The Dream Songs consists of 385 "songs" written over a period of twenty years (the earliest lines in the form of a dream song can be dated back to 1947), and can be described as a personal epic in the form of a group poem (and the content of which naturally collapses over a longer period of time than the actual writing of the poem). In 1964 he published 77 Dream Songs, which won him the 1965 Pritzer Prize for Poetry, followed by "Dream Songs"
was published in 1969 under the title His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
and won the National Book Award. Not counting the unfinished fragments, there were several hundred more completed but unpublished
"songs"; in 1977, Berryman researcher John Haffendan collected 45 of them in a single collection titled The Fate of Hen
Lee. Berryman committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in early 1972, and the collection of books, manuscripts, and journals
is in the library of the University of Minnesota, where he taught during his lifetime.
The fact that the poem is titled Dream Song allows me to make several interpretations. For one thing, the Dream Songs are about night dreams, which are the result of what one sees and thinks during the day, and such a grouping requires no linear logic, not even Floyd's "dream-work". There have even been attempts to study his three published collections numerically, but it seems difficult to say that there is any verifiable
logic (other than the emotions of the protagonists themselves) in the songs that the poet has chosen for publication. It might even be said that the process of writing these songs was a dream
process. Second, though, it was only between 1954 and 1955 that Berrymanjoo recorded hundreds of pages of nightmares, which he continued to analyze from time to time; it was also at the end of 1955 that he wrote his earliest "Dream Songs" (which, like many of the early ones
, did not make it into the later Dream Songs. Dream songs might be better understood as daydreams (not "daydreams"
), a kind of reverie that is both real and fantastical, in which we can imagine Berryman in a half-drunken, half-awake state, not distinguishing between reality and fantasy, no longer in the here and now and no longer on the other side of the world, but in a room, in a room, in a room, in a room, in a room.
Scribbling in his cell, one moment telling a lie, another moment telling a lie, one moment pretending to be him, another moment pretending to be me; the poem has several characters playing the same person, or the same person wearing different masks in sequence or at the same time
, observing each other or self-examining. Perhaps Berryman, who delves into the cup, could just as well ask himself, who knows whether I
examine the butterfly or the butterfly examines me? The point is that here is a text that is realized as a text that makes a place for all of the
me/us/them. Third, what kind of world is the place these texts constitute? I
think it's more like a purgatory (not a hell on earth). There is a speaker, let me call him
"Henry's Eye/I Henry's Eye/I", who keeps balking at the earth
as if pursued by some irresistible force, as if Dante, though led by Virgil, was mainly because of the He is urged forward by the ghost of a ghastly vision before his eyes, which of course is still seen by the same "Henry's eye/I" (invisible to most people), and not necessarily by the lamp or the star at the end of the dark passageway.
Throughout Dreamsong, we see words like farewell and move on, which are hypnotic and seductive. Dreamsongs is an anti-utopian/outlaw utopian dystopia of the Divine Comedy, in which the poet wanders and records in the world of the living
(but I'm not sure how the dream world of the living is to be defined); we know that the Divine Comedy
is a phantasmagorical allegory of dreaming, and in this Dreamsongs and the Divine Comedy are in agreement. The Divine
Song is written in ternary rhyming stanzas terza rima (rhyming with ABA, BCB, CDC, ...), and I believe that the stanzas created by
Berriman for the Dreamsong seem to have been composed with two ternary rhyming stanzas as a basis, whereas the three six
line stanzas combined together seem to be the same both in terms of length/ structure and thematic development are close to the traditional sonnet
sonnet. It could also be argued that this makes the Psalms implicitly close to traditional love poems, or that these
"songs" are elegies to Henry and to all those who (once) lived in Henry's world. Of course, the
syllables of each line are different from the traditional triple rhymes or sonnets; the stanzas of Berryman's "Dream Song" have a 5-5-
3-5-5-3 meter, with most of them rhymed with "ghost rhyme"; I tried to rhyme as much as I could in my translation, but was powerless
to keep the rhymes consistent with the original.
