A minor point: Bhattikavya is not an example of shlesha. It is a re-telling of the Ramayana that uses exceptional and unfamiliar forms set out in Panini's grammar that one is unlikely to encounter elsewhere. It does not function as a commentary on Panini's grammar; it is meant to be read along with a commentary as Bhatti himself mentions in the work. A genuine example of extended shlesha is Raghavapandaviya which simultaneously narrates the Ramayana and Mahabharata in 13 cantos. There are also other works that simultaneously have 6 meanings (shat-sandhana-kavya). I am in the process of editing a text which consists of just one verse of 32 syllables, which in turn yields 64 verses when its syllables are shifted cyclically (clockwise and counterclockwise). These 64 verses tell the story of the Ramayana.
Thank you Suhas. When I studied the Bhattikavya the part we read was described as an example of extended shlesha but I’ll edit the post to delete it so as not to mislead anyone. Thanks for commenting!
I've never been sure if I think that Eliot's evening 'like a patient etherised upon a table' should be described as surrealist, but it certainly has the force of shock that the Surrealists sought with their conjunctions. The Apollinaire simile here is in some ways milder by comparison: there's arguably a Dresden shepherdess-y shape to the Eiffel Tower, and the bleating of the bridges could presumably be explained as traffic noise etc. What about this run of similes from the draft of The Waste Land, though?
In the evening people hang upon the bridge rail
Like onions under the eaves.
In the square they lean against each other, like sheaves
Like onions under the eaves! How wonderful. Have to admit I have never looked at the drafts of TWL. Is it all that fun? You're right that this particular bit of Apollinaire is actually one of his milder bits of surrealism, though I do particularly like it, not least because (as you imply) it's sort of unseeable once you've thought of the splay of it as her skirts.
The drafts of TWL are, alas, not all that fun, but those are some of the lines I always think could have stayed in the poem -- although they are perhaps *more* Surrealist than anything else that survived the cut, except perhaps 'bats with baby faces'. Eliot tended to distance himself from the avant-garde radicalism of contemporary Paris (Surrealism, Stein), but of course he was well aware of it, and his own Symbolist origins bring him close to it in spirit. His later Anglo-Catholicism, though, increasingly brought his dream imagery within a more legible framework, and overshadowed English Surrealists like Humphrey Jennings and David Gascoyne. I think that someone like John Ashbery was trying to escape the influence of Eliot and Auden on the Anglophone modernist tradition by (literally) returning to France and Surrealist poetics in his early work. An Ashbery line like 'The lake a lilac cube' feels to me more Surrealist in its *impossible* yet beautiful juxtaposition of objects than much I can think of in pre-1950 Anglophone poetry.
I agree that Eliot is not a very thorough-going surrealist or imagist or symbolist in the end. I think the French influence on his work is most obvious in his use of form and tone, which are so obviously indebted to that "vers libre" generation of French poets -- for me, reading those French poets for the first time, already knowing Eliot very well, was one of the clearest of those "ahh, that's where it's from" moments, a bit like reading Jesuit Latin poets when you know English metaphysical verse well already, or Callimachus if you know Augustan Roman poetry. Very interesting what you say about Ashbery escaping Eliot/Auden by returning to the French. I know Ashbery much less well than either the British or the French poets in question, but I'm very struck by the line you quote. I know David Gascoyne, but not Humphrey Jennings. Shall pursue both of these points, thanks.
My first reaction to these (which I'd never seen either) was that they feel like riffs on/copies of Pound's “petals on a wet, dark bough.” I could see Eliot taking them out as too obviously derivative… Is that a silly thought? I don't know the relative dates, but somehow the petals feel more authentic than Eliot's similes here.
I know what you mean -- more the influence of imagism in this bit than surrealism for sure. I do really like the onions under the eaves though, so domestic and specific!
This is obvious now you mention it, but I hadn't seen it at all! Imagism and surrealism I guess had that common wish to stimulate perception with surprising likeness -- but Imagism, as its name implies, was more photographic than dream-resemblance. Pound's editing of The Waste Land is very focused on removing derivative material (e.g. passages too much like Joyce or Eliot's own early poetry) so he may have seen his own influence too much in this. Something tangential that this discussion has made me notice is that there are almost no original similes as such in The Waste Land: really only 'Like a taxi throbbing waiting', if you discount 'like a burnished throne' as Shakespeare. These lines would have increased that tally significantly!
