In a selection from William Carlos Williams Spring and All ( To Elsie ), the speaker

Transcription

1 Ung 1 Some Elsie, Some Man: Encounters with the Disabled in William Carlos Williams Poetry For the Sixth Biennial Conference of the William Carlos Williams Society Emperatriz Ung, Georgetown University Abstract: This paper interrogates the transformation that occurs when a normate subject encounters a non normate subject in William Carlos Williams poetry. Attention is given to the speaker s transformed perspective and its development from a selection of Williams early work in Spring and All ( To Elsie ), as well as a selection from his later work in Journey to Love ( To a Dying Man on His Feet ). This study uses Ludwig Wittgenstein s seeing as discussion to examine encounters with non normate subjects that move beyond shock and disruption for the normate speaker. Widely read with a focus on ethnic difference, the non normate figures in Williams work channel a plurality of experiences informed by not only gender and racial differences, but the experience of the disabled as well. In a selection from William Carlos Williams Spring and All ( To Elsie ), the speaker observes pure products of America including deaf mutes, thieves prior to contact with the disabled non subject Elsie (1, 7 8). Elsie who is described as a girl so desolate / so hemmed round / with disease or murder (31) becomes an aesthetic trigger that renders both the disabled non subject and the speaker in the poem visible. The speaker in Williams poetry continues to grapple with encounters of non normate and disabled figures in Journey to Love ( To a Dying Man on His Feet ). Visibility of the non subject in the poetry brings both Elsie and the man dying on his feet out of the structure that expels the disabled from political order. Language and form in Williams poem gives the disabled Elsie and the physically non normate dying man the ability to make the speaker visible and reveal aspects that otherwise would have remained unseen in a normate subject. With philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein s idea of seeing as, the speaker of

2 Ung 2 the poem becomes introspective as the pronouns shift and Elsie s broken // brain gives light to new perspectives on a normative subject ( To Elsie 42 43). Previous scholarship on the figure in To Elsie analyzes the opposition between femininity and masculinity, the role of the working class, and ethnic difference. Tension in the poem arises from near violent cultural and historical ambivalences that silence the other in Williams poetry (Bremen 49). Elsie s plurality allows for an intersectional reading of Williams poem. Although Elsie lacks a voice in the poem, her presence becomes a focal point for the speaker. Her identity is malleable and situated in a precarious sphere. The non normate man in To a Dying Man on His Feet is also subject to the speaker s gaze: Your jaw / wears the stubble / of a haggard beard ( To a Dying Man on His Feet 10 12). The speaker engages with the non normate facet of the man. Janet Lyon, drawing on Giorgio Agamben s critical work, defines the non subject as someone who has fallen out of political order because of a presumed incompetency: to be nonverbal or atypically verbal in a normate culture is to be presumed incompetent in the language of agency and therefore unintelligible as a political or moral subject; it is to be a non subject (Lyon 554). This presumed incompetency of the non subject leads to a cancelled citizenship where Elsie is not a member of the same normate group as the speaker in Williams poem. She is from the pure products of America that go crazy (1, 2). To go crazy transforms the product into a non subject who falls out of the normative sphere from which the speaker observes. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein describes dawning perception as an instance where another aspect of a subject s being is revealed: I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice

3 Ung 3 its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience noticing an aspect (Wittgenstein 194). In encounters with disability within select modernist works, Lyon uses dawning perception and the instance of shock for the normate subject. With Virginia Woolf s prose, Lyon focuses on how this shock disturbs the perception of the narrator: But what seems essential to her horror is the dawning awareness of mental disability in those faces the slow recognition that what seems to be normal is in fact an illusion, and that beneath the illusion lies an uncanny reality, a kind of negative double of the apparent world. Deepening affective shock like this, produced out of dawning perception acts as a narrative aesthetic trigger (Lyon 558). Her study requires a close analysis of the relationship between the normate and disabled non subject in order to show how the dawning perception phenomenon works for the normate in the encounter. While the appearance itself remains the same, the feeling, or perception, changes. As Sigmund Freud describes aesthetic triggers, emergence of a sense of the uncanny is intellectual uncertainty (125). Encounters with the unfamiliar and novel result in an intellectual uncertainty that reveals the hidden nature of a subject (124). A dissonance materializes, but the experience after the dawning varies. While Lyon applies the use of dawning perception in modernist works, her application of Wittgenstein s seeing as discussion is limited to the non disabled speakers and their shock in the face of disability, particularly in Charlotte Mew s poetry and Virginia Woolf s prose. In Williams poem, Wittgenstein s dawning perception functions to have the speaker reflect intrinsically rather than solely respond to shock

