The night before this was due, I was at someone's house with my then-wife, and, around midnight, I said I had to go since I had this 5-7 page paper due in the morning. "How much have you written so far?" I was asked. "About a paragraph."
I finished it about three hours later and received the highest marks in the class. A fête I would repeat with the third paper in the class. Both the writing it in the last hours of its deadline as well as highest marks. But with the third one, I knew quite well what I would write about. With Orlando, I made it all up as I went along...
I love the way referenes to Phillip José Farmer (via the Donne quote), William Burroughs, and Lou Reed pop up in this.
~•~
(1st draft)
English 490 - Gothic Disturbances
March 24, 2009
The Horns of Dilemma
At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;
―John Donne
On Thursday, May 10 (year unknown), when Orlando was in the seventh day of his trance, he dreamed (hallucinated/envisioned) his own demise—
Would that we might here take the pen and write Finis to our work! Would that we might spare the reader what is to come and say to him in so many words, Orlando died and was buried. (133-34)
Like so much in Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography, this death is only an affected circumstance in which the male Orlando metaphorically dies while the female Orlando will rise from the sleeping trace. What Woolf may intended with this analogy is that the male Orlando's death is his trance, and his body is not buried in a grave beneath six feet of earth, but in a bed beneath the sheets.
In directly addressing the reader, Woolf once again breaks the proverbial "third wall" between audience and performers (or, in this case, the author and her readers), which creates a sense of immediacy and an informational tone of conversation, almost like a friend relating a news article they had just heard.
Woolf then invokes her first trinity, which are named for three things which her text ironically obscures to a great extent:
But here, alas, Truth, Candour, and Honesty, the austere Gods who keep watch and ward by the inkpot of the biographer, cry No! Putting their silver trumpets to their lips they demand in one blast, Truth! And again they cry Truth! and sounding yet a third time in concert they peal forth, The Truth and nothing but the Truth! (134)
When she cites Truth, Woolf is calling forth the single most important content of this scene—perhaps the novel—yet a perspective which cannot be subjected to absolute analysis. Truth, in this case, lacks any veracity and is not entirely correct nor accurate. Even so, the truth here could still be seen as something of a troth, a betrothment of Orlando's aspects to each other; an alchemical marriage between him and herself (to mix the pronouns with which we can truthfully describe hir (sic)). And truth, in the case of Orlando, means not only different things at different times, but contradictory things at the same time.
(As we shall see in these examples, the juxtaposition of paradox is commonplace in the world Woolf shows us with the hermaphroditic Orlando.)
Candour is a truthful openness which also means to shine, (this latter definition is quite likely, at this point in the scene, the most intended meaning). Shining an austere light upon this confusing satire is much needed to critically analyze the state of flux Orlando hovers in amidst this cacophonous delirium of his transformation from him to her.
The use of the word Honesty in this context, like the original meaning of the word itself, has more to do with honor than being honest, represents Orlando's sense of worthiness to transcend his gender. So worthy in fact, that in his dream-state, the onset of change is literally heralded by a refrain of silver trumpets blowing forth their tintinnabulation.
But why silver trumpets in particular; why not gold?
Silver trumpets would indicate a certain civility, a certain delicacy that gold does not represent—silver requires more refinement in its smelting process than does gold, and Orlando is, at this point, in a state of refinement, a state of sublimation between being a male in his past and a female in her future.
Woolf continues, with her tongue placed firmly in cheek, to introduce her second trinity, which take the semblance of the Three Graces, or, considering the outcome their appearance has upon Orlando, they could be closely likened to the Moriae of Greek myth.
At which--Heaven be praised! for it affords us a breathing space--the doors gently open, as if a breath of the gentlest and holiest zephyr had wafted them apart, and three figures enter. (134)
They appear very much like the cloaked witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, although these three Ladies have a very different agenda. They are not here to prophesy, but to obscure, and yet in obfuscation, they act as a Greek chorus does, and tell far more than they disguise.
The three are the Lady of Purity, the Lady of Chastity, and the Lady of Modesty. Each speak over Orlando's sleeping form, and their three speeches are followed by a pealing of trumpets which seem to banish them.
Our Lady of Purity speaks first:
[...] I cover vice and poverty. On all things frail or dark or doubtful, my veil descends. Wherefore, speak not, reveal not. Spare, O spare! (135)
Purity is defined as that which is clean or unsoiled. So the veils of Purity hiding the dark and doubtful are perhaps the only things her nature is capable of hiding. And even as she covers the vice and poverty of the world, the Lady of Purity entreats us not to speak or reveal these things.
But are we not suppose to speak of her actions, or are we not to reveal that it is she who does so? Like so much else in Orlando, we are left with impressions of answers, and the intentional ambiguity which is an integral theme of the work.
As if sensing that the reader—the viewer of this dance of veils—wishes to ask questions of the Lady of Purity's enigmatical comments, Woolf dismisses the first sister and brings on the second.
Here the trumpets peal forth.
'Purity Avaunt! Begone Purity!'
Then Our Lady Chastity speaks:
[...] where my eyes fall, they kill. Rather than let Orlando wake, I will freeze him to the bone. Spare, O spare! (135)
The trumpets peal, she tells us, which is a loud summoning—peal being the shortened form of appeal—and then says "Purity Avaunt!" which, like so much else Woolf shows us in this quandary, means opposite things simultaneously; avaunt being a word that means both "to call forth" and "to send away," which is a paradox that was certainly not lost on Woolf in writing this.