Berryman is said to be able to memorize the lyrics of more than 200 popular songs, a resource not to be underestimated. Not only was his generation's creative thinking a reaction to High Modernism, but even his linguistic style could be said to have been shaped
in rebellion against the linguistic purity of Eliot's T. S. Eliot, Orton's W. H. Auden, and others. Berryman had this to say in his acceptance speech for the National Book Award, "I thought of myself as thinking that the long poem Bradstreet (referring to the long poem Homage to Mistress Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, published in 1956) was an attack on The Waste Land, from the persona to the plot ...... I thought to myself that Dreamsongs was hostile to every visible tendency in Anglo-American poetry
". In a letter to Berryman, Lowell had described their generation of poets
as simply "Frost, Pound, Eliot, Marianne? Moore their embarrassing followers
epigoni". This is the embarrassment of the so-called Middle Generation Middle Generation poets. Critics largely agree
Middle Generation poets include, among others, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Berryman
John Berryman, and Robert Lowell. LowellRobert Lowell.They were of similar age, had similar experiences, and were close in poetic style
and were central figures in the so-called Confessional School. This claim can be said to derive from a few lines of Lowell's poem:
really we had the same life,/ the generic one/ our generation offered
(truth be told we had the same life/ our generation offered/ the same genus). A notable feature compared to their predecessors
is their proximity to pop culture. Even though most of them have a collegiate background,
and from a certain point of view, they are still more critical than appreciative of pop culture. This is mainly pop music,
bars and movies. The first part of 77 Dream Songs contains poems related to bars (e.g., nos. 2-5, 15)
and movies (e.g., nos. 6-9); and what could be as dreamy as a movie? After all, the seemingly ungrammatical pairing of dream and song
is the juxtaposition of "dream" and "song".
Instead of the systematically distilled visions of Wasteland, Dream Song has the shattered film of marijuana (which in Berryman's case might better be described as drunkenness); instead of the songwriting Wasteland that was so subtle, but not so sentimental as pop songs, Dream Song's implied erudition could well be said to have been drowned out in Drunk Talk, a song about a man's life.
Iceberg of drunken talk (boozy talk). The rhythms in the lines of Dreamsongs have a jazz-like jump,
impromptu excitement, sudden shifts in key/personality/perspective, and several of the psalmist's characters are comparable to the usual jazz-band instrumentals, simple but indispensable, and each with its own unique function. But such music is not translatable/transferable
(like the difference between listening to a jazz CD, and listening to a live performance), not so much because of the improvisation in live performance, but because the environment influences the mood of the players/singers, and that mood leads to the wonderful subtleties of color and language that are unique to the music of the moment.
But then, I'd have to try to play jazz on a different set of instruments. My interpretation here can only hope to give
a "partially complete" text, which is not possible for such a large work, so
I can only do "partially complete". I'm not sure if I can do that, but I'd like to hear my own version!
(I'm officially serious about Dream Songs from now on)
..................... .............................. .............................. ...
First, start with the dedication. As mentioned above, 77 Dream Songs was published in 1964. The title dedication is "Dedicated
to Kate, and to Saul". Kate was his wife, Kathleen Ann Donahue, and Saul was his
lifelong friend, the novelist Saul Bellow. Bellow Saul Bellow.Berryman was a great admirer of his novel Augie? The Adventures of Augie March
The Adventures of Augie March" was so highly regarded that the first week after New Year's in 1953, he brought home a hard copy of
Bellow's novel, intending to read it while he was there the following weekend, but who knew that he wouldn't be able to stop reading it, and as he read it, he tsked aloud. "It's brilliant! Bellow is an absolute genius." Then he read it until
4:00 a.m. Sunday morning, and when he was done, he ran to Bellow's place in the cold, pounded on his window, woke him up from
a dream, and told him that the novel was terrific. Ten months later, the novel's publication didn't elicit the kind of response that
Belliman had hoped for, so he was forced to write an article for the New York Times Book Review comparing its relationship to American
culture to that of Ulysses to Irish culture.
