cry of a newborn -

the aroma of chicken broth

wafting from next-door

the feelgood sensation

of a sated mum


bikja ta’ tarbija tat-twelid –

tinxtamm ġejja m’għand il-ġara

l-aroma ta’ brodu tat-tiġieġa

is-sensazzjoni pjacevoli

ta’ omm sodisfatta


新生儿哭声

邻家飘来

鸡汤香气

饱腹娘

良好感觉


Christina Chin (Malaysia) / Paul Callus (Malta)  

[Maltese translation by Paul Callus (Malta)] 

[Chinese translation by Agnes Chin (Malaysia)]


----------------------------

meraki

strokes of passion

on canvas

the ink

of a calligraphy master


meraki

pinzellati passjonali

fuq it-tila

il-linka ta’ mgħallem

tal-kaligrafija


meraki

激情笔触

画布上

书法师

的墨水


Paul Callus (Malta) / Christina Chin (Malaysia)

[Maltese translation by Paul Callus (Malta)] 

[Chinese translation by Agnes Chin (Malaysia)]

Discuss Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre as a bildungsroman novel 

Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman genre of Victorian prose fiction and poetic drama of the spiritual pilgrimage of the narrative protagonist bildungsroman heroine Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre’s quest of self discovery leads her childhood and adolescence folded, molded, stamped and carved by the engravings of the Reeds and Lowood Institution. Hypocrisy and prejudicial inequality throttled Jane Eyre to the attic of the Red Room with “blood coloured” and “ghastly white” striking terror to the childish lamblike soul. Mr. Brocklehurst denouncing in chastisement to belittle Jane Eyre as a “castaway”, “interloper” and “alien”.  In the Reeds’ household sterility, xenophobia, claustrophobia, sadistic cruelty and power mania embodied by their moral hypocrisies, emotional deficiencies and perversities of the presumably materialistic and power hungry middle class as a whole and the society that the class dominates. Except few figures such as Bessie, Doctor Llyod, Helen Burns and Miss Maria Temple; Jane Eyre was facing repressed emotional frustration amidst villainous and satanic characters including Mr. Brocklehurst and the Reeds family. Jane Eyre’s enrollment at the poor relief educational charity institute thrust her to impoverishment and malnourishment. Jane Eyre’s orphaned body politic within its virulent passions, tempestuous temperament and mutinous rebellion, are implicated to be epistemological anxieties, forlorn depressions, humiliation, self-doubt and habitual mood swings latterly foreshadowed by the antithesis of the heroine to the foil of Bertha Edward Fairfax Rochester———– loathsome, distinct, formal and mirthless madwoman of the attic——–the ominous and misapprehensive impediment to the marriage of Edward Fairfax Rochester with Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre’s flight from Thornfield Hall is the aftermath of the forewarnings by the letter from her guardian Uncle John Eyre as well as Mr. Briggs—-the solicitor espoused by Bertha Mason’s kinsman Mr. Mason revelation of Rochester’s clandestine relationship and the rending of the bridal veil.

Jane Eyre’s encounter with the Victorian romance and patriarchal misogyny is implicated by the gothic macabre and nightmarish episodes of Thornfield Hall. Edward Fairfax Rochester’s impervious personae, moody demenaour, boorish and brusque manner of conventionality and judgmental personage arouses the indignation of Jane Eyre to flee temptation as metaphorically alluded by her flight from Thornfield Hall. Jane Eyre’s adulthood and humanity are disparagingly critiqued by the judgmental nature of Rochester as addressing the governess as  “linnet”, “imp”, “fairy”, “elf”, “salamander” and even a “thing”. In response to the bigamous affair and scandalous adultery of the libertine sentimentalist Edward Fairfax Rochester, the bildungsroman heroine adheres to the philosophic Helen Burns’s sentimental morality, spiritual integrity and transcendental asceticism as reechoed in the following dialogism foreshadowed by the dialect : “I must resist those who punish me unjustly.”  Jane Eyre: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—–I have as much soul as you and full as much heart!” [The bildungsroman heroine remonstrates a froth of emotions evoked by the tumultuous brain and insurrectionist heart as she becomes envious of Edward Fairfax Rochester’s merriment in the houseparty with Blanche Ingram.]

