/lit/ - Literature

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1681399]

Interpretations thread no. 2
Offer up an interpretation of your own of something you've read. Argue to whatever extent you want, it doesn't matter so long as it gets people's imaginations going.

Patrick Kavanagh poem 'Epic' is ultimately self defeating for the self-contained value he professes in the poem, that "Gods make their own importance", (which in the context of the poem in one sense amounts to a renewal of nationalist pride and self-definition), because the manner in which he emphasizes the importance of such self-definition is only possible through the affirmation of others, the "Munich bother" causes him to lose faith in the relevance of the affairs of his countrymen but it is just as important an aspect in his ability to set those very affairs apart. He cannot even convey this without drawing on the mythology of another, "Homer's ghost", and in a way this has been one of Ireland's lingering problematics in a postcolonial state - the problem of self-definition. I do not think Kavanagh offers us a solution in his poem. In fact I think he serves merely to affirm such a reliance on the Other.

[Anonymous No.1681402]

are you fucking shitting me?

[Anonymous No.1681405]

Oedipus Rex is a dark comedy because I was laughing all the way through.

[Anonymous No.1681411]

You're a fucking loser who feels the need to validate himself to an internet message board full of people who hate him.

Die in an embarassing fashion.

[Anonymous No.1681410]

perfect opportunity to dump a pdf of my dissertation, tentatively titled "sirius black and professor lupin were hella boning"

[Anonymous No.1681420]

Brownbear takes a night off, Anonymous wins. Suck a million dicks, Herp&Derpy.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1681462]

Here is another one by me from an earlier thread a few months back while I remember:

The Road is a McCarthy's take on the Binding of Isaac. It mirrors Kierkegaard's focus on the myth as a sort of ultimate testing-ground of true faith, but where Kierkegaard does not push such a situation to its worst extremes, this is exactly what McCarthy does in situating the father's burden in a terrible world. Instead of an abstract deity serving as the catalyst for sacrifice, the wasteland (where there is absolutely no hope) serves as the ultimate catalyst. McCarthy makes a clear statement here: even in such bleak conditions faith does not overcome such a bond. But just like Kierkegaard, McCarthy opts out of following the gruesome outcome of true faith: the boy is saved in the end just as Isaac is saved.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1681464]

also, going to bed now, will bump tomorrow afternoon.

[Anonymous No.1681489]

I enjoyed the premiere too bro.

I fucking love Irons.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682017]

bump

[Anonymous No.1682027]

DEEP AND EDGY'S POSTS ARE TOO DEEP AND MAYBE EDGY FOR MOST. BEING ANYTHING BUT IRRELEVANT TO LITERATURE ANONS AND TRIPFAGS ALIKE HAVE NO MEANS OTHER THAN JUST SPEWING FORTH RANDOM SHIT IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN HIM.

[sage No.1682072]

sage

[Anonymous No.1682140]

>>1682072
SOMETIMES A SAGE CAN HAVE THE OPPOSITE AFFECT, ESPECIALLY ON A SLOW BOARD. THIS POST IS PROOF OF THAT, SINCE YOU REPLIED WITH A 'SAGE' IT GIVES ME A REPLY TO 'SAG' TO.

[Anonymous No.1682143]

>>1681399

shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.1682147]

Anon, in this instance, is being fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.1682154]

>>1682147

fuck you, he made this thread three times last night in response to claims that he was a windbag. this is the one that's still on page 0, so what? you think it's ok for people to act like faggots constantly on /lit/, then the second he posts something serious we have to show him respect?

[Anonymous No.1682158]

>>1682154
NO, YOU'RE TO PUT ASIDE WHO HE IS, SEE THE POST FOR WHAT IT IS, AND RESPOND TO IT ACCORDINGLY.

IF AN ANON POSTED THIS THREAD, WOULDN'T YOU REACTED DIFFERENTLY?

[Anonymous No.1682157]

>>1682154
>you think it's ok for people to act like faggots constantly on /lit/

No

> then the second he posts something serious we have to show him respect?

Yes.

[Brownbear !Wfn4kkpLag!!fEGZw8wphGR No.1682167]

the wasteland is an allegory for reading where T.S Elliot examines the ways in which we write and read and intend to lead the reader in circles, looking up references and from there more references until he finally comes back to the original poem.

supported by his intertextuality to a shit load a stuff.

dunno if it's original but it's what i thought...