"77 Dream Songs" quotes four sentences as its title.
The first sentence follows the title dedication above and is taken from the Bible? Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:57: THOU DREWEST NEAR IN THE DAY
(THOU DREWEST NEAR IN THE DAY). The context is as follows: Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou
saidst, Fear not (Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou
saidst, Fear not). The last three inscriptions are on a separate page.
The second sentence, "GO IN, BRACK MAN, DE DAY'S YO' OWN" ("Go in, black man, this
day's your own! ") Although not attributed, this parody of the Negro's tone can be traced
to a book very much related to Dream Songs. The
book that examines black minstrelsy (traveling show business performances) is Tambo and Bones (tentatively translated as Tambourine and Rattling
Plates), published in 1930 by a man named Carl Wittke. The above quote is cited as the book's title. The roles in this traveling show were all played by white men
performing comic routines with talking and singing, often with the tambourine man at one end of the stage and the rattle board man at the other.
This draws our attention to the "performativity" (falsity or disembodiment) of such performances, and the dialogic nature of the entire Dreamsong
is key to the composition and understanding of the poem. As for why white people play black people? I'm not
an expert in this area and dare not presume to say, but at least the following three aspects can be examined: 1) the liveliness and vitality of black cultural factors
such as the blues, jazz, improvisation, and so on in this kind of performances; 2) the slapstick as
a kind of reflection, a kind of temporary relief and loosening up, a mockery of the rationality of daily life; 3) the contrast with white people's of an
other can constitute a riff on countless classic combinations of characters or concepts; we could mention Don Quixote and San
chu, Lear and the Fiddler, even the Self and the Ego, and so on. Ah yes, one famous feminist theorist
even said it's because white men have an inferiority complex about their own playthings, so they get
some kind of (false) satisfaction or superiority by mimicking blacks to cope with their own frustrations about their own life experiences, and that "Mr. Rattlesnake
is Berryman's Mr. Bones is Berryman's fanciful penis, his prancing
skeleton, engaged in an endlessly entertaining dance of love and death). entertaining dance of love and death)
(see page 165 of Racechanges, Gubar Susan Gubar's monograph on the phenomenon of white skin and black face in American culture). I had the pleasure of hearing her give a talk once, and I don't know how she elaborated on the phenomenon of yellow-skinned blondes. You don't have to agree with her assertion, but it must be acknowledged that this black character, Mr. Rattleboard, really has a lot of room to expand.
The third sentence is from the Bible. Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:63 "...... they all make a song of me" (...I AM
THEIR MUSICK). The superscription of this half of the sentence is: Behold their sitting down, and their rising up, I am their musick
(Behold their sitting down, and their rising up, I am their musick).
The fourth line, "BUT THERE IS ANOTHER METHOD," is from a book by South African
reformer Olive Schreiner. The book, published in 1914, is called
(Dreams). Ms. Schreiner argues that there are two ways in which artists usually present the "real," one of which is the "stage
method," in which the characters behave as puppets at the will of their creators; "but there is another method -
the method of the life we all lead. Here everything is unpredictable. People come and go in strange steps. Recognize the
field, perform and re-perform for each other, and then die." It's this latter that is the approach that Hilena favors.
Overall, it seems possible to speculate on the latent structure of Berryman's 77 Dream Songs. Not only does the phrase
"another way" convey Berryman's compositional principles and dialogic structure, but the black-accented phrase
suggests the kind of stage on which these dream-songs are staged in terms of what kind of human beings are in love with each other and what kind of trouble they are in. And the
quotes from the Bible point to the work's deep-seated theme: don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid!
Dream Song #1
Angry Henry hides and disappears For a whole day,
Heartbroken Henry is full of sulks.
I understand his thoughts,-always wanting to settle things once and for all.
It's an idea that everyone has, and everyone thinks
that they can do it, and the thought of it made Henry sulk and despair.
But he should have stood up and spoken out.
The whole world was on Henry's side like a woollen lover
and it had seemed so before.
Then came the breakup.
After that there was no more flip-flopping that could or should have been.
