Saturday, May 31, 2014

Slanting lines and raindrops: thinking of Apollinaire on a rainy day in Melbourne

It is Sunday, the first day of June, and raining heavily in Melbourne. We're into late Autumn now. In our toasty bedroom, I'm enjoying the aroma of roasted coffee, lingering in the air that little bit longer thanks to the radiator. We haven't had a downpour like this in some time (yesterday was surprisingly warm and sunny). The mingling sounds of the clothes dryer in the next room and the rivulets trickling on the windowpane are perfect accompaniments to a lazy morning. I'm thinking about the slanted lines of Guillaume Apollinaire's concrete poem, 'Il Pleut' (published in 1918) where form and meaning are in glorious harmony:

Now here is Roger Shattuck's linear translation:


It’s Raining

It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little
drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music

Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below


Monday, May 26, 2014

National Sorry Day - "It's time to move forward together"

Today - the 26th May - is National Sorry Day in Australia. This annual event has been held in Australia on this date since 1997 to remember and commemorate the mistreatment of the continent's Indigenous population. In 2008, the Australian Government delivered the National Apology, an important step in building trust and developing stronger relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. 

Background

The first National Sorry Day was held on May 26, 1998, which was one year after the tabling of a report about the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. The report, known as Bringing Them Home, acknowledged that Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and communities since the early days of European occupation in Australia. Governments and missionaries were responsible for this forced separation.
Systematic removal practices were implemented through various assimilation and “protection” policies by the late 19th century. Many Indigenous children were forcibly taken away from their families in the name of assimilation during the 1950s and 1960s. These children are known as the “Stolen Generations”. They were brought up in institutions or fostered to non-Indigenous families. This removal was official government policy in Australia until 1969.
By the 1980s, by welfare and community groups spoke out that governments' social welfare practices were discriminatory against Indigenous people. This forced a reappraisal of removal and placement practice during the 1980s. In 1980 the family tracing and reunion agency Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation was established. Similar services now exist throughout Australia.
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tabled a motion in parliament on February 13, 2008, apologizing to Australia’s Indigenous people, particularly the Stolen Generations and their families and communities, for the laws and policies that inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss. The apology included a proposal for a policy commission to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in matters such as life expectancy, educational achievement, and economic opportunity. This event is seen by many as a step forward in reconciliation.

Symbols

The Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag are often seen on National Sorry Day. The Aboriginal flag is horizontally divided into two equal halves of black (top) and red (bottom) with a yellow circle in the centre. The black symbolizes Australia’s Aboriginal people and the yellow circle represents the sun. The red represents the earth and people’s relationship with the land. It also represents ochre, which is used in Aboriginal ceremonies in Australia. Harold Joseph Thomas designed the flag, which was first flown at Victoria Square in Adelaide on July 12, 1971.


Australian Aboriginal Flag

The Torres Strait Islander flag stands for Torres Strait Islanders’ unity and identity. It features three horizontal stripes, with green at the top and bottom of the flag and blue in between, divided by thin black lines. A white dharri or deri (a type of headdress) sits in the centre, with a five-point star underneath it. The color green represents the land. The dharri symbolizes all Torres Strait Islanders. The black represents the people and the blue represents the sea. The five-point star symbolizes the island groups. The star is white, which symbolizes peace in this case. Bernard Namok designed the flag.


The 13 February 2008 parliamentary apology read as follows:
I move:
That today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations—this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering, and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement, and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.
— Kevin RuddPrime Minister of Australia, 13 February 2008, at a sitting of the Parliament of Australia.

As an outside observer in Melbourne, I would say that there is still a pervasive sadness evident on Australian streets, a palpable silence around Indigenous issues in many social contexts, and the sense of a great chasm between White Australia and Aboriginal peoples... Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd's historic apology was, however, a giant step in the right direction, as is journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger's powerful polemic, Utopia. Although Tony Abbott's recent disastrous budget cuts do not auger very well for Aboriginal communities, we can only be hopeful for the future welfare of the Indigenous people of Australia and for stronger interrelationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples, acknowledging that 'it's time we move forward together' as the following song invites. Click on this link to watch a neat video clip containing extracts from Rudd's milestone apology.


Sunday, May 25, 2014

Ekphrasis: The Fall of Icarus as springboard

Here is the painting 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus', attributed to Pieter Brueghel, which inspired both W. H. Auden to write his 'Musée des Beaux Arts' and William Carlos Williams to pen 'Landscape and the Fall of Icarus'. It is enjoyable to contemplate how the imaginations of two poets took flight in different directions (pardon the pun) in response to this art work. Both are free verse poems, but that is where the similarity ends; the mood and tone of each is quite distinct with Williams's short lines and stanzas creating a vital sense of immediacy as Icarus drops, while Auden's longer lines scaffold a broader meditation on the arbitrariness of human suffering and how the Old Masters captured this so skilfully. The fact that both writers refer to Brueghel in the body of their poems serves as a reminder that ekphrasis is concerned with the act of representation itself.

Landscape with the Fall of IcarusRoyal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

















Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus
William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel

when Icarus fell

it was spring



a farmer was ploughing

his field

the whole pageantry


of the year was

awake tingling

near



the edge of the sea

concerned

with itself



sweating in the sun

that melted

the wings' wax



unsignificantly

off the coast

there was



a splash quite unnoticed

this was

Icarus drowning 


Musée des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.