This may be one of MacBeth's greatest lines, and it calls out to one of
Shakespeare's: "Light thickens, and the crow / Makes wing to the rooky
wood." (There are more owls in the aviary of Macbeth than in any other
play, and they are all emblems of the title role, where there's a Banquo
hoovering in the background of the banquet, behind the banquette.)
On Wed, 14 May 2008 16:07:49 +0200
C Addison <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> There's a poem by George MacBeth in which an owl is described as
> "hoovering over the floor of the wood," which gives the word a less
> housewifely feel--the owl may be vacuuming up small prey as he flies but
> this "hoovering" IS a kind of "hovering," with the owl-sounds added...
> ghosts can hoot--or perhaps moan--quietly in the background, too? The word
> has onomatopoeic possibilities that don't resemble the sound of a motor...
>
> Catherine
>
>
>> The only thing I would venture to add from attempting to diagnose my own
>> laughter (perhaps not ever a good idea) is that the physical activities
>> conjured up by hoovering and hovering are such as to reinforce all of
>> this: even hovering is a bit demeaning to ghosts, but hoovering creates
>> for me a mental image of busy to-ing and fro-ing, pushing the snout of a
>> machine into corners and so forth, an almost dance-like motion that
>> comes to epitomize the kind of silly busy-ness we resort to when the big
>> picture is beyond us--if we can't do anything about that, we can at
>> least make the living room presentable. There is a gender as well as
>> class dimension, perhaps: Ghost as Nervous Nellie. But in any case I
>> think puns are sometimes, though not always, powerful because of the
>> incongruous physical images that accompany the meanings of the conjoined
>> words: "doggie dog world" gets me thinking of the way dogs shake
>> themselves when they're wet.
>>
>> JH
>>
>> James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
>>> Prof. Hedley: You're welcome. Perhaps I failed to make the point you
>>> wanted, though, which would have been about what's usually called "comic
>>> relief," whether internal to the play, or external to it (on the
>>> student's paper). Inside the play, this relief is supplied by the
>>> grave-digger, who remembers the avuncular jester Yorick, who is almost
>>> outside the play: like the verbally naive student who was quoted. The
>>> grave-digger is doing the present hoovering (menial tasks: entertaining
>>> with schtick, burying corpses), and he's in the foreground; the
>>> entertaining practical joker Yorick is dead -- yet abiding in the
>>> grave-digger's memory, and therefore like the ghost, hoovering in the
>>> background. -- Jim N.
>>>
>>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 17:38:37 -0400
>>> Jane Hedley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>> Oh, my! I'm so glad I asked--this is vintage. And thank you for
>>>> appending the poem, whose first stanza is indeed eerily a propos.
>>>>
>>>> Jane Hedley
>>>>
>>>> James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 11:59:15 -0400
>>>>> Jane Hedley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>> Professor Nohrnberg, I'd be grateful if you could take a run at the
>>>>> Ghost
>>>>> of Hamlet's father hoovering in the background--which I think you
>>>>> haven't
>>>>> yet commented on. It's the one of all of these wonderful bloopers
>>>>> that has
>>>>> me erupting into giggles every time I think of it--and yet, I can't
>>>>> figure
>>>>> out how this approach can be used to account for its risibility.
>>>>>
>>>>> Prof. Hedley:
>>>>>
>>>>> Well of course the niave and child-like reduction of the "doggie dog
>>>>> world" one was easier, given its departure from the Mondo Cane /
>>>>> dog-eat-dog world of the opening lines of the Iliad and its
>>>>> comparison of Achilles to the Dog-star near the opening of Bk. 22
>>>>> (note the scavenger-like demon that gapes for a warrior at his death
>>>>> -- Hector says it's these same death-spirits that bore the ships of
>>>>> the Greek 'dogs' in their sweep against Ilium in the first place).
>>>>>
>>>>> But the Hamlet one is much funnier (or, in my terms, strikingly
>>>>> pertinent): because it reduces the ghost to night-time help -- after
>>>>> hours, they come in and try to clean things up. The arc of Hamlet's
>>>>> experience of the ghost seems to take the (former) Majesty of Denmark
>>>>> into the same area of experience as represented by the endless menial
>>>>> task. Why does that matter for the King formerly known as Hamlet?
