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2020 NPM # 2: Truisms by Louis MacNeice

OK, a different direction and a different place today. Have you ever seen the movie, The Quiet Man, with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara? Depending on your viewpoint, it is either rife with stereotypes or an endearing portrait of a time and place. Regardless, one of its main themes is the idea of homecoming, a concept I revisit frequently in my own writing.

Coming at things from a different direction, there are many viewpoints about parenting, and perception of your own parents. As teens, many (perhaps most) individuals rebel against their parents, craving freedoms of one kind or another. (The Amish have an interesting way of dealing with this. ) Yet in the end, for most people, as they themselves become adults, and then parents, and gain perspective, more often than not they begin to appreciate and understand the forces that made their parents what they were, and eventually, the forces that made themselves into what they are. Generally they gain, in the process, a deeper appreciation for the knowledge and character of those who have gone before.

If you are on the front end of that curve, you will disregard what I have just said. But the farther along the arc of life you travel, the more sense it makes to you. Trust me on this.

(Frederick) Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) Was an Irish Poet and Playwright, part of a circle of well-known British and Irish poets and writers from the 1930’s and 40’s which also included W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis, and others. Much of his playwright duties, interestingly, were writing radio plays for the BBC.

His poetry alternates between thoughtful contrasts and ironies, and pieces whose language is sometimes readable, sometimes difficult. One of his more memorable poems is a short piece with a very simple allegory more common in tone to poets like Houseman or Kingsley. It is called Truisms:

His father gave him a box of truisms Shaped like a coffin, then his father died; The truisms remained on the mantelpiece As wooden as the playbox they had been packed in Or that other his father skulked inside.

What is a truism? It is something that is true, but is generally sounds a little trite. Perhaps it is just stating the obvious. Common examples are “You get what you pay for,” and “It’s always in the last place you look.” My older son tells me these are called Dad Memes nowadays. I guess if I had my choice, I’d rather be amusedly redundant than confidently wrong.

But life happens:

Then he left home, left the truisms behind him Still on the mantelpiece, met love, met war, Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal, Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house He could not remember seeing before, And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from And something told him the way to behave.

The short meter stuffed with the chronology of the son’s life reminds me of Kenneth Ashley’s Rudkin, one of my favorites. What is MacNeice’s poem about? Perspective. That, and how the experiences of our life change our perspective. Our view changes as we advance along the curve.

He raised his hand and blessed his home; The truisms flew and perched on his shoulders And a tall tree sprouted from his father’s grave.

You might also argue that it is a poem about faith vs. disbelief, with faith winning out in the end. That fact alone makes this perhaps unusual for MacNeice, who was largely agnostic but whose father was a minister (and eventually a bishop), and, I presume, would have liked the metaphor at the end.

-- Steve Spanoudis

#louis macneice #macneice #national poetry month #poetry month #irish #20th century #the other pages #theotherpages.org #poetry #poems #poets #poem #poet #homecoming #the quiet man #truisms

I wrote a post about the idea (from here) that Foucault “developed the theme of self-care ironically”, which seems sort of true, and pegged on to it some quotes from Lazzarato about ‘work on the self’ in neoliberal capitalism, as well as on desire and subjectivity. My main feeling currently is that the claustrophobic critique of neoliberal subjectivity should be tempered with a Buddhistic ‘aesthetics of existence’ (and vice versa I suppose), though I can see why it’s a tough sell.

I also posted a quick thing about the Louis MacNeice poem ‘Woods’, the vaguely screamo-like sound of a woodpigeon call, Heidegger’s Lichtung and the difficulty/mystery of communication - which is I guess the other theme of this attempt at a blog. Somewhat ironically for somewhere that was meant to be a place for longer and more worked-out posts, I’m still rushing off more-or-less single takes.

#foucault #philosophy #lazzarato #macneice #poetry #buddhism

Studies on Louise MacNeice

#Louise MacNeice #Ireland #poem #MacNeice #Louis #history #1916 #Easter Rising #Irish history #Belfast #Northern Ireland

Acis and Galatea by Nicolas Poussin (1629) described in the sonnet Poussin by Louis MacNeice.

In that Poussin the clouds are like golden tea, And underneath the limbs flow rhythmically, The cupids' blue feathers beat musically, And we dally and dip our spoon in the golden tea. The tea flows down the steps and up again. An old-world fountain, pouring from sculptured lips, And the chilly marble drop like sugar slips And is lost in the dark gold depths, and the refrain Of tea-leaves floats about and in and out, And the motion is still as when one walks and the moon Walks parallel but relations remain the same. And thus we never reach the dregs of the cup, Though we drink it up and drink it up and drink it up, And thus we dally and dip our spoon.

[The painting is identified in

http://mwbdvjh.muse.jhu.edu/journals/cambridge_quarterly/v038/38.3.walker.html

which discusses the influence Anthony Blunt had on Louis MacNeice's approach to art. The image is taken from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Poussin

The painting itself is in the National Gallery of Ireland. Thanks to @yvonnify for pointing out the poem.]

There is another Poussin Art in Fiction here:

http://artinfiction.tumblr.com/post/90933481136/et-in-arcadia-ego-by-nicolas-poussin-late-1630s

#Poussin #MacNeice

Untitled Project: Robert Smithson Library & Book Club [MacNeice, Louis. Astrology, 1964] Oil paint on carved wood, 2014

#ASTROLOGY #LOUIS MACNEICE #MACNEICE #SCIENCE #TECHNOLOGY #SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY #1964 #HARDCOVER #RESERVED #NO LONGER AVAILABLE

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