Editorial [PDF]
James Farrugia, Elsa Fiott: University of Malta
On John Ashbery’s Poetry [PDF]
Sayani Sinha: New York Univeristy
This article is a meditation on the essence of John Ashbery’s poetry. To ask what Ashbery’s poems are “about” is to wrestle with the term’s own aboutness; or, to put it differently, such an inquiry comes with the odd realisation that what his poetry is “about” cannot itself be it. So it is either something else entirely, or one must reckon with the irreducible gap between “it” and its aboutness. There is no inside or outside to his poetry; no question of whether it is about itself or something other than itself. In other words, it is not a question of either/or, but an irresolution of one and the same, much like Heidegger’s aletheia: ‘letting Being be by not letting Being be’. The fundamental impossibility of either letting Being be or not, which in Heidegger takes the shape of his unending quest for the ‘elementary’ and ‘primordial’, or which in Richard Rorty’s reflection resembles the ultimate and absolute finality of the ‘final vocabulary’ (language/western metaphysics), is here imagined in the impossible concept of the ‘subaltern’—a concept whose ontological possibility is the negation of its ontic essence. It is as impossible as it is to situate Being, or to write what Ashbery writes about.
The Anxieties of Cultural Influence: Cross-Cultural Contrasts and Conflicts in Steve Erickson and Ryu Murakami [PDF]
Liam Randles: University of Liverpool
A 1997 piece in Shincho literary magazine featured Steve Erickson and Ryu Murakami in conversation with one another. The most notable subjects of the discussion were details of their respective literary influences and working methodologies. Similarities between both writers have been noted with regard to style and tone to make this a particularly fascinating piece. Interestingly, both writers published novels around the time of this piece, conveying comparable themes and subject matter. Erickson’s The Sea Came in at Midnight (1999) and Murakami’s In the Miso Soup (1997) each depict close interactions between American and Japanese characters in order to highlight cultural contrasts between the two nations. Confusion and conflict, in this context, comes not through the dichotomous contrast between the two cultures, but in how a character’s preconceptions do not correspond with the reality. Criticism will focus on how destructive imagery is an implicit feature of the relationship between both nations, predicated by the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My paper will also document the changing nature of Japanese culture during the 1990s to illustrate a collective amnesia with regard to the country’s ancient traditions, and how this has given rise to a fetishising of American commercialism.
Give Us the Foils—Fencing in Hamlet [PDF]
Sean Fenech: University of Malta
Hamlet is indubitably one of the most well-known and well-loved plays that Shakespeare has ever penned. However, as times began inevitably changing, and the ways of old were forgotten beneath the surge of progress and modernity, a crucial aspect of the play—one that had a bearing on the play itself and also provided an exhilarating spectacle to its audience—was also similarly forgotten, despite the play’s survival in three different versions. This aspect is the staging of the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes. The loss of this aspect is not felt as much nowadays, since the scene has still been recreated and re-enacted multiple times, albeit with fencing techniques that are anachronistic and largely influenced by modern sport fencing. This essay is an attempt to understand how the match might have been staged—especially with regards to the exchange of swords—and with what weapons. At the same time, it will contextualise the fight’s staging with regards to its historical setting, elaborate on the context of fencing in Shakespeare’s contemporary England, and highlight the importance of the fight in the context of the play.