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682174]

>>1682154
>he made this thread three times last night
>Interpretations thread no. 2

>in response to claims that he was a windbag
that sounds a little too composed for what people were posting last night

[Anonymous No.1682347]

http://pastebin com TEiHcQbU

Satire, not very good, but good enough for me.

[Friendly Neighbourhood Spiderman !!imEIcTjbs/H No.1682361]

It's not mine, but reading The Raven as an elegaic paraclausithyron. It cannot be unseen.

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682370]

This thread is absurdly pretentious. I'm not impressed, D&E. Nevertheless:

>>1682167
It's an analysis of how we read poetry, but not because of the reasons you said.

1984 is not a critique of totalitarianism but of modernism.

[Anonymous No.1682376]

>this thread

[Brownbear !Wfn4kkpLag!!fEGZw8wphGR No.1682404]

>>1682370
>>1682370
care to expand?
you seem to think that's a definitive interpretation

[Anonymous No.1682424]

>>1681399

Okay I'll bite. I actually think Epic is one of the few poems where Kavanagh says anything remotely true or reasonable (90% of his work is tainted by the fact hes such a bitter old fuck).

First of all, Ireland has never had any real problems with "post colonialism", as Ireland had a unified culture before being subjugated, and successfully held onto those values throughout the occupation. Frankly I don't know why you brought this up, it has no relevance to the poem.

Second, the peom is not empahsising the ineed for "self-definition" but the complete opposite. It is arguing that such definiton is of no relevance. The line "Gods make their own importance" expresses this perfectly. The notion of assigining various levels of "importance" to events is unnecessary for the real world, for only for mythology.

The compariosn the The Iliad is completely apt, as at its heart its nothing more than a local row. (Hot girl runs off and sexes boy, her father gets all mad) The Duffys and McCabe for the poem have just as much motivation to fight as the characters in the Iliad, the only difference is the scale.

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682434]

The references are not to be looked up and investigated. Rather, they make up part of what Richards describes as the poem's 'music of ideas' - that is, the way the poem is meant to be interpreted. While previous poets needed a continuous thread of narrative - an 'action' to suit to the 'word' - Eliot removes the 'action' and leaves just the 'word' and illustrates that our reaction to a poem is based just as much, if not more, on the emotional state that the timbre and tone of a piece can conjure up in us as it is on an intellectual response to a poem's perceived message. In this way it could be described as an analysis on how poetry is read.

[Anonymous No.1682450]

/lit/ is the tale of a polarization of forces, good vs evil, anonymity vs tripfaggotry. Within this framework, tripfaggotry takes an apparently messianic role, and anon is portrayed as the adversarial figure. However, as one delves deeper into the narrative, it is revealed that both sides of the dichotomy are equally meaningless; they are both just masks, worn by pretentious arrogant faggots, on the internet.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682452]

>>1682424
>Ireland has never had any real problems with "post colonialism"
Yes, it has. There are several prominent examples of this, and especially the tension and after-effects of colonisation: one being the dispute between Britain and Ireland over the use of Irish ports for the British army in WW2, which was denied by a neutral Ireland. There was a possibilty that such tensions would have amounted to a re-colonisation. There is also the example of the Anglo-Irish Trade War, an conflict which developed out of the Free State's refusal to pay land annuities to their previously colonising power. Both of these examples, especially the latter, arose from the interplay of forces between coloniser and colonised.


>Ireland had a unified culture before being subjugated
It was in fact the lack of a unified culture that inspired the Irish Renaissance, which was an attempt to consolidate Irish culture and inspire a newfound interest in it.

>I don't know why you brought this up, it has no relevance to the poem.
I didn't bring it up, I didn't say anything about a unified culture. I spoke of a renewal of nationalist pride and self-definition, which is made prevalent in the poem through first a doubting of relevance, and then re-affirmed through reference to mythology.

>Gods make their own importance" expresses this perfectly
Making your own importance is an act of self-definition.