I don't understand how Henry can still be alive after being found and seen through by others
.
He now has a lengthy miracle to tell,
that the world can still endure and must suffer.
Once upon a maple tree how happy I was
Standing at the top and singing at the top of my voice.
At this moment the mighty sea slams the earth
And every bed becomes empty.
Translation note:
Berryman always thought that the one written in 1947 would be the first, and the first line of that poem reads, The
jolly old man is the silly old dumb. But
over, (just as I already know that I can't possibly finish translating this poem, and I'll say that now after this first) he decided early on
which poem he would end Dream Songs with, and in his diary on the night after the birth of his son, Paul,
he noted, "Dream Songs should happen to end with this incident! ". Of course, he had always assumed that he should have had
a daughter rather than a son this time, and the last three words of Dream Songs, the last three words of No. 385, become the extra
nineteenth line, which is MY HEAVY DAUGHTER.
I'm afraid that a draft of the first of what is now the first song was written as early as April (8?) 1958, and that the first line of this poem It was written at the same time as this poem
It was probably a draft of Silent Song No. 52. At the time, Berryman had been hospitalized for alcoholism, had just gotten out, and had had a big fight with his then
second wife, Ann Levine, so was moping around the house and not seeing anyone. This would
be the first stanza or thereabouts most of the second stanza, while #52 has the line Alone. they
all abandoned Henry (Alone. They
all abandoned Henry). Also available for reference is No. 14, below
side: as bad as achilles (as bad as the Achilles boy). This poem compares Henry, who is in hiding
, to Achilles, who refuses to come out of his tent out of anger.
On March 29, 1971, Berryman wrote, "I always thought this first poem was about his father's self-
murder," and later added in an interview that it was about the fall of man, a fall that presents itself as a two-tiered idea
: the traumatic memory of birth and the expulsion from the Eden. The last line of the poem is most likely due to a song by black female jazz
singer Bessie Smith titled "Empty Bed" Empty Bed.
Dream Song 1
Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point, -- a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.
All the world
All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought to.
I don't see how Henry, p don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.
Dream Song #2: Big Buttons, Paper High Hats: on
This chick wears a chastity belt! There are neither nightclubs nor
no bars, no free sunny sidewalks, no excuses
to play along for a deal, and
no punks nor much-needed ones. Henry was
depressed as hell. Did each person go to Maine
Runners get on the train?
When it comes time for all the niggers to all spill,
will he come? Let's hit the dance floor, girl,
Get a little sleazy, get a little slippery,
as long as you want this shit. Take it off,
Old sausage, spare us, honey man; or
Stick to chastity for a night.
--Sir Rattlesnake, or Knight Grahay the High and Mighty:
You are amazingly good and law-abiding. Are you feeling well?
Honeyman, dusk is truly a jade.
-That's a lot to take in. Still, king or worm, though
Casual. Here comes the errand cat of worship, hurrah, hurrah.
I vote from my big hole.
Translation note:
The title of the poem quotes a minstrelsy, a traveling black rap show, announcing the entrance of a character, and the words "big buttons
and paper hats" refer to the character's costume. The poem was written on Thanksgiving Day, 1962, when Berryman was doing a poetry reading in Boston-
. The first stanza of the poem is set on Election Day, a day when all bars must close. The
poem was dedicated to Papa Rice ("Daddy" Rice), whose full name, Thomas Dartmouth Rice, made
him the man who started the tradition of the traveling black rap show (which Berryman knew about because he read the book mentioned above, Tambourine and Rattleboard
and knew something about it). Berryman didn't actually see a real traveling rap show, as he admitted in a 1963
letter, though he said he had seen vaudeville.