4 Ung 4 from the encounter with the non subject. Wittgenstein describes the experience of dawning perception as impression shifts: But surely you would say that the picture is altogether different now! But what is different: my impression? my point of view? Can I say? I say describe the alteration like a perception; quite as if the object had altered before my eyes (Wittgenstein 195). The interpretation of the aesthetic aspect has changed, and the image of the aesthetic aspect is no longer static. Using Wittgenstein s seeing as discussion we can analyze how the presence of Elsie interferes with the assumption of a stable normality for the speaker. The speaker s focus turns away from Elsie, the object of the aesthetic trigger, and internalizes the shift perspective. The speaker first observes mountain folk, deaf mutes, thieves, and young slatterns, bathed / in filth ( To Elsie 3, 7, 13 14). These opening verse paragraphs form the speaker s perspective prior to the encounter with Elsie. The young slatterns are unable to express themselves, and held back from expression due to terror. There is an inability to express and communicate with the normate speaker of the poem: sheer rags succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke cherry or viburnum which they cannot express ( To Elsie 22 27) The em dashes in To Elsie create a non normative dialogue in Williams work, where the dashes visually generate speech impairment in the structure of the poem. This atypical speech of the speaker s bridges the two worlds of the normate and the disabled. An increasing number of

5 Ung 5 em dashes control the rhythm of the lines create an atypical dialogue, with broken thoughts. The non normate may still experience this numbed terror, but through the expression the speaker turns away from those who go crazy (24, 2). They are silenced as they succumb without // emotion (22 23). These disabled non normate subjects who populate the poem before Elsie s appearance emerge from imaginations which have no // peasant traditions to give them / character (18 20). Lack of roots to peasant traditions further lowers their status and reduces their character. In To Elsie, dawning occurs when Elsie s broken // brain can express the truth about us ( To Elsie 42 43, 43). Once Elsie can express with her broken brain, the encounter alters the speaker s perception. This dawning perception is not one of shock for the speaker who has observed the subjects that go crazy (2). The use of pronouns creates separate spheres for the speaker and the disabled non normate subject. The shift in language from the use of them/they to us/we becomes a pivotal point in the piece. As Lyon writes about encounters with the disabled non subject, there is a distinction in the language for the speaker to differentiate from the cancelled citizen: they are clearly not a part of us (554). The plural pronouns contain an implication for the speaker to confront the difference between himself and Elsie where José María Rodríguez García has noted: a plural pronoun invites the middle class to which Williams and the reader belong to assume their share of responsibility in the actions narrated in the poem (Rodríguez García 6). This change in To Elsie occurs in the fourteenth and fifteenth verse paragraph of the poem: some doctor s family, some Elsie voluptuous water expressing with broken brain the truth about us

6 Ung 6 her great ungainly hips and flopping breasts ( To Elsie 40 45) Elsie is a non subject that is unseen by others. She is some Elsie, not a subject with a clear, solid identity. But it is through her that the speaker becomes visible: expressing with broken // brain the truth about us (42, 43). It takes her broken brain, the brain of the disabled, to piece together a new perspective and reveal the truth of the speaker. Her existence teaches the normate a truth otherwise unavailable to him. Elsie s rescue and rearing by institutions doesn t force her into a normative framework. The unvoiced claims of long suppressed subaltern identities exist within Elsie s expressive truth (Rodríguez García 17). Her presence serves as a reminder to the speaker of her existence and the non normate. She holds a plurality of voices through the various non normate groups she represents. As a woman who is disabled, and as a girl so desolate with a dash of Indian blood, Elsie serves as a diverse conduit that the speaker encounters (Williams 31, 30). The speaker absorbs the truth that Elsie presents him, and begins to retreat into his own thoughts rather than observe the world of the non normate and disabled. The speaker s dawning perception does not require him to reconcile with the shock of the cancelled citizen, but rather to reevaluate his own state of normalcy. Varying the use of dawning perception in disability studies allows for a reading that illustrates not only how the normate process their encounters with the disabled, but how those encounters work for the speaker beyond disruption. The speaker begins to reassess his identity where the imagination strains, and the stifling heat of September / Somehow / it seems to destroy us (55, 58 60). By analyzing this disruption of stability and removing the shock, there is room to see how the

7 Ung 7 disabled non subject can inform the normate past the moment of the encounter, as well as how this cancelled citizen still functions within the political order. The non normate subjects who were once bathed / in filth are now separate, and the speaker refers to himself and his group of normates using we ( To Elsie 13 14, 54). The filth that the young slatterns were bathed in becomes a substance for the speaker to consume: as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth (49 54) Here filth is no longer a superficial layer on the non normate that the speaker observes. [F]ilth becomes something absorbed in an attempt to sate the hunger he suffers as part of the degraded prisoners. The dawning thereby alters the speaker s perception of filth. What was once a surface element in the disabled non normate population now becomes a necessity to process and internalize for the speaker. The poem ends with no observers. There is no one left to observe the non subjects, and the speaker has abandoned his role as an observer after the encounter: No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car (64 66) There is no guide or ward for the normate group with whom the speaker identifies with. While Elsie makes the speaker visible, and brings an understanding and truth to the enjambed narration of the text, the car is left empty with no one to witness the speaker s own dawning perception, and he must acknowledge it himself.

8 Ung 8 The poem juxtaposes two worlds of the disabled non subject with the normate speaker. The disabled non subject can be studied outside the instance of explicit shock for the normate, and by doing so we can see how the subtle shifts in language in modernist poetry enables us to witness and observe in ways the speaker is unable to. Through this experience of dawning perception the speaker is aware of a change in perspective. By the end of the poem, he is resolute. After passing through this change in an aesthetic trigger, Freud claims, We can no longer be in any doubt about where we now stand (Freud 147). The speaker himself may be unaware of how the change itself was triggered in this interaction, and with dawning perception it is difficult for the subjects themselves to recollect the aspect that has altered. The change in perception exists, and there is no doubt about where that change has taken the speaker. But for the speaker himself to calibrate where the change occurred on the object that triggers this dawning, it is difficult. The speaker pushes past observation. While he does not move towards action and social change, he no longer remains a detached onlooker (Rodríguez García 6). The twelve verse paragraphs of To a Dying Man on His Feet are each split into three fragments. This dying man renders the speaker solemn with a gaze the look you give me // and to which I bow ( To a Dying Man on His Feet 3 4). Unlike the encounter with Elsie, here the speaker wishes to bring this good guy to an alluring space (32, 30). The speaker recognizes a part of himself in the dying man. While it is unclear where this encounter takes place, the speaker comes into contact with this pure product[s] of America ( To Elsie 1). Studying William Carlos Williams poetry with Wittgenstein s dawning perception contributes to the readings of the poem that address difference in identity. Elsie as a disabled non normate figure adds to the plurality of voices that she channels when in contact with the

9 Ung 9 speaker of the poem (Rodríguez García 15). The man dying on his feet with a haggard and dirty beard places the speaker in a position of encountering a non normate subject who recognizes the suspicion he triggers as one that lives. Dawning perception does not force the speaker to reconcile with any madness, and the instability experienced places the speaker in a position to think about himself rather than any change to Elsie or the aesthetic trigger. Moving forward, Wittgenstein s seeing as discussion can inform readings of other texts in disability studies.

10 Ung 10 Works Cited Breman, Brian A. The Language of Flowers. William Carlos Williams and the Diagnostics of Culture. New York: Oxford UP, Print. Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. The Uncanny Trans. David Mclintock. New York: Penguin, Print. Lyon, Janet. On the Asylum Road with Woolf and Mew. Modernism / modernity (2012): Web. 2 October Rodríguez García, José María. Intertextual and Inter Ethnic Relations in William Carlos Williams s To Elsie : A Poetics Of Contact. Journal X: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 7.1 (2002): MLA International Bibliography. Web. 26 Nov Williams, William Carlos. To Elsie. The Collected Poems: Volume I New York: New Directions, Print.. To a Dying Man on His Feet. The Collected Poems: Volume II Edited by Christopher Macgowan. New York: New Directions, Print. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. 3 rd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, Print.