to such a question using a Garden of Eden-like setting, symbols of a “forbidden fruit” of temptation, and nature imagery.

Seamus Heaney, in his work “Come to the Bower,” speaks to a female object of desire. Heaney uses the setting of a bower as a backdrop for his intricate description of an imagined sexual encounter with the female figure. A bower, which can also mean a woman’s bedroom or apartment in a medieval castle, is employed in “Come to the Bower” as a shady, leafy shelter or recess in a garden or wooded environment. Heaney further develops the setting of a garden, perhaps similar to the biblical setting of the Garden of Eden, by using phrases like “By sweetbriar and tangled vetch” and “Of the peat, sharpened willow.” He could also be describing a woman’s bedroom, filled with many roses and small flowers, but there is no doubt that the setting is romantic, dark, and conveys the feeling of temptation for a “forbidden fruit,” or sexual encounter. Heaney creates an image of himself desiring the female object, which is referred to in the poem as “dark-bowered queen” and “Venus bone.” His reference to the female figure as Venus, the roman Goddess of love and beauty, and “dark-bowered queen,” portray her to be an idealized, desirable woman of beauty, perhaps even a symbol of the forbidden fruit of temptation.

In comparison to Marilyn Hacker’s poem, “Lacoste 1,” a biblical reference to the Garden of Eden, which is used by Heaney as well (the Bower), employs the feeling of temptation. In her phrase, “But I’m bad at being bad, and risk that satisfaction on a kiss,” Hacker creates the feeling of temptation and uses the word ‘kiss’ as a symbol of the forbidden fruit. Both poets write of a craving for an enticing, sexual encounter with a female figure. Hacker, like Heaney, uses nature imagery (flowers, water, and fruit/animals in nature) to create a personal, private depiction of herself developing an intense yearning for an idealized female object.

Hacker’s use of the phrase, “I worked, walked, ate, grew brown, wiry, and lissome climbing paths along peach-orchards’ plaid on vineyards,” employs the natural image of a peach orchard and uses the peach as a symbol of something sweet, desirable, and even abundant around her, yet unattainable, or forbidden from consumption. Like the encounter she desires with the female she speaks of, Hacker’s use of the peach is describing a “forbidden fruit.” In “Come to the Bower,” Heaney uses the phrase “And spring water starts to rise around her,” which creates an image of the desired female as a goddess surrounded by natural, spring water. His use of ‘spring water’ may symbolize the potential for cleansing or revitalization of himself if he satisfies his feelings of temptation for the woman.

The nature imagery and symbols of life in nature used by both Heaney and Hacker reveal a similar aesthetic strategy for coping with feelings of temptation for an unachievable encounter with a desired female figure.

(I have slightly reparagraphed Leanne's essay for clarity.)