Edward Rochester masquerades as the disguisement of a fortune teller in relation to the welfare of Jane Eyre’s association whose brow profess to say: “I can live alone if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born within me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.” [Class prejudice and gender inequality coalesces with the coercion of the status quo in the semiotic.] Furthermore, ironically Rochester sees her [Jane Eyre] as a bird rending its own feathers self-destructively or glancing through the closed bars of a cage: Edward Rochester: “Jane, be still; don’t struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.” And of course, Jane Eyre’s reclamation of the spirit of independence is justly and aptly brought into focus by the narratorial voice. Jane Eyre: “I am no bird; no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.” This dialogism focusing the repartee between the protagonists spotlights the flashback of metaphorical imageries in the envisioning of the impediment to the betrothal as the nostalgic reawakening of pathetic fallacy:

“A Christmas frost had come at mid-summer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed over ripe apples; drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfields and cornfields lay a frozen shroud.”

Rochester’s and Jane’s relationship is symbolically decadence and fragmentation metaphorized by nothing better than before the thunder struck lightning of the old chestnut tree in the orchard. Furthermore, Jane Eyre’s staunch principles of the moral integrity and the revolutionary struggle for establishment is noteworthy in this relevance pertaining to the obstacles and hindrances to the wedding between master Edward Fairfax Rochester and the governess Jane Eyre. Undoubtedly, the heroine can relate herself to the counsel of the housekeeper Mrs. Alice Fairfax whose insurmountable imperative was: “gentlemen of his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses.” Jane Eyre’s abhorrence of triffles and frivolities disenchants her from the London heirloom jewels, the amethyst silk and pink satin from Rochester are prolifically pointed by the former: “The more he [Edward Rochester] bought me, the more my [Jane Eyre’s] cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation…He smiled; and I thought this smile was such as a Sultan might….bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched.”    

In Western customs and traditions the bridal wedding veil symbolism proclaims the virginity of the bride before wedlock. In this instance, Jane Eyre insists on her plain head covering, her “veiled figure”…. “seems almost the image of a stranger” to her because the marriage seems like a masquerade. By ripping the veil, the spinsterish lunacy of Bertha Mason suggests the implication of fabricated or sham marriage that women like Jane Eyre and herself cannot split up into the innocent virgins and insatiable maidens into spoiled belles and overfed mistresses.

Jane Eyre casts herself as the saviour by her rescuing efforts in the endeavours to extinguish flame ablaze in Edward Rochester’s bed-chamber. Nonetheless, Jane Eyre does not abdicate her dreams and aspirations despite forlorning the Thornfield Hall. Aestheticism of the eclectic nature reinvigorates Jane Eyre’s spiritual communion with mother nature amidst the Marsh End Moors: “Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult clung to her with filial fondness. Tonight at least, I would be her guest——as I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price”.

Significantly Jane Eyre’s association with the Marsh End Moors St John Rivers exposes her to the dramatics of full blossoming maturity. This was the moment when Jane Eyre’s symbols of servitude as an ‘ape of the harlequin’ contrasts with the enshrinement of the missionary’s asceticism. We can trace back to the Thornfield Hall referring to the halcyon heyday in Jane Eyre’s bildungsroman. “I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield. I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life—–momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried in the inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic, and high. I have talked face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in—–with an original, a vigorous and an expanded mind.”

Jane Eyre after all, proclaims the fantasy wish fulfillment in the admiration of Edward Fairfax Rochester; which juxtaposes veneration of sainthood and apostleship in the approbation of St John Rivers. [In the former case, the following dialogues are observed: “My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood before me and every thought of religion; as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not in those days, see God for His creature of whom I had made an idol.” In the later case, the following subsequent dialogism emerges: “I felt veneration for Saint John Rivers—–veneration so strong that its impetus thrust at me at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him—–to rush down the torment of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own.” It is noteworthy that Jane Eyre’s subjectivity and endearment of such fellow-feeling is the aftermath of St. John Rivers’ asserted opinion of the former: “Human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you”. Moreover, the ‘glorious prospects of independence’ and the ‘ponderous gifts of gold’ could be transformed into a legacy of life, hope and enjoyment through Jane Eyre’s collaborative beneficiary between St. John Rivers, Diana and Mary; thus dividing the fortunes endowment of twenty thousand pounds in proportion of equanimity. So far this is poignantly observant of the Valley of Humiliation impoverished and destitute Jane Eyre visitation to the Moor House is reminiscent of the Pilgrim’s Progress and particularly John Bunyan’s allegorical the Palace Beautiful, as suggested that she had strayed from the narrow at Thornfield.

