Literaryspot

Dean J Baker - Horatio Says Not Me

This poem makes me think of Laurence Sterne’s great comic novel, Tristram Shandy, in the deceptively frivolous last line of the poet’s denial in not having written the poem for someone special; all the statements of denial follow the well written verse of submission in the end - with the nonchalent tone of, ‘well actually I did’ which makes this poem a beautiful one to re-read.

This style of using satire to counteract a flow of denials is none so well expressed as in Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent, whereby the hero allows the readers to doubt how much he can and do know about himself; in the case of this poem, about the emotions implied.

The novel is however, a thoroughly enjoyable read, of Tristram’s beginnings, which we only get to, in the 4th volume and which brings to mind Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim where the descriptions take up much of the novel and readers’ imaginations.

The conclusion to Sterne’s novel though is, the readers are inert participants in the life of someone which wasn’t totally true and the serious underlying theme is that things aren’t what they appear to be - the difference in the way this novel tells us that, is in its consistent use of imageries which show a sense of disconnection and especially through the ploy of breaking off from the story, during the narration, to speak directly to the reader, which makes this novel probably the first of its kind.

As with Charlie Chaplin’s heroines, the camera’s eye is their friend, the desired effect being to make us active participants in the scene; we sense our ‘presence’ at the crucial moment of heightened drama - and are witnesses to the fate, sometimes fatal, of the damsels’ in distress and inevitably we become their accomplices.

This also brings to mind our literary conversation with other writers and in reference to

CRITICAL MASS: A Conversation with Anne McLean on:

http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com

Now the focus is on you and your thoughts.

http://www.collsliterary.blogspot.com/

CRITICAL MASS: A Conversation with Anne McLean 

I have great admiration for writers who can translate novels written in another language into English and Anne McLean is one who has been acclaimed to do just that. It is sometimes difficult even to comprehend the theme in a novel written originally in English so the art of translating from one language to another is an extremely complicated one. I tried reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll in French but somehow the incidence of Alice going through the tunnel in an effort to find an opening to ‘reality’ got lost in complicated imageries which gave for me a new meaning to the term ‘adventures’.

For a poetical ‘conversation’ - ‘Horatio Says Not Me’ by Dean Baker, take a look at http://deanjbaker.blogspot.com/

http://www.collsliterary.blogspot.com/