That’s rather remarkable about the lack of similes — I had no idea. Thanks for sending me back to do a reread — it had been decades!
I suppose an image above a mantelpiece “as though a window” is barely that — nothing like these from the draft, in any case.
By the way, I once had the radio on here (in Swedish) while cooking, only listening with half an ear, and suddenly the unmistakable opening words of Burnt Norton came on, with the right rhythm and meaning — but in Swedish. It was a truly bizarre experience, hearing the words but in the wrong words, if that makes any sense.
In any case, the onions, though I agree with you both that they’re great, really do feel like copies of the Pound: crowds, and individuals compared to flora 😊.
"It’s as if an element of surrealism... has become, in this context, a kind of generic marker, part of the way that you indicate that what you are writing is a poem." This is so true. When I first started reading contemporary poetry (early 2010s?) it already stood out - e.g. the young Faber poets. A kind of generational identity which was too shy/self-effacing to really announce itself, but felt pretty established all the same. Irony, too, which feels connected somehow and is/was perhaps even more pervasive (I think sincerity is coming back now, for better and often for worse).
Hmm, yes, how interesting. I hadn't thought about trying to locate when the "surrealism-lite" as a marker of poetry first came in. 15-ish years ago sounds about right to me though. You see it all the time in US poetry too, perhaps of longer standing there.
Someone said on a piece I'd written "just enough mysteriousness and brevity". I have surrealistic pretensions if nowt else, and I put that down to my aim to show not tell - and remain ambiguous. Homer's poppy/rain example is beautiful brief singing language seems to grasp the nettle. Bear with, having read up on surrealistic art, and revived an interest in Marinetti, I await delivery of his works plus Dada and After - Extremist Modernism in English Literature; droool https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Dada_and_After/-RXpAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook
A minor point: Bhattikavya is not an example of shlesha. It is a re-telling of the Ramayana that uses exceptional and unfamiliar forms set out in Panini's grammar that one is unlikely to encounter elsewhere. It does not function as a commentary on Panini's grammar; it is meant to be read along with a commentary as Bhatti himself mentions in the work. A genuine example of extended shlesha is Raghavapandaviya which simultaneously narrates the Ramayana and Mahabharata in 13 cantos. There are also other works that simultaneously have 6 meanings (shat-sandhana-kavya). I am in the process of editing a text which consists of just one verse of 32 syllables, which in turn yields 64 verses when its syllables are shifted cyclically (clockwise and counterclockwise). These 64 verses tell the story of the Ramayana.
Thank you Suhas. When I studied the Bhattikavya the part we read was described as an example of extended shlesha but I’ll edit the post to delete it so as not to mislead anyone. Thanks for commenting!
Especially encouraging to know that at least one person is reading the footnotes!
I've never been sure if I think that Eliot's evening 'like a patient etherised upon a table' should be described as surrealist, but it certainly has the force of shock that the Surrealists sought with their conjunctions. The Apollinaire simile here is in some ways milder by comparison: there's arguably a Dresden shepherdess-y shape to the Eiffel Tower, and the bleating of the bridges could presumably be explained as traffic noise etc. What about this run of similes from the draft of The Waste Land, though?
In the evening people hang upon the bridge rail
Like onions under the eaves.
In the square they lean against each other, like sheaves
Or walk like fingers on a table
Like onions under the eaves! How wonderful. Have to admit I have never looked at the drafts of TWL. Is it all that fun? You're right that this particular bit of Apollinaire is actually one of his milder bits of surrealism, though I do particularly like it, not least because (as you imply) it's sort of unseeable once you've thought of the splay of it as her skirts.