This poem contains the first appearance of Bones, the name of a key figure in the collection (along with such others as Henry Pussycat). This white-on-black onstage chorus of characters stands on
two sides of the stage, each holding a musical instrument, while Bones responds to
Tambo, the drummer at the other end, with a rattlesnake, more or less a chorus or a tease. This mask-like character plays a key role in understanding the characters in this
long poem, because the author himself says that Henry, the Henry of the poem, is sometimes a black
man, and there is a lot of non-standard black slang in this poem. In addition, there are a lot of slips of the tongue in this poem, for example, in the last line, the word "big hole" can be said to be both a homonym for hall and a shortened version of the expletive ass-hole; and of course, if you relate it to the rat metaphor (dream
) that follows it, you can see that it is not the same thing as "big hole". metaphor (dream
song #7 as well as #13) and the previous line of the poem ("the errand cat who canvassed for votes"), the hole is the (old
rat) hole; and who's to say we don't live like rats?
Galahad the Grahay Galahad, one of the purest of the Knights of the Round Table in King Arthur legend, found the Holy Grail alone.
Dream Song 2: Big Buttons, Cornets: the advance
The jane is zoned! no nightspot here, no bar
there, no sweet freeway, and no premises
for business purposes,
no loiterers or needers. Henry are
baffled. Have ev'rybody head for Maine,
utility-man take a train? >Have ev'rybody head for Maine,
utility-man take a train?
Arrive a time when all coons lose dere grip,
but is he come?
If they are all you seem to réquire. Strip,
ol banger, skip us we, sugar; so hang on
one chaste evenin.
-- Sir Bones, or Galahad: astonishin
yo legal & yo good. Is you feel well?
Honey dusk do sprawl.
-- Hit's hard. Kinged or thinged, though, fling & wing.
Poll-cats are coming, hurrah, hurray.
I votes in my hole.
Dream Song #3: Stimulants for an old brute
Golden acacia, burnt myrrh , velvet, zinging thorns,
- I'm not that young but I'm not that old either,
says a screwed up and tired 23 year old kosher girl.
There's still a vestige of what it feels like to have just been dumped,
with no one to kiss on the mouth.
(- My psychiatrist can lick your doctor) Women always get the dirty deed.
All these old thieves will get it sooner or later
always. I've been going through old journals.
The Gottwald Company, now bankrupt.
Strong funds withdrawn. Double agents, goths.
She's not atmospheric as a seal, like a paper seal,
and whiter and smoother.
Rilke is a freak.
I tolerate all his pathos and his music
and his gang of obsessed, disappointed noblewomen.
A threshold is worse than a circle of people
There are a lot of little people there in the open and in the dark,
Rilke's gang, as I said,
Translation:
On New Year's Day, 1948, Berryman was attending a party at which a woman told him that she would love to tell him what he had been up to,
and that she was not going to tell him.
She was tempted to tell his
poet buddy Swartz, "My psychiatrist can lick your doctor."
On Friday, May 7, 1948, Berryman read
a letter from the English poet Swinburne saying that the French erotica writer, the Marquis de Sade, was "a stimulant for an
old brute" (in fact Swinburne's 1837-1909 own poetry is still full of
eroticism as an afterthought of the Romantics), and he excitedly noted it in his diary.
Sometime in 1955, Berryman noticed a girl called Susan saying she was "not so young but not
so old". On April 16 of that year, Berryman had written an unsent letter about Rilke:
"To tell you the truth: there is something disgusting about Rilke, something inhuman, unmanly, unmanly, coy like a woman
. I'm not talking about homosexuality, which is not the case with Whitman and Orton, for example, or Marlowe, which people don't
turn off. Lai is toad-like ...... I don't know what to say ...... I admit he's a marvelous poet."
Gottwald refers to Klement Gottwald, the Czechoslovakian prime minister, who became prime
minister in 1946 and chairman in '48, and, obeying the interests of the USSR, carried out the Great Party Trial of the Line Struggle, which led to the murder of a number of his colleagues
and his own death in 1953. Berryman's diary entry of March 24, 1948 records this.
Dream Song 3: A Stimulant for an Old Beast
Acacia, burnt myrrh, velvet, prickly stings.
-- I'm not so young but not so very old,
said screwed-up lovely 23.
A final sense of being right out in the cold,
unkissed.
(-- My psychiatrist can lick
All these old criminals sooner or later
have had it. I've been reading old journals.
All these old criminals sooner or later
have had it. I've been reading old journals.
Gottwald & Co., out of business now.
Thick chests quit. Double agent, Joe.
She holds her breath like a seal
and is whiter & sm and is whiter & smoother.
Rilke was a jerk.
I admit his griefs & music
& titled spelled all-disappointed ladies.
A threshold worse than the circle
where the vile settle & lurk,
Rilke's. as I said, --
Dreamsong #4
Filling her spicy chickens with firm
and mouth-watering body, she glanced at me
as many as twice.
I was giddy with excitement, and I stared in gluttonous awe
only because her husband plus four others were present
that I didn't pounce on her like a tiger
or fall to my knees at her luscious feet and chant
"You're one of the hottest of the darkest nights in many years
so good that Henry's eyes
swooned at the A bright sight." I move forward
Eat my (desperate) praline ice cream. --Sir Rattlesnake: Hold up,
The world, full of gourmand chicks.
--Black hair, Latin complexion, jewel-like eyes
Glance down ...... that redneck beside her Feast which ...... Look down there
p>What kind of spectacle is she sitting on?
The hotel buzzes like a fly. There's a chance she could be on Mars.
Why did all this even go wrong? What law should be working against Henry.
- Mr. Rattleboard: right indeed.
Translation note:
This poem was written in a Minneapolis restaurant called Gaslight.
"Look down there / What a wonder she sits on?" The "spectacle down there" refers to her ass.
Dream Song 4
Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband & four other people
kept me from springing on her
or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced Upon
(despairing) my spumoni.--Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif feeding girls.
--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . . What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
--Mr. Bones: there is.
Dream Song #5
Henry sits at the bar alone,
One drink after another is always at the end of the line,
The world and its God are at war,
His wife is nothing,
His wife is nothing. wife is nothing,
Stephen the Martyr
Snow your name.
Henry got on the plane in a cheerful mood.
Careful Henry never yelled
But when the Holy Virgin emerged from the clouds
falling from the light to the holy mountain of her homeland,
his thoughts produced air pockets the plane lurched a little.
"Count me wide, Holy Mother." "No problem."
Henry lay in the netting, the wild waves uncontrollable,
meanwhile brain-inflamed birds pecked at the scales;
Mr. Heartbreaker, the newborn man,
who came here to cultivate a bed of madness;
the newborn's fingernails
reflected the image of a dead man.
Translation note:
Berryman says the second stanza comes from his experience traveling to India on a lecture tour in the summer of 1957. Arranged by
the United States Information Service,
the United States Information Service, Berryman flew to Japan (where Sanga
Kwan Mongo has the 73rd) on July 6 to speak about American literature in Calcutta, Bombay, and Pune for nearly two months before and after the trip, and then
he moved on to Italy and Spain to return to the United States. While flying to Italy, he saw from the air Mount Athos
in northeastern Greece, and glimpsed a holy woman emerging from the clouds, forgiving him for all his sins and disrespect.
The last two lines are from a novel by the Spanish writer Cervantes, entitled The Dialogue of the Dogs, which contains these
words: the sorceress Camacha of Mundilla can "make the living or the dead appear in mirrors or on the fingernails of newborn
children".
"His thoughts produce lumps the plane is a little bumpy" was once used as the title of one of his limited edition poetry pamphlets
.
Dream Song 5
Henry sat in de bar & was odd,
off in the glass from the glass,
at odds wif de world & its god,
his wife is a complete nothing,
his wife is a complete nothing. wife is a complete nothing,
St Stephen
getting even.
Henry sats in de plane &was gay.
Careful Henry nothing said aloud,
but the world is not the same.
But where a Virgin out of the cloud
to her Mountain drop in light,
his thought made pockets & the plane bucket.
'Parm me, lady.' 'Orright.'
Henry lay in de netting, wild,
while the brainfever bird did scales;
Mr Heartbreak, the New Man,
come to farm a crazy land;
an image of the dead on the fingernail
of a newborn chi
an image of the dead on the fingernail
of a newborn chi