>The notion of assigining various levels of "importance" to events is unnecessary for the real world, for only for mythology
I guess a nuclear strike on russia is no more important than stubbing my nail on a toe then. Whatever, dude.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682456]

>>1682452
>Ireland has never had any real problems with "post colonialism"

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682460]

>>1682452

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682479]

>>1682452
>Ireland has never had any real problems with "post colonialism"
>being blown to pieces is not a real problem

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682533]

>>1682479
You're responding to a post arguing the same thing as you.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682537]

>>1682533
I'm responding to my own posts, as a continuation.

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682567]

>>1682537
So you are.

[Anonymous No.1682584]

OP's prose is so cringe-worthy.

Oh I really love this bag of prepositions, "-tion"s and latinate words.

Come on, man. Come on. No one is fooled.

Unless you're trolling. Then I am fooled.

[Scorpion Ranger !ne3aBUNfxE No.1682605]

TEST TEST TEST

[Anonymous No.1682627]

>>1681399
D&E's interpretation of Kavanagh is alright with me. And whoever said Ireland hasn't had problems as postcolonial or subaltern is fucking retarded.

>>1682167
I agree that Eliot is trying to create a new method of reading but not in the way you're suggesting. My analysis is not original by any means but I agree with the argument that in the postwar atmosphere The Waste Land was written in, Eliot is trying to rebuild a literary society from what he sees as a total failure. To do this he needs to reach back in the history of literature, beginning again with the Greeks and moving forward in time. This way he can affect the future in a positive way. He's using poetry as a way to ask why and provide the answer. His self-referential points only further connect what he is creating as the new literary canon.... There's the short version, anyway.

[Anonymous No.1682641]

>>1682450
I think we can go a lot further here. The intended narrative of /lit/ (if indeed there was one at all) was one of anonymous intellectuality manifested in literature based discussion. A hive mind if you will. However the anonymity of the chan has ensured that this has not come to be for various reasons which I'm not going to go into; in a nutshell, if you're anonymous you might as well troll people because it's fun. The presence of tripfags within the chan creates a polarity in which one end revels in anonymity and the other in identity. By seeking identity in anonymity and alongside other anonymous posters, Deep&Edgy is attempting to identify himself within a sea of anonymity, of non-identity, attempting to state his presence within the hive mind and therefore his significance and importance. He singles himself and others out from amongst the crowd of anonymous. Why does he do this? Most likely an inability to identify himself within the outside world. Suffering rejection from his peers he seeks sanctuary and meaning within nothingness, alongside the nameless and the deprived. This is the discourse of the chan. We as anonymous recognise and therefore create the identity which the Tripfag desires for himself, a creation which he feels people within the real world fail to take part in. This is probably where the desire stems from (this part is pseudo-psycho babble, I'm probably going a bit off track).

Deep&Edgy may not be edgy, but he is indeed deep, highly insecure and probably a bit depressed.

[Anonymous No.1682645]

>>1682627
A literary society? I think Eliot is more concerned with society as a whole. The Wasteland is rich with cultural & social intertextuality, biblical passages, moral teachings etc.

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682652]

>>1682627
Why am I wrong?

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682660]

>>1682652
(To clarify, I am not, of course, wrong, I am just interested in knowing why you think so.)

[Anonymous No.1682663]

>>1682645
You're reading the emphasis incorrectly. Eliot believed that all society was influenced directly by literature so a literary society refers to a civilised one. But civilisation failed during the war. Also, I would argue that Eliot refutes most of the religious references. And the moral teachings are not specifically Christian.

>>1682652
You're not. I was just elaborating a little. Brownbear was my reference.

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682671]

>>1682663
"but not in the way you're suggesting"
Why not?

[Anonymous No.1682680]

>>1682671
Is this BB? I don't pay attention to tripcodes. If it is- To me it sounded like you were arguing that Eliot's self-reflexivity is in place to create a working narrative within The Waste Land. I think he is using it to essentially canonise his own poem by constantly putting it on the same level of those he considers to be the essential works of lit.