>>>>> Well, classically, "tragedy" denominates classical plays created in
>>>>> the image of a protagonist’s desperation, blinding, physical or
>>>>> psychic maiming, mania, or borderline state—e.g., Fury-haunted
>>>>> Orestes. Its universally acknowledged mask shows eyes out, hair
>>>>> standing on end, face twisted in a Gorgonical or Caravaggio-esque
>>>>> grimace of pain or rictus of terror. Quasi-religious or
>>>>> quasi-Jungian, Macbeth presents this apotropaic image when the
>>>>> frightened and rapt murderer is unmanned by the blood-boltered Banquo
>>>>> with no speculation in his zombie-like eyes. Lear’s naked, wretched
>>>>> Edgar quails before the sockets of the blinded Gloucester wandering
>>>>> in limbo around Dover before reconnoitering with the mad king.
>>>>> Hamlet’s Ghost tells stories contrived to unnerve the listener and
>>>>> turn him into the same image — he transfigures Hamlet’s visage in
>>>>> Gertrude’s bedroom. But as these plays progress the image of blasted
>>>>> ecstasy and tragic appallment devolves into dismay at the merely
>>>>> quotidian. The Ghost armed with hair-raising stories contracts into
>>>>> an old mole knocking under the boards like a drunken janitor in the
>>>>> basement. In the play's late graveyard Hamlet laments not his
>>>>> father’s appalling death or his uncle’s outrageous crime, but the
>>>>> insensitivity of a singing gravedigger — he lacks feeling for his
>>>>> occupation, while Hamlet voices the pathos of the common lot and
>>>>> indistinction: the ghost hoovering in the background. Similarly, at
>>>>> Lady Macbeth’s suicide, Macbeth represses any sorrow over her demise,
>>>>> or horror at their crimes; his "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"
>>>>> speech despairs over a garden-variety workaholic’s numbing careerist
>>>>> exertion, mocked by its own futility. At Dover Edgar reviews
>>>>> existence from a theatre seat reserved for the gods. They see us as
>>>>> miserable flies — or samphire-gatherers who manage to eke out
>>>>> subsistence in an ecological niche on the edge of an abyss. When
>>>>> Hamlet handles Cain’s jawbone "that did the first murder," his
>>>>> viewpoint is virtually forensic or archeological — hardly Claudius’
>>>>> raw distress at offenses that smell to heaven and re-enact the first
>>>>> murder. This routinization takes us quite through the
>>>>> horror-mongering genre. Its protagonists lose a stature sovereign
>>>>> and remarkable, and we acquire it vicariously. That's us, hoovering
>>>>> in the background. Meanwhile exhaustion reduces the tragic heroes
>>>>> named to a level of mundane incapacities merely our own: no one is
>>>>> ague-proof, none can be made right — or anything perfect — and
>>>>> everyone’s had bad dreams. Hamlet Sr. dies sharing in common
>>>>> depravities and decrepitude: something happens in midlife that turns
>>>>> any male body from Hyperion to a satyr. It needs no ghost to tell us
>>>>> this – yet it’s ungrateful news, hoovering in the background.
>>>>>
>>>>> Or, that's one way of reading it.* Yours, Jim N.
>>>>>
>>>>> (*But my personal associations, in this season of presidential
>>>>> ambitions, are with the ghosts noisily hoovering in the background of
>>>>> the first stanza of the following aging poem, in which my now late
>>>>> father appeared. The poem was read to class on the occasion of
>>>>> President George H.W. Bush's visit to Jefferson's Rotunda at UVa in
>>>>> Charlottesville for the Education Summit. A member of that class is
>>>>> now a prof. in the Dept. here.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Presidential Special
>>>>>
>>>>> My maternal grandfather looked like Orson Welles.
>>>>> He sat in the darkened living room of his house
>>>>> After a cataract operation. Inside the noise
>>>>> (The cooler in the window roaring,
>>>>> The water cascading the barrier wall)
>>>>> The older man was saying to my father,
>>>>> "The country made a terrible mistake,
>>>>> When they abandoned Mr. Hoover."
>>>>>
>>>>> He’d been introduced to A.P. Giannini,
>>>>> First president of the Bank of America,
>>>>> Because of a letter he’d written once, in behalf
>>>>> Of a beginning bank-clerk, for doing his job well.
>>>>> Something in this democracy must have worked.
>>>>>
>>>>> Years after Mr. Gibbs had died,
>>>>> My grandmother said that it was wrong,
>>>>> To put That Man on the dime.
>>>>> Stuck into the edge of her bedroom mirror,
>>>>> Where she might have had a picture of Jesus,
>>>>> Was a postcard from Eisenhower-Nixon
>>>>> Thanking her for the five dollars.
>>>>>
>>>>> I myself saw Truman; when I was seven,
>>>>> In the middle of ’Forty-Eight. My father
>>>>> Lifted me up onto the hood, at the SP station.
>>>>> The windows of the train’s last car
>>>>> Were loaded with floral displays
>>>>> From the President’s well-wishers.
