Posted by David J. Rothman on March 27, 1997 at 16:52:36:

In Reply to: Re: Mal Paso Bridge, Section 8, ll 9-10 posted by Rob Kafka on March 14, 1997 at 10:43:48:

: :
: : : Can someone explain to me the syntax of "Mal Paso Bridge",
: : : Section 8, ll 9-10? I refer specifically to the words
: : : "Wonderfully move / Light" -- how do they relate to one
: : : another, and to the rest of the passage?

: : : The poem will be in CP Volume 4. In the meantime, you'll
: : : find it in one of the editions of Roan Stallion, Tamar &
: : : OP -- either Boni & Liveright or Modern Library.

: : : -- Rob

: : Rob... could it be as in the present tense of
: : " whisper the waters" from ll 5 that he uses
: : "move (the) light"?.

: (Sorry for the empty followup preceding)

: John: I don't think so. "Rises the dawn" (line 2)
: and "whisper the waters" are present tense -- but
: (as Boon pointed out privately) "move" would have
: to be "moves" for parallelism -- i.e. "moves (the)
: light."

: By the way, I checked the Boyle Tamar -- and it too
: has "move". The typescript is at Texas, but I my
: notes are silent on the point.

: Thanks for the thought . . . -- Rob

Dear Rob and John:

The syntax of the entire passage is very free--perhaps it's because I always have Milton in my head when reading this poem from that "shear the rhyme-tassels from verse" line, but I always think of the syntax as highly Latinate, or Miltonic. At any rate, assuming that the printed version is an accurate rendering of the ms., I think the synatx of the passage in question makes good sense, if we just supply a little assumed punctuation, and follow RJ's verbal markers. Here's my paraphrase, which does terrible violence to the poetry, but perhaps elucidates the sense. Let me know what you think:

The daw rises at the head of the valley, a white bird beating between the hilltops; the stars are hushed. The redwoods shake their columns of shadow, while deep in darkness the waters whisper an adorable word. [Next comes the sentence you asked about.] Light, and the waters which were wakeful all night long whenever we listened, and the sacred hilltops whitening in heaven, all wonderfully move through the cool calm and the secret twilight, which is silver-foreheaded, saintly, a maiden.

I think this works, in the case of the final sentence, because "move" must take a plural subject, which RJ does provide, albeit tangled. The sentence does in fact seem to be highly latinate (Latinists correct me): it begins with a prepositinal phrase (which takes up one full line), then an appositive, which takes up the second line, followed by the verb with an adverbial modifier (third line), followed by two parts of the three-part subject in line four, adverbially modified ("whenever we listened") in the first half of line five, followed by the third part of the plural subject ("the sacred hilltops"), which is modified by a final adjectival phrase ("whitening in heaven"). The lineation follows the major syntactical junctures very closely except in the next to last line, where there are two such units.

I hope this is useful--I've looked it over a few times and it seems to work to me--but many thanks for directing our attention to it--it is dense. Among other things, this syntax allows JRJ top end the poem with the word "heaven," wich is rather the opposite of the poem's opening word, "Under."

BTW--This forum is great--but is there any way we can avoid writing in these hateful little boxes?! It's danged hard to edit.

Best,

DJR

Follow Ups:

Re: Mal Paso Bridge, Section 8, ll 9-10 Rob Kafka 16:00:08 4/10/97 (2)
Re: Mal Paso Bridge, Section 8, ll 9-10 David J. Rothman 10:10:55 4/11/97 (1)
Re: Mal Paso Bridge brophy 18:37:27 4/23/97 (0)

Post a Followup