The opening salvo of Cheltenham Elegy 260 is an image both
tactile and subtle enough to convey the vagaries of a certain kind of teenage
life in the American suburbs— the Elegiac Protagonist, “too stoned to find the
bathroom,” pissing on a tree-trunk in the backyard of a friend of a friend:
I was too stoned to find the bathroom.
The trees in the dude’s backyard made
it look like Africa. You
were my hook-up
to this new crowd. The same voice, as always,
cuts in to say you were fucked up even
then. You had a dooming Oedipal
complex. We were all wrapped tight,
even when we got high. I was the
only one getting any, so you both
mistrusted me. African trees & easy
camaraderie. A primitive pact sealed
between warring factions— my spears
(take this as you will) for your grass.
That the trees look “African” is clearly the byproduct of
his intoxication. Dramatic tensions inhere— does the third party here, an
unfamiliar, approve of his tree-trunk being pissed on? Of even more interest is
a textual moment which bridges the chasm between the Bakhtinian dialogism
discussed in the Elegies recently and the phenomenological tensions explored in
the Elegies earlier this year— “the same voice, as always/ cuts in to say you
were fucked up even/ then. You had a dooming Oedipal/complex.” This constitutes
the manifestation, in a first person narrative voice, of a precise, coherent,
fully realized second voice; in it, the realization of a second complete
character, dramatic interest intact, within the first. The textual stance of
the Elegiac Protagonist must appear layered, because the complexities of his
character encompass a multitude of voices which may be channeled through him at
any moment. This phenomenological tension— the exploration of the narrative
first person singular, its potentialities not only to contain multitudes, but
to manifest precise, cohesive voices out of this multifarious consciousness—
creates the possibility of meta-dialogism,
the interstitial communication of complex data within a single character or
consciousness. A perceived stability— the “same” voice— establishes the dynamic
of meta-dialogism as a defense mechanism against the bewildering congeries of
appearances which constitute Cheltenham’s
“game face” to the world. Competing voices in a single consciousness arise out
of situations which manifest such extreme surface/depth tensions/abrasions that
they can only be processed accurately with a repertoire of cohesive voices in
tow.
So it is in Elegy 260— the Protagonist’s second manifested
voice is there specifically to assert depth— that the smooth phenomenological
surface (a dope deal, African trees, “easy camaraderie”) belies other voices
(Oedipal ones) which render the Other in the poem (the same Other, we assume,
as in 261) both impotent sexually and generally ineffectual. The Elegiac
Protagonist is sexually potent, and mistrusted for it; his “cock out” routine
in the Elegy’s opening vignette amounts to an assertion of physical confidence.
This receives a mirroring algorithm at the Elegy’s conclusion regarding the
Protagonist’s intellect— “my spears…for your grass” suggests that the bartering
process involves thoughts, plans, stratagem, and the recompense of drugs for
them. The textual back-lighting also shades the situation to suggest that the
Protagonist has been brought in as a hired hand, to employ the “spears” of his
intellect towards finding a solution to whatever the stalemated, drug-related
situation is. As in 261, the hero/anti-hero Other (or brother) figure in the
Elegies drags the Elegiac Protagonist into a dangerous, possibly
life-threatening situation (the rough u-turn in Old York Road being a compacted version
of this drug contretemps), and the suburban façade of placidity is disrupted
severely by the tasks being fulfilled by its inhabitants.
This congeries, which creates a practical/tactile base for
the emergence of meta-dialogism in the Protagonist, is both complex and a
complex (psychological hindrance), to be endured by those placed/situated to
endure it. What the function or purpose of meta-dialogism is for the Elegiac
Protagonist, is both a coping mechanism and a phenomenological quirk which
facilitates recognition, no matter how beleaguered, that the human world is
real, and that everything which happens to him in Cheltenham
really is happening. The only way to give human reality a stable voice, from
within one consciousness, is to develop several distinct voices. The
Protagonist’s meta-dialogism takes the world (Cheltenham-as-stage)
and solidifies it, against the wonted suburban impulse to nullify human
experience/reality via outright denial, and the adoption of singular,
indistinct first person perspectives.
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