[Anonymous No.1682681]

>>1682680
samefag here. i'm going to the pub right now so i can't continue but will bump the thread again when i get back if people are still talking about this

[ElegentiaeArbiter !bHPPL//q.s No.1682713]

>>1682680
...no, this is ElegentiaeArbiter, as you can see from the green text right above this and many other messages.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1682860]

bump

[Anonymous No.1682871]

>>1682645

I thought the multiple references in The Waste Land were a sign of a fragmented & disjointed time, in which Eliot tries to piece together meaning in such a hopeless era by looking back to the past for answers. For example, the passage where he compares himself to Philomela where he is raped, & turned into a nightingale & tries to sing his sadness in a different language, but it doesn't come out quite right ("jug jug jug / jug jug jug / so rudely forc'd")

[Anonymous No.1684713]

>>1682713
Ahhh I finally figured out why you're all butthurt about which I think is >>1682434 yes/no?

Sorry, I hadn't even read that reply until I reread the thread today. That's why I was confused. Anyway, as it turns out you are wrong.

I think the references were crucial for Eliot. If you read earlier drafts of The Waste Land he goes into much more detail about them and provides the reader with an easier narrative to follow. It wasn't until Ezra Pound got his jew-hating hands on it that so much was cut out (thank god for that, though). I agree with you insofar as Eliot not needing a narrative to make the poetry work but your (or Richards's) analysis seems to leave out the idea of agency which I think it much more important. You are also suggesting a sense of independence in Eliot that I don't think is there. The Waste Land is so powerful because Eliot's agency IS his source texts. To disregard those is a bit immature.

I agree with this guy >>1682871
which is pretty much what I said in my first post.

Glad I saved this off page 14. Was too drunk last night to comment.

[Anonymous No.1684718]

>>1682456
Your picture proves anon's point. Ireland is/was until at least very recently never post colonial, but still colonial. army still had to be there. idjit.

[Anonymous No.1684720]

Obviously, something is "wrong" with Milton's portrait of God as an absolute monarch in Paradise Lost. Had Milton wanted, he could have portrayed God as something more abstract (and less controversial), as Dante did in the "Paradiso" where he portrays God as the intersection of light. Critics should be asking themselves what exactly Milton was getting at, rather than trying to give us the old song and dance that while Milton spent his whole life railing against absolute monarchs on earth, he was just peachy keen about absolute monarchs in heaven.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1684882]

>>1684718
>Ireland is/was until at least very recently never post colonial
Ireland became a Free State in 1922, when the colonising force left Ireland. It was then a post-colonial state. Northern Ireland is not post-colonial because it is still, or is, a part of England. The army is not in Ireland. So no, my picture does not prove his point.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1685209]

bump for more interpretations

[Anonymous No.1685231]

Green light in Gatsby & Eye of Sauron

shit was SO 'stache

[Anonymous No.1685243]

>>1684720

niiiiiiice

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1685408]

bump

[Ranga's Hat No.1685433]

Caligula might have been an inspiration for the typical Alpha attitude in BNW

[Anonymous No.1685455]

Scooby-Doo and Shaggy are bankrolling the whole Mystery Machine operation with the money they made from robbing the bank of Hanoi right at the end of the Viet Nam war, and at the end of Shag's third, brain-breaking tour in the jungle (coincidentally, the stooges he set up for the bank heist also ended up living in a van, and solving mysteries, but that's another story). Shag finally accepted the stupidity of the war (and drugs) during the mission to investigate colonel Kurtz. He was discharged on an insanity jacket after trying to pull the mask from the colonel, claiming he was just the janitor Fred and Daphne are kept around for two reasons: Shaggy is too boxed to drive most of the time and Scooby is a dog and he can't drive. The other reason is that Shag, like most Nam veterans on the run from a slightly dodgy past, needs a front man, a 'face' if you like, for his operation, otherwise as a drifter with a chequered past, riddled with violence, accompanied only by a dog who he claims talks, would be in jail faster than you can say 'rednek sherrif'.

Velma is in the van because she is Shaggy's fucktoy, of course, and she's prepared to do all that kinky stuff he got a taste for in Da Nang. Plus she doesn't mind doing Scooby. Plus she's fucking hot.

All the mysteries are solved by Shag, because they are actually hallucinations - when the mask comes off, Shaggy is actually slicing an innocent janitor's face off with a razor and then nailing it back on upside down. Fred doesn't care because fuck Fred.

[Anonymous No.1685491]

>>1685455

So, on a scale of one to Sheen, how fucking high are you right now?