{"id":184,"date":"2009-01-05T21:12:03","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T21:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=184"},"modified":"2015-10-29T21:21:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T21:21:35","slug":"j-m-coetzee-comparison-with-elizabeth-bishops-faustina-or-rock-roses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=184","title":{"rendered":"J. M. Coetzee. Comparison with Elizabeth Bishop’s “Faustina, or Rock Roses”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve just reread a couple of Coetzee novels \u2013 Waiting for the Barbarians<\/em> and Disgrace<\/em> \u2013 and his memoir Boyhood<\/em>. I admired Waiting for the Barbarians<\/em> as much as ever, but an old reservation re-awoke and \u00a0<\/span>was crystallised by my rereading Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s \u201cFaustina, or Rock Roses\u201d at the same time. Bishop presents the squalor, the pathos, the embarrassingness for a visitor, of the almost total helplessness of the old woman she describes, but she isn\u2019t disgusted<\/em> by it, and she doesn\u2019t know whether the horror she seems to feel on one level is the right response. She asks<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is it<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

freedom at last, a lifelong<\/span><\/p>\n

dream of time and silence, <\/span><\/p>\n

dream of protection and rest?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or is it<\/span><\/em> the very worst, <\/span><\/p>\n

the unimaginable nightmare…?\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>(my italics)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She makes us imagine the scene very sharply, very uncomfortably, but she has the human sensitivity to know that what matters in the end is not what she feels but the separate, intrinsic reality of \u00a0<\/span>what she encounters, and what the old woman herself feels, which \u2013 as she says \u2013 she can\u2019t know. This gives her poem a human depth and imaginative outgoingness which contrasts favourably with the egotism and melodrama \u2013 for all its horrifying power \u2013 of Larkin\u2019s \u201cThe Old Fools\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coetzee is a superb observer and moral analyst of the world, but I don\u2019t think he has nearly as much of this desire to go out imaginatively into what other lives feel like to the people who are living them. He brilliantly describes how other people impinge on him and how they jar with or delight his own feelings, but he\u2019s only concerned in a very general way with what it feels like to be them<\/em>. And some of the feelings they stir in him recur from book to book almost obsessively. One \u2013 the one that made the contrast with \u201cFaustina\u201d jump to mind \u2013 is a horror of age with its ugliness and disgrace<\/em>. The profound and passionate humanism of Waiting for the Barbarians<\/em> \u2013 wonderfully expressed on pages 106 \u2013 107 of the original Penguin edition, but also subjected to the Magistrate\u2019s stringent self-criticism \u2013 is in fruitful tension with a pull towards a kind of Nietschean feeling that all that really matters may be the health and beauty of the vital, vigorous young body. In other books by Coetzee, I\u2019m not so sure of the imaginative strength of this moral and humane passion. I\u2019ve found his most recent works relatively thin and unengaging \u2013 perhaps I haven\u2019t read them well enough \u2013 and in Boyhood<\/em> what I was most conscious of was a kind of fierce distaste for life in all but its most unfeelingly aesthetic aspects \u2013 like the slim legs of the beautiful young people vainly desired by the protagonist. This chimes with the ravishing descriptions of landscape and of light and of physical pleasure in Waiting for the Barbarians<\/em>. I found myself wondering whether in the end this aesthetic<\/em> contrast between beauty and ugliness isn\u2019t one that taps more deeply into Coetzee\u2019s feelings and imagination than his undoubtedly intense moral concerns do. But at this point I need to reread The Life and Times of Michael K<\/em>, which I remember as an almost unbearably moving and compassionate work.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Does anyone have\u00a0a link to the whole text of \u201cFaustina, or Rock Roses\u201d? Here\u2019s one to a site with a few of\u00a0Bishop’s\u00a0other poems: <\/span>http:\/\/www.poets.org\/poet.php\/prmPID\/7<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to Greg G Brown who has kindly sent a link you can see in his comment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve just reread a couple of Coetzee novels \u2013 Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace \u2013 and his memoir Boyhood. I admired Waiting for the Barbarians as much as ever, but an old reservation re-awoke and \u00a0was crystallised by my rereading Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s \u201cFaustina, or Rock Roses\u201d at the same time. Bishop presents the squalor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elizabeth-bishop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}