The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson

585 Pages·1999·36.447 MB·English

by  R. Bruce Elder

The Films of Stan Brakhage
in the American Tradition
of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein,
and Charles Olson
R. Bruce Elder
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the
support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing
activities.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Elder, Bruce (R. Bruce)
The films of Stan Brakhage in the American tradition of Ezra Pound,
Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olson
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88920-275-3
1. Brakhage, Stan - Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PN1998.3.B74E42 1998 791.43'0233'092 C98-930429-9
©1998
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3C5
Cover design by Leslie Macredie, using a still from the film Dog Star Man by Stan
Brakhage
too)
Printed in Canada
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may
be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or
mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for
photocopying, recording, taping, or reproducing in information storage and retrieval
systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprog-
raphy Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6.
Contents
With Gratitude v
Acknowledgments ix
Preface 1
From the Givenness of Nature to the Encumbered Modern Body 8
The Signifying Body 12
The Two Bodies in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Body
Observed Externally and the Body Experienced from Within 18
The Modern Body's Unbearable Burden of Being 30
The Harmony of Spirit and Body 37
The Primacy of the Subject Body and the Recessiveness
of the Subject Body 41
Chapter 1. Four for America: Williams, Pound, Stein, Brakhage 45
Styles of English Metre 45
Meaning and Personal Being: Pound and Brakhage 64
The Seachange: Or, How Pound Came "To Break the Pentameter" 69
Bergson, Hulme, Pound, and Brakhage on the Body and Energy 75
Experience as Energy: A Pattern for Thinking 100
First-Person Singular: Bergson, Hulme, and Brakhage
on the Primacy of Individuality 146
Between Self and World: The Image in Hulme, Williams, Brakhage 157
Writing = Composing Sound's Energies, Filmmaking = Composing
Light's Energies: Gertrude Stein and Stan Brakhage's
Conceptions of Their Media 212
Digressive Interpolation: The Persistence of Emerson's Vision
in Stein's Writing and Brakhage's Filmmaking 228
ill
iv The Films of Stan Brakhage
Out of Stein: A Theory of Meaning for Stan Brakhage's Films 240
The Paradox of a Perlocutionary Semantics:
Brakhage and Stein on Artistic Meaning 261
The Romanticism of Brakhage's Conception of Meaning 295
Chapter 2. The Conception of the Body in Open Form Poetics and
Its Influence on Stan Brakhage's Filmmaking 309
D.H. Lawrence and the Poetics of Energy 309
Two Crucial Influences on Embodied Poetics: A.N. Whitehead
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty 313
A.N. Whitehead's Project: Reconciling Permanence and Flux 325
Olson's Energetics of Embodied Existence 348
Michael McClure's Poetics: The Body Is an Organism. The Universe
Is an Organism. A Poem Embodies an Aspect of the
Universe's Evolving Form 423
Allen Ginsberg: The Breath, the Voice, and the Poem 432
Action Painting as Performance 442
Glossary 453
Notes 473
Selected Bibliography 533
Stan Brakhage Filmography 545
Index 555
With Gratitude
This book began many years ago. I was an aspiring poet who, not too long
before, had just published his first chapbook, and was about to begin studies
for a Ph.D. when I suddenly had a change in heart. I had done my utmost to
drill my attention down on the more technical, logico-mathematical areas of
philosophy, so as to keep my artistic and my intellectual lives as widely sepa-
rated as possible (primarily to give my artistic urges a safe harbour from the
tumult of the academies); but I was suddenly beset by doubts about whether
I could sustain over many decades the degree of interest in such technical
areas as would allow me to make genuine contributions. I needed an alterna-
tive, and set upon the possibility that industrial filmmaking might be a means
for obtaining the necessities of living, and allow me to go on writing poetry.