The drafts of TWL are, alas, not all that fun, but those are some of the lines I always think could have stayed in the poem -- although they are perhaps *more* Surrealist than anything else that survived the cut, except perhaps 'bats with baby faces'. Eliot tended to distance himself from the avant-garde radicalism of contemporary Paris (Surrealism, Stein), but of course he was well aware of it, and his own Symbolist origins bring him close to it in spirit. His later Anglo-Catholicism, though, increasingly brought his dream imagery within a more legible framework, and overshadowed English Surrealists like Humphrey Jennings and David Gascoyne. I think that someone like John Ashbery was trying to escape the influence of Eliot and Auden on the Anglophone modernist tradition by (literally) returning to France and Surrealist poetics in his early work. An Ashbery line like 'The lake a lilac cube' feels to me more Surrealist in its *impossible* yet beautiful juxtaposition of objects than much I can think of in pre-1950 Anglophone poetry.
I agree that Eliot is not a very thorough-going surrealist or imagist or symbolist in the end. I think the French influence on his work is most obvious in his use of form and tone, which are so obviously indebted to that "vers libre" generation of French poets -- for me, reading those French poets for the first time, already knowing Eliot very well, was one of the clearest of those "ahh, that's where it's from" moments, a bit like reading Jesuit Latin poets when you know English metaphysical verse well already, or Callimachus if you know Augustan Roman poetry. Very interesting what you say about Ashbery escaping Eliot/Auden by returning to the French. I know Ashbery much less well than either the British or the French poets in question, but I'm very struck by the line you quote. I know David Gascoyne, but not Humphrey Jennings. Shall pursue both of these points, thanks.
My first reaction to these (which I'd never seen either) was that they feel like riffs on/copies of Pound's “petals on a wet, dark bough.” I could see Eliot taking them out as too obviously derivative… Is that a silly thought? I don't know the relative dates, but somehow the petals feel more authentic than Eliot's similes here.
*wet, black bough, not wet, dark bough
I know what you mean -- more the influence of imagism in this bit than surrealism for sure. I do really like the onions under the eaves though, so domestic and specific!
This is obvious now you mention it, but I hadn't seen it at all! Imagism and surrealism I guess had that common wish to stimulate perception with surprising likeness -- but Imagism, as its name implies, was more photographic than dream-resemblance. Pound's editing of The Waste Land is very focused on removing derivative material (e.g. passages too much like Joyce or Eliot's own early poetry) so he may have seen his own influence too much in this. Something tangential that this discussion has made me notice is that there are almost no original similes as such in The Waste Land: really only 'Like a taxi throbbing waiting', if you discount 'like a burnished throne' as Shakespeare. These lines would have increased that tally significantly!
That’s rather remarkable about the lack of similes — I had no idea. Thanks for sending me back to do a reread — it had been decades!
I suppose an image above a mantelpiece “as though a window” is barely that — nothing like these from the draft, in any case.
By the way, I once had the radio on here (in Swedish) while cooking, only listening with half an ear, and suddenly the unmistakable opening words of Burnt Norton came on, with the right rhythm and meaning — but in Swedish. It was a truly bizarre experience, hearing the words but in the wrong words, if that makes any sense.
In any case, the onions, though I agree with you both that they’re great, really do feel like copies of the Pound: crowds, and individuals compared to flora 😊.
Agree re Eliot. He probably read too much into the incised eye in Dali's film. Extremism isn't allways anything elseism:)
Superb, thank you Victoria.
"It’s as if an element of surrealism... has become, in this context, a kind of generic marker, part of the way that you indicate that what you are writing is a poem." This is so true. When I first started reading contemporary poetry (early 2010s?) it already stood out - e.g. the young Faber poets. A kind of generational identity which was too shy/self-effacing to really announce itself, but felt pretty established all the same. Irony, too, which feels connected somehow and is/was perhaps even more pervasive (I think sincerity is coming back now, for better and often for worse).
Hmm, yes, how interesting. I hadn't thought about trying to locate when the "surrealism-lite" as a marker of poetry first came in. 15-ish years ago sounds about right to me though. You see it all the time in US poetry too, perhaps of longer standing there.
We get everything second-hand!
Someone said on a piece I'd written "just enough mysteriousness and brevity". I have surrealistic pretensions if nowt else, and I put that down to my aim to show not tell - and remain ambiguous. Homer's poppy/rain example is beautiful brief singing language seems to grasp the nettle. Bear with, having read up on surrealistic art, and revived an interest in Marinetti, I await delivery of his works plus Dada and After - Extremist Modernism in English Literature; droool https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Dada_and_After/-RXpAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook