[ilds] Revenge and the Persian Lady

[william godshalk]

>
>
>Bruce
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
> >From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> >Sent: Feb 28, 2008 12:10 PM
> >To: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> >Subject: Re: [ilds] syllabary and codes
> >
> >On 2/28/2008 10:34 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> >> Why do I think the poem is contemporary with composition?  The 
> colloquial diction for one:  "Say what you like . . . "
> >
> >>         Next day he deliberately left the musical city
> >>         To join a boring water-party on the lake.
> >>         Telling himself 'Say what you like about it,
> >>         I have been spared very much in this business.'
> >
> >
> >I think that I prefer to allow "A Persian Lady" to be ancient or modern
> >in its historical moment, with my reading swinging back and forth
> >between those ambiguous points of reference, "/his time and ours/."
> >
> >Eliot is there too, Bruce, and the colloquial is a sign that he is one
> >of the shadows behind the poem.
> >
> >And we should recall that Eliot used the regularly colloquial voice for
> >figures modern /and /historical--cf. 'breezy' Tiresias, who also worked
> >the typing pools of Georgian London, of course; but also the voice from
> >"The Journey of the Magi" (1936):
> >
> >>         'A cold coming we had of it,
> >>         Just the worst time of the year[. . . .]
> >
> >Eliot's sort of ventriloquism sets its taproots--dry or otherwise--in
> >the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning.
>
> >Bill Godshalk has access to one of Durrell's unpublished limericks, "My
> >Parsee Maiden."  That limerick comes from somewhere near the same moment
> >as "A Persian Lady."  Perhaps Bill would transcribe it for our
> >entertainment?
> >
> >C&c.
> >
> >***
> >> A PERSIAN LADY
> >>
> >> Some diplomatic mission---no such thing as 'fate' ---
> >> Brought her to the city that ripening spring.
> >> She was much pointed out---a Lady-in-Waiting---
> >> To some Persian noble; well, and here she was
> >> Merry and indolent amidst fashionable abundance.
> >> By day under a saffron parasol on royal beaches,
> >> By night in a queer crocketed tent with tassels.
> >>
> >> He noted the perfected darkness of her beauty,
> >> The mind recoiling as from a branding-iron:
> >> The sea advancing and retiring at her lacquered toes;
> >> How would one say 'to enflame' in her tongue,
> >> He wondered, knowing it applied to female beauty?
> >> When their eyes met he felt dis-figured
> >> It would have been simple---three paces apart!
> >>
> >> Disloyal time! They let the seminal instant go,
> >> The code unbroken, the collision of ripening wishes
> >> Abandoned to hiss on in the great syllabaries of memory.
> >> Next day he deliberately left the musical city
> >> To join a boring water-party on the lake.
> >> Telling himself 'Say what you like about it,
> >> I have been spared very much in this business.'
> >>
> >> He meant, I think, that never should he now
> >> Know the slow disgracing of her mind, the slow
> >> Spiral of her beauty's deterioration, flagging desires,
> >> The stagnant fury of the temporal yoke,
> >> Grey temple, long slide into fat.
> >>
> >> On the other hand neither would she build him sons
> >> Or be a subject for verses---the famished in-bred poetry
> >> Which was the fashion of his time and ours.
> >> She would exist, pure, symmetrical and intact
> >> Like the sterile hyphen which divides and joins
> >> In a biography the year of birth and death.
> >>
> >> 1964/ 1961
>
>
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***************************************
W. L. Godshalk		*
Department of English         *
University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
513-281-5927
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