So I enrolled in film school to learn a trade. Owing to the paucity, at the time,
of academic film programs, my interest in aesthetics, and the happy coinci-
dences that film studies was then a burgeoning discipline and the school
where I studied was embarking on a drive that would transform it from a
trade-training institution to a university, I was asked to teach there. Having
no better opportunities at hand, I accepted, and immediately set out to find
how film history, film analysis, and film theory were taught elsewhere. My
wife and I headed to a summer graduate school in New England, where she
enrolled in a course taught by Prof. Gerald O'Grady; from her notes, which
she discussed with me nightly, I learned a great deal, and it would be no
exaggeration to say that what I learned changed my life, by allowing me to
see films more deeply. Throughout the years, I have remained in touch with
Prof. O'Grady, and his unstinting drive to discover ever more about the art of
the cinema has remained a model for me.
At that same summer session I met another person who was to profoundly
change my life: Stan Brakhage, who taught a course on the Songs. I was not
enrolled in his course, but each instructor at the summer institute presented
v
vi The Films of Stan Brakhage
to the entire student body an evening that dealt with the topic they were
teaching. On one of the first evenings, Stan Brakhage presented a number of
his films; what I saw struck me with the force of revelation. My plans were
in ruins, for I sensed I had to become a maker of such "poetic" films. I knew
that Stan Brakhage had accomplished in film everything I dreamt of doing as
a poet; so, straightaway, I began sitting in on his classes. My wife somehow
persuaded the school's administration to loan us money, and I purchased a
Bolex camera from a schoolteacher who, the previous year, had been
inspired by Brakhage's example to take up filmmaking, but had come to the
conclusion that he and the medium were not congenial.
I also set out to see as many avant-garde films as I could. Innumerable
times my wife and I made the trip between Toronto and Buffalo, where Prof.
O'Grady had established a centre that screened avant-garde films and pre-
sented many distinguished lecturers on avant-garde films. I hunkered down
to a life of teaching, to support my "unorthodox" filmmaking, and resolved to
do the best I could at it. It has been a blessing: my students have long been a
source of great delight (and in the past few years all the more so), and have
annually renewed my commitment to the subjects I teach. Year after year,
they have responded with enormous enthusiasm to avant-garde cinema; and
several of them now devote themselves, either part-time or full-time, to
making and exhibiting it. They have done much to shelter me from the criti-
cism of parties who do not share their, or my, enthusiasm for the practice.
Indeed, circumstances have occasionally called upon them to take direct
action to fend off such attacks, and they have risen most effectively to the
task. And recently, when I was in distress, and in doubt about going on with
my work on this book, a group of them let me know that they simply would
not countenance my reneging on my responsibilities. Earlier, one of that
group, Izabella Pruska, had taken on the responsibilities of tracking down,
photocopying, and checking every quotation in this book (even though I had
hired her as a filmmaking assistant), and she did so with a very touching
sense of being fortunate to be required to read the writings of Brakhage et
al. with such fine care; at that juncture she went to pains to convey her
desire to reread the book under different conditions, and the disappointment
she would feel if she could not.
I am grateful to the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada
for providing funds for the publication of this book. The Office of Research
Services at Ryerson Polytechnic University provided funds that helped
defray the costs of indexing. I am also grateful to their anonymous reviewers
who made many valuable suggestions (the inclusion of a glossary was one),
and who drew to my attention several errors in detail. Barbara Schon did a
splendid job on this brutally difficult-to-index manuscript (the most difficult
With Gratitude vii
she has ever had to do, she tells me). I have also received support that goes
far past the call of duty from the entire staff of Wilfrid Laurier University
Press. Leslie Macredie has handled many design, production, and marketing
details in exemplary fashion (and with notable good cheer). Doreen Arm-
bruster agreed to take her work on the manuscript with her into retirement
(and the manuscript benefited greatly from her experienced eye for detail).
r
Carroll Klein had to go to enormous pains to work a sprawling manuscript,
produced by one who does not write easily, into a more seemly shape; the
book has benefited greatly from her scrupulous care. Sandra Woolfrey, WLU
Press's director, took personal interest in the project, and at every turn and
in a thousand practical ways conveyed her deep commitment to it. She also
provided immensely wise counsel that salvaged the project at one crucial
moment.
While I was reviewing the page proofs for this book, on an airplane bound
for New York City, where I was to present a film that concerns the mystery
of the resurrection, and at a juncture when reflection was appropriate, I came
across a beautiful passage quoted in German, and tears of thankfulness for all
that my father taught me welled up in my eyes. He gave me a very good
example that some of our ideals cost us dearly and demand appalling sacri-
fice, but are worth holding out for, even in the teeth of barbarous criticism;
his example makes it possible for me to continue. Even though he was
barely acquainted with Brakhage's films, he took a real interest in this book,
partly because he knew I believed Brakhage to be a "poetic" filmmaker and
he held the spirit of poetry in reverence, but mostly because he understood
that Brakhage's films have given my soul the ballast necessary for that spiri-
tual gravity which is requisite for real thinking. When it seemed the funding
for the book was unlikely, he was most distressed. I wish he were here now,
so that he could have seen the happy resolution of that trial.
My wife, Kathryn, has listened to more complaints from me (and many of
them about my labours on this book) than anyone should have to, and she
has listened very sympathetically. She also did many of the endless chores
that confront one in making a book such as this when I became too busy, too
blue, too distracted by my filmmaking, or too swamped by the demands of
teaching to carry on. She has stood by me through the successive assaults
that came our way during the time we worked on this book, and really made
me believe that somehow, come what may, we would survive. She has ac-
cepted our many financial misfortunes over this period with impressive dig-
nity and grace, and let me know in ten thousand ways that she believes
maintaining one's ideals is more valuable than seeking the remuneration that
another discipline might have provided us. She has, against all reason,
encouraged my filmmaking. She brightens my every moment.
viii The Films of Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage's films have enriched my life immeasurably. But he means
as much to me personally as his films do. I have had him as a friend for
thirteen years, and during this entire time, he has taken a great interest in
my doings, been concerned when I have become ill or fallen under attack,
and been a wonderful companion with whom to talk about painting, music,
literature, and film. Over the years, he has been a bulwark of support. He
has cheered me when (and it is not infrequent) I became terribly blue; he
has watched my films, and written illuminatingly on them. Our exchanges on
the many topics on which we differ has enlivened my thinking. The breadth
of his knowledge in the arts astonishes me. I consider myself very fortunate
to have him to talk with. His friendship has remained steadfast through
many trials to which the making of this book, and the horrid politics of
experimental filmmaking, has subjected us. I dedicate this book to him, with
love.
Acknowledgments
The author and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to use
copyright materials by other authors:
Carcanet Press/New Directions Publishing Corporation for material from
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All, "Young Sycamore," "Delia Prima-
vera Transportata Al Morale" from The Collected Poems of William Carlos
Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939, edited by A. Walton Litz and Christopher
McGowan (Paladin Grafton Books, 1991); and for material from William
Carlos Williams, "Writer's Prologue to a Play in Verse" from The Collected
Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 2: 1939-1962, edited by A. Walton
Litz and Christopher MacGowan (Paladin Grafton Books, 1991).
Dover Press for material from Gertrude Stein, "Sentences and Para-
graphs" from Gertrude Stein, How to Write, with a new Preface and Introduc-
tion by Patricia Meyerowitz (Dover, 1975); and for material from Arthur
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, translated by
E.EJ. Payne (Dover, 1960).
Faber and Faber Ltd./Georges Borchardt Inc. for material from George
Steiner, "Language and Silence" from George Steiner: A Reader (Oxford Uni-
versity, 1984). Copyright © 1967 by George Steiner. Reprinted with the per-
mission of Faber and Faber Ltd. and Georges Borchardt Inc. for the author.
Faber and Faber Ltd./Harcourt Brace and Company for material from T.S.
Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Preludes, II" from T.S.
Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (Faber and Faber, 1963).
Film Culture for material from Stan Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision, edited
with an Introduction by P Adams Sitney (Film Culture, 1963).
Allen Ginsberg for material from Allen Ginsberg, Improvised Poetics, edited
by Mark Robison (Anonym, 1971); and for material from Allen Ginsberg, "When
the Mode of the Music Changes the Walls of the City Shake" from Esthetics
Contemporary, edited by Richard Kostelanetz (Prometheus Books, 1978).
ix