Nevertheless, Saint John Rivers is later vindicated to be a more subtle and more cold Mr. Brocklehurst; cold cumbrous column of a clergyman self-sacrificial colonial missionary—–the impetus reminiscent of the black pillar on the hearth rug of Gateshead.  However, St. John Rivers’ character cast by the Brontean novelist is of paramount importance to the extent of possibilities and further discoveries of the bildungsroman protagonist. St. John Rivers is the antithesis to Helen Burns without innocence and naivete; he is more purposeful, direct and threatening. In both of these persona the heroine of the narrative as well as the author visualizes extreme spiritual impulse: a form of sublimation which can be both creative and liberating but at the same time self-destructive or self-sacrificial as exemplified by the sadistic arrogance of St. John Rivers and masochism of Helen Burns.

Somehow, Helen Burns’ and Miss Maria Temple’s serene philosophy of life touches Jane Eyre’s with strokes of heart melting emotions. Supernatural incantation of telepathic nature restores her wounded relationship with the maimed, blinded, lamed and crippled Edward Fairfax Rochester; whose masculinity was brown, shaggy; and later metamorphosed into a lion as well as Nebuchadnezzar of the forests imploring Jane Eyre to ‘be with my [Rochester’s] infirmities’ and ‘overlook my [Rochester’s] deficiencies’.

The revelation that Rochester already has a wife living, however, changes Jane’s prospects, although not her love itself, and reminds her the power that social position exerts over even the most passionate devotion. “I am not talking to you now through the medium of customs, conventionalities nor even of mortal flesh———it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal——as we are!” This speech act is later to be ameliorative in case of Rochester’s imperial patriarchy and colonial misogynistic nature as reflected in the dialectic: “Divine justice pursued its course; disasters come thick on me [Rochester]. I was forced to pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.” Reformation of Rochester achieves celestial salvation by the glory of divine justice. Jane Eyre abandons her past misfortunes to be faded away to the seas and reunite with the maimed, blinded, lamed and crippled Edward Fairfax Rochester amidst the landscapes of Ferndean Manor. As a mistress, Jane Eyre declares her much awaited confession: “No woman was ever neared to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”  

Works Consulted

Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own The Marxist Feminist Literature Collective: Women’s Writing: Jane Eyre

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar: From A Dialogue of Self And Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress [1979]

Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak: From Three Women’s Texts And A Critique of Imperialism [1985]

Linda Schlossberg’s “The Low, Vague, Hum of Numbers”: The Malthusian Economics of “Jane Eyre”, Victorian Literature and Culture, 2001, Volume: 29, No. 2, pages: 643-666

Thomas Tracy’s “Reader, I Buried Him: Apocalypse and Empire in Jane Eyre, Critical Survey, 2004, Volume: 16, No. 2, Postcolonial Interdisciplinary, pages: 59-77

Sarah Gilead’s Liminality and Antiliminality in Charlotte Bronte’s Novels: Shirley Reads Jane Eyre, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Fall 1987, Volume: 29, No. 3, Nineteenth Century Fiction, pages: 302-322, University of Texas Press

Elizabeth Atkin’s Jane Eyre Transformed, Literature/ Film Quarterly, 1993, Volume: 21, No. 1, pages: 54-60, Salisbury University

Kathleen Vejvoda’s Idolatry in “Jane Eyre”, Victorian Literature and Culture, 2003, Volume: 31, No. 1, pages: 241-261, Cambridge University Press.

Nancy Pell’s Resistance, Rebellion and Marriage: The Economics of Jane Eyre, Nineteenth Century Fiction, March 1977, pages: 397-420, University of California Press.

coffee grounds

its autumn now, leaves falling to the earth

creating the next name for a season,

its fall,

falling.

…

an angel, unnamed.

ink dipped feathers shedding from the bubbles

that formed when you fell.

falling.

i’ve always wondered what it’d be like to fall,

to plummet.

…

air resistance resists the death of a human mind.

a mind already dead. dying. 

rot creeping up the lines.

falling.

bedtime at 8:30, it becomes 9

dont tell.

the kitchen is dirty.

dont tell.

the dog is still outside.

dont-

dont lie to her.

ive already torn that apart.

repetition

of the same mistakes

now ive buried my brain in the back yard

in a jar.

sealed with my secrets,

decomposing like coffee grounds.

…

theres still a song stuck in the throat 

of my skeleton.

decaying on war ground.

lost.

moral of the story: nothing good comes from falling.

You told me that I cannot love.

You told me that I was a bird without wings, 

That love was an illusion to dash me to the ground. 

You tell me that there is only pain, and that

Pain is a tiger, pulling my wings out of my back

While I writhe in agony.

You tell me that love is false, and I believed you.

I stood so close – so close to a black abyss 

That would take the agony away. 

And I felt like a bird without wings –

A bird that would never fly.

It was easy for a wingless dove to never feel the tiger’s claws.

But if love is fake, then what is it I feel?

What is it I feel when 

I watch the waves crash over red rocks,

For every grain of sand I can run through my fingers.

I will never get that sand back.

What is it I feel for a girl who I will never see, 

But holds my hand while I stare out over the abyss, 

Beckoning me home.

Love is an illusion, you say.

It will bind me for the tiger to catch, you say.

I can see that the tiger has caught you already.

Mauled you with its teeth and claws

But then what is it I still see in your eyes?

Eyes that are as cold as blood leaking from open wounds,

Scars that will never fade, from the tiger’s claws.

Did you save me from her, or are you her?

If love is fake, why do you tell me not to love?

Why do you scream for me to grow wings I can never grow,

White wings, not brown wings, not yellow wings. 

I can never grow white wings, and never can you.

If love is fake, why do I weep at night when her words

Bring me further away from the edge. 

If love is fake, why didn’t you leap into the abyss?

No, I think it is real.

Hit me if you want, you lied.

Love is why I did not step into that abyss.

I will never step into it willingly.

I will not let my eyes grow cold like yours.

Why did I want to stay, if pain will catch me?

Why did you stay?

I will not let the tiger tear my wings out so that they are the color it wants,

I grow my own wings. 

I will not let you tell me I cannot love.

I will let love wash over me in the form of her presence. 

I will see the love in your cold eyes.

Look, I can fly.

“Closet”

There is nothing

On the other side

We both know this

I am just a figment of

Their imagination

And they are mine

When they knock on the door

I pretend I cannot hear it

They walk around in the blackness

And I walk in the sun

I meet a girl at school

She tells me she remembers

What the darkness feels like

I tell her I do not

I have only ever been in

The Sun

We are friends in a way

That I have never been 

Friends before

Mom tells me that

Girls are not supposed 

To be friends like this

I tell her it feels natural

My Sun fades and

My world grows a little

Darker

I tell my Mom that

My world is dim

She tells me that

Everyone’s world is dim

I don’t want to believe her

I want to show her

The door in my room

That closes off the dark

She does not follow me there

I stand in front of the door

And I feel the girl stand beside me

I reach for the handle and

The Sun in my room flickers

The door swings open and

I see myself

He is scared and he is young

And he is me

My Sun flickers out.

———————–

Santo Domingo In Pictures

Picture:
The world as a postcard.
Picturesque palms line the sandy beaches
The sky-blue waves lazily roll in and out
And the sun beats down hard on three gradient backs.

Picture:
The typical atomic family
sans an electron by the standards of one
one who knows that’s just out of his control at this point
So he merely grimaces and poses uncomfortably in the familial embrace he’s grown used to.

Picture:
A bare-legged gaggle of legs
each of a varying, beautiful shade
all of them loving
loving each other

Picture:
The immortal bareness of skin

kissed by Sol’s immortal rays
God might’ve made immortals of us
Had we been any less perfect

Picture:
a single moment in time
frozen in cardstock and printer ink
Now, the sun’s rays
Never seem as bright without us three together.

Cheesecake

sitting on the table next to my little red chair

vines cover the wall of the backyard that now lives in my memory

kids in bright-colored tee shirts stand beside me

 waiting for the cheesecake to be served

sunlight dapples the fence behind mama 

i keep this memory in the taste of sugar 

i keep this memory tucked in my subconscious

in a little teal box with sparkles that i have tied 

with a piece of my soul 

mama is glowing in this memory 

this moment will be replaying in the corner of my mind forever

and maybe this moment is always happening 

floating in the ripples of time. 

one year on the earth 

one candle in the center of the cheesecake

eyes that were bigger than the universe take in 

the first sight of a flickering flame 

little hands reach out to touch the golden glowing thing 

one chubby finger touches the flame and pulls away 

big eyes turn into glossy marbles,

tears dripping down puffy cheeks

mama’s hands hold onto the tender little arm 

she whispers words that I couldn’t yet understand 

words that talked to my heart instead: 

It’s gonna be okay