The Lady of Chastity speaks of stones and stars, of dancing and the Alps, of lightning, eyes, and bones. Whereas the Lady of Purity spoke of covering vice and poverty, the Lady of Chastity tells us that she kills all she looks upon, and would rather freeze Orlando's bones rather than let him awaken from his fevered dream.
The connection between chastity and ice is entirely metaphoric—as so much else has been—involving the sexual frigidity of being chaste. Regardless of Orlando's physical experiences of sex, in the moment he is in the depths of his dreaming, Woolf is telling us, completely pure and sexually unsullied. Rather than allow him to awake back into a body that has been—in the eyes of the Lady of Chastity—defiled by sexual desires and encounters, she would just as soon freeze his bones.
But once again, there is a clamor of horns and the Lady of Chastity is banished, bringing forth the third sister.
Here the trumpets peal forth.
'Chastity Avaunt! Begone Chastity!'
Then Our Lady of Modesty speaks, so low that one can hardly hear:
[...] I let my mantle fall. My hair covers my eyes. I do no see. Spare, O spare! (135-36)
Modesty is self-control, a freedom from exaggeration and excesses; moderation and even measures. Sober. And the Lady of Modesty speaks of virginal things, as well as fertile things such as vineyards, flocks of sheep, apples, and fields of ripened fruit. The sort of things that are known to be associated with the very acts that show no modesty—once again displaying the paradox and contradictions contained within this scene and this story.
The Lady of Modesty lets her mantle fall, her long and sleeveless cloak that is wrapped around her. Her hair covers her eyes because, of course, she must be too bashful to even look about the sleeping form of this man (soon-to-be-woman). She too, like her sisters, ends her dialog with the repeated phrase, "Spare, O spare!"
The word spare could mean extra, additional, or even frugal, but in this case it is more likely to be associated with the definition of "to refrain from harming" and "to allow to go free."
Despite the threat of harm the sisters may appear to be harbingers of, none of them will, or, (since they may well be apparitions springing from Orlando's fevered trance) can harm him.
But what they do bring about is a profound and immediately noticeable change in the man.
Again the trumpets peal forth:
'Modesty Avaunt! Begone Modesty!' (136)
With the paradox call of come forth and be gone, the Lady of Modesty has spoken her piece and now, all three sisters begin to dance in unison, performing a sort of pavane around the sleeping form of Orlando.
And, again (a common refrain of our own in this discussion) we can liken an aspect of this scene to previous literature, this time it resembles that of Salomé's Dance of the Seven Veils, which both reveals and occludes the subject it addresses—
With gestures of grief and lamentation the three sisters now join hands and dance slowly, tossing their veils and singing as they go:
'Truth come not out from your horrid den. Hide deeper, fearful Truth. For you flaunt in the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown and undone; you unveil the shameful; the dark you make clear, Hide! Hide! Hide!'
Here they make as if to cover Orlando with their draperies. The trumpets, meanwhile, still blare forth:
'The Truth and nothing but the Truth.'
At this the Sisters try to cast their veils over the mouths of the trumpets so as to muffle them, but in vain, for now all the trumpets blare forth together.
'Horrid Sisters, go!'
The sisters become distracted and wail in unison, still circling and flinging their veils up and down. (136)
They dance, and in singing about concealment, even as the trumpets blare in counterpoint about truth. This conflict shows us the conflict Orlando has concerning his gender, and the difficulties of understanding what is to be done about this.
Truth, in this as in most cases, is not an unchanging law, but something that is variable, circumstantial, and most times, hidden. Truth is something to be unveiled; revealed. Just as Orlando's nature and gender is a hidden truth that must surely be offered for display.
The circling dance of the sisters represents the yonic powers of women, smooth and supple and calm (feminine actions). The trumpets are described as blaring or pealing or blasting (all masculine verbs), and the very musical instrument itself is phallic in its design and appearance.
This is the internal battle raging within Orlando as he sleeps and dreams, until finally—
They retire in haste, waving their draperies over their heads, as if to shut out something that they dare not look upon and close the door behind them.
We are, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast:--
'THE TRUTH!
at which Orlando woke. (137)
With a blast of the trumpets, Orlando's seven-day trance comes to an abrupt end. From the narrative, it would seem the trumpeters are real while the three sisters were not, but again, this is a metaphoric description drenched in the pheromones of paradox.
The phallic trumpets herald the awakening of a new Orlando, one that, it would seem, is minus a male appendage.
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess--he was a woman. (137)
With this unusual and disconcerting paragraph, Virginia Woolf issues a statement about feminism, transgendered ideals, and a forerunner of sexual perversity that would not be matched for thirty to forty years when literature and music would once again take up the challenges of transgendered ambiguity, and such conflicts would arise (no pun intended) in the sexual ambivalence of William Burroughs' novels and Lou Reed's songs.
Like Orlando slipstreaming through time without apparent reason, we can connect the 1970s influences on Lou Reed from the likes of Virginia Woolf ("shaved her legs and then he was a she"—"Walk on the Wild Side") to the Jacobean poet who wrote the epigraph used at the onset of this discussion:
Orlando imagined these trumpets from the four rounded corners of his world (a combining of male and female geometric shapes), with the three graces of Purity, Chastity, and Modesty being like angels to him, he arises from a slumbering "death" back to his single body that is scattered between possible genders.
Conflict, paradox, and dualities overlay each other like veils upon this scene.
And here we, at last, write Finis on our own work.
· • ·
No comments:
Post a Comment