Yeats and his killer line
QUESTION Did novelist Cormac McCarthy borrow the title No Country For Old Men from a poem?
With novels such as All the Pretty horses, Blood Meridian, the Road and 2005’s No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary fiction. he uses references to classical and modern texts throughout his work.
the title No Country For Old Men was taken from the poem Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats. this is the first verse: That is no country for old men.
The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees — Those dying generations — at
their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerelcrowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all
summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music
all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.
Yeats wrote the poem in 1927 when he was in his early 60s. it tells of an ageing man who feels out of place, his wisdom and experience neglected by the young, so he travels to seek spiritual salvation.
‘Byzantium was the centre of European civilisation and the source of its spiritual philosophy, so i symbolise the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city,’ he wrote. McCarthy’s novel, which was made into a multi-Oscar-winning film in 2007, reflects the poem: ageing sheriff tom Bell comes up against a new kind of criminal, the nihilistic Anton Chigurh, from whom his only means of salvation is to walk away.
Sophie Wagner, London SE14.
QUESTION What motivated Klaus Conrad to coin the term apophenia — seeing a meaningful connection between seemingly unrelated things?
KlAuS CONRAd was a professor of psychiatry and neurology, and became director of the university Psychiatric hospital in Gottingen, Germany, in 1958. in that year he published Die Beginnende Schizophrenie, which is considered fundamental to understanding the onset of paranoid schizophrenia.
Conrad, a former member of the Nazi party, examined 117 cases when he was working as a psychiatrist in a military hospital during World War ii.
he recognised four stages in the development of delusion: the initial phase, which he called das trema; the apophantic phase, in which the establishment of the delusion takes place; the apocalyptic phase, in which the patient disintegrates; and the consolidation phase, which refers to outcome.
Conrad coined the term apophany, from the Greek apo (away from) and phaenein (to show), to reflect the fact that the schizophrenic initially experiences delusion as revelation.
in contrast to epiphany, apophany does not provide insight into the true nature of reality or its interconnectedness, but is a ‘process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the entire surrounding experiential field’. it is entirely selfreferential and paranoid: ‘being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers’.
the experience of many unusual phenomena might be attributed to apophenia: ghosts, poltergeists, electronic voice phenomena, numerology, the Bible code, divination, prophecy, remote viewing and many paranormal and supernatural experiences and phenomena.
A famous illustration of apophenia was the descent into mental illness of American Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike while he was at Cambridge university on a sabbatical from his California diocese.
One day in February 1966, he found his clocks had stopped at 8:19 — the time when his alcoholic son, James Jr, had fatally shot himself in New York two weeks earlier. the strange coincidence, according to Pike, was accompanied by other unexplained phenomena.
his books were mysteriously moved from place to place and clusters of safety pins appeared ‘where they had not been before, all open to the position that the hands of a clock are in at 8:19’.
the curious incidents convinced him that his son was trying to contact him from beyond the grave. he was accused of heresy and forced out of the Church. in 1969, he died in the desert of Judea in the Middle East in mysterious circumstances.
Jim Cowan, Maidenhead, Berks.
QUESTION Why can the word ‘act’ be used for drama and in the Parliamentary sense?
ESSENtiAllY, the two usages are the same. it is only their contexts — theatre and Parliament — that make them appear different.
in the manuscript for a play, the word act is used to identify those parts of the script where the action is taking place, as performed by the actors.
Elsewhere in the manuscript is the cast list and possibly notes about the characters on which the actors can build.
Modern theatre producers are more creative and don’t feel they need to be bound by the manuscript.
there may also be a prologue, which isn’t part of the action. it is a spoken introduction for the benefit of the audience, setting the scene for the action.
An Act of Parliament does what it says: it is politicians taking action in the culmination of a democratic process.
Before it becomes law, draft legislation is known as a Bill because it can’t be acted upon. the origin is in the latin bulla, meaning a proclamation. When the Pope issues or amends Roman Catholic doctrine, it is known as a Papal Bull.
Once a Bill has been passed by Parliament and receives the Queen’s signature, it becomes an Act of Parliament, which allows local and national government and the judicial system (the actors) to take action. n IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.
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