>>>>>
>>>>> I stood inches from Estes Kefauver reaching out his hand
>>>>> From a Rushmore height with a Barrymore voice
>>>>> On the steps of the Presbyterian Church. It was impossible
>>>>> For my mother to say anything bad about a good man
>>>>> From Tennessee, and of course he was an Elder’s guest.
>>>>> But my father probably felt it wasn’t right,
>>>>> Even on vacation
>>>>> He wouldn’t fish on Sundays.
>>>>>
>>>>> In Nineteen Fifty-Three,
>>>>> Last night of the National Jamboree,
>>>>> The Vice-President of the United States—
>>>>> Was scheduled to address the Boy Scouts
>>>>> Of America. The troops had lit the way
>>>>> With candles by the thousands. In the flickering bowl
>>>>> The voice of vigilance echoed from the loud-speakers,
>>>>> Recording for posterity.
>>>>>
>>>>> Stevenson was almost apologetic: ironical, shying away
>>>>> From Adlai, in a small dark-gray
>>>>> Three-piece suit, with a white, button-down
>>>>> Shirt. Something seemed to be already over:
>>>>> There were very few of us around: my best friend,
>>>>> Who was intellectual, I who wished to be,
>>>>> And maybe five others. The candidate gamely waved
>>>>> Himself on, on to the next. But it wasn’t clear
>>>>> How many people might have heard where it was
>>>>> That he was supposed to be.
>>>>>
>>>>> John F. Kennedy came out of University Hall
>>>>> Into the bright New England fall,
>>>>> After the Board of Overseers;
>>>>> I was leaving owl-eyed Sever,
>>>>> After Homeric Greek.
>>>>> He was areté and dios,
>>>>> Large, without a coat or hat:
>>>>> Turning toward us he made sure to say,
>>>>> In his give-and-take way,
>>>>> "I’ve been looking at your grades."
>>>>> (Mine were mired at Troy.)
>>>>>
>>>>> LBJ roared vaingloriously down a wide Manhattan avenue,
>>>>> Top down, standing up, hair slicked back, sirens flying,
>>>>> Like a Flying Dutchman in a Batmobile,
>>>>> That black Cadillac charger
>>>>> Bolting into irrelevance.
>>>>>
>>>>> I liked the President in his sweater on TV: Jimmy Cardigan.
>>>>> He was hostage to more than oil,
>>>>> But he sometimes made a point:
>>>>> "Inflation is like watching an event
>>>>> Where everyone in the audience wants to see better,
>>>>> So they all start standing up." He was five foot eight.
>>>>>
>>>>> My children can see nearly all of this
>>>>> On endless instant replay.
>>>>> They scarcely need a parent’s anecdotage
>>>>> To lift them up.
>>>>>
>>>>> .)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jane Hedley
>>>>>>
>>>>>> James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
>>>>>>> I don't say the student actually has had the more difficult thought
>>>>>>> in mind, or known both discourses, only that these things were
>>>>>>> implicit in the language he/she ended up using, and which he or she
>>>>>>> may have mismanaged to telling effect ("dozing wit"): guilelessly
>>>>>>> unsuspecting, for the most part, the possible relevance (or violent
>>>>>>> questioning or flouting of usage), like Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop,
>>>>>>> or earlier, Shakespeare's Dogberry. But we remember these mistakes
>>>>>>> because we suspect that they are not altogether mistakes, but
>>>>>>> potentially ingenious in either how wrong they are, or how right:
>>>>>>> like new inventions, striking interferances of one word with
>>>>>>> another one seemingly phonetically twinned with it, or like verbal
>>>>>>> experiments serving as probes, or as ironic deconstructions. Of
>>>>>>> course the question raised is perhaps being treated in Pyramus and
>>>>>>> Thisbe in Midsummer Night's Dream, where Theseus is charitable to
>>>>>>> those bent on entertaining and honoring him, and Hippolyta reacts
>>>>>>> somewhat snobishly to the earnest bumpkins and thickskins who
>>>>>>> unkowingly mangle the proper words:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thes. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are not
>>>>>>> worse, if imagination amend them.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hipp. If must be your imagination, then, not theirs. (V.i.18)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -- But the last words in the play are therefore critical: "restore
>>>>>>> amends." E.g.:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "It's a doggie dog world out there!" (I.e., it's a world gone to
>>>>>>> the dogs, good dogs or bad dogs.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 'This idea "has subcutaneously seeped into the minds of African
>>>>>>> Americans today."' (I.e., 'I may have a subconscious problem with
>>>>>>> dark-skinned people.')
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "... or in lumens terms,..." (This one I don't get, or only
>>>>>>> dimly: is it "luminous/human terms"?)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 'The Prioress' Tale is a satire of "such violently anti-semantic
>>>>>>> attitudes."' (This one almost declares 'I have trouble with some
>>>>>>> big words that seem suspiciously like other ones.")
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "When I was a baby still in the wound..." (This one is two
>>>>>>> discourses, or perhaps three: babe in the woods / babe in the womb
>>>>>>> / babe causing an injury to the mother.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "If I put my mine on what I am doing and consecrate, I can do a
>>>>>>> better
>>>>>>> job on writting." (This one may perhaps possess -- "mine/mind" --
>>>>>>> a vocation as a priest, and perhaps takes us from script to
>>>>>>> scripture. Words sufficiently intensely attended to do seem
>>>>>>> consecrated.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "This play is actually quit entertaining and mind-bottling."
>>>>>>> ('This play quit entertaining me quite early, but I've nonetheless
>>>>>>> gotten trapped in it.')
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "... we see this when Hamlet says: You cannot, sir, take from me
>>>>>>> anything that I will more willingly party withall." (This gets at
>>>>>>> something Hamlet is to say later -- in so many words -- that the
>>>>>>> party ends, so far as you are concerned, whenever it is that you
>>>>>>> leave it, and stop partying.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "The old woman in the Wife of Bath's tale is actually kind and
>>>>>>> genital..." (The older meaning of 'kind' [gens] sticks out here;
>>>>>>> the phrase "kind and genital" has got to be in Finnegans Wake
>>>>>>> somewhere.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My dear typist, not always able to read my handwriting, guessed the
>>>>>>> title Fables of Green Fields for Tables of Green Fields, and I
>>>>>>> stuck to it. Restore amends.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -- Jim N.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Perhaps the question is not really the blooper's source, but it's
>>>>>>>>> interest, its tellingness, insofar as the blooper might also be
>>>>>>>>> said to have
>>>>>>>>> let a cat out of a bag. Interest actually means, here,
>>>>>>>>> relevance, or stake
>>>>>>>>> in meaning. The interference of the "mis-take" or "mis-stake"
>>>>>>>>> seems to
>>>>>>>>> emerge through the dozing wit of 'bloopers' that somehow seem made
>>>>>>>>> accidentally on purpose, i.e, that are really metaphors,
>>>>>>>>> translations
>>>>>>>>> between different discourses: as in the example of the student who
>>>>>>>>> substituted the first act of Hamlet for that of Othello. For
>>>>>>>>> both tragic
>>>>>>>>> protagonists want proof. If Hamlet had been an Othello, there
>>>>>>>>> would have
>>>>>>>>> been no second act of Hamlet, Claudius wouldn't have stood much
>>>>>>>>> of a chance;
>>>>>>>>> if Othello had been a Hamlet, Desdemona would have had a rather
>>>>>>>>> better one.
>>>>>>>>> Cleopatra's "naval" looks like both her navy in the discourse of
>>>>>>>>> battle,
>>>>>>>>> and her navel in the discourse of bedrooms. As that example
>>>>>>>>> shows, the kind
>>>>>>>>> of condensation of two discourses we are talking about is
>>>>>>>>> regularly achieved
>>>>>>>>> in the pun. For the mind that is allegorically or hermeneutically
>>>>>>>>> inclined,
>>>>>>>>> a pun is a more difficult thought that has found a way of
>>>>>>>>> breaking through
>>>>>>>>> or condensing itself with a less difficult or familiar thought:
>>>>>>>>> the pun is
>>>>>>>>> a primitive form of polysemy. For the rationalist, of course,
>>>>>>>>> puns are
>>>>>>>>> merely discourse behaving badly, and turning thought -- that is,
>>>>>>>>> its
>>>>>>>>> linguistic distinctions and discriminations -- back into static
>>>>>>>>> or noise,
>>>>>>>>> that is, back into the babble they have originally emerged from.
>>>>>>>>> The
>>>>>>>>> 'telling' blooper is the telltale one that makes one laugh, but
>>>>>>>>> then causes
>>>>>>>>> us to look again. -- Jim N.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>>>> James Nohrnberg
>>>>>>> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>>>>>>> Univ. of Virginia
>>>>>>> P.O Box 400121
>>>>>>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
>>>>>
>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>> James Nohrnberg
>>>>> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>>>>> Univ. of Virginia
>>>>> P.O Box 400121
>>>>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
>>>
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> James Nohrnberg
>>> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>>> Univ. of Virginia
>>> P.O Box 400121
>>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
>>
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
|