Alice McDermott's novel, 'At Weddings and Wakes' and Iconic Realism: Doors

As my #37 bus passed by this section of Dublin, these doors always intrigued me.

From a paper presented at the American Conference for Irish Studies, Emory Univ., Atlanta, Georgia: 

Alice McDermott incorporates the iconic figure of a door, as a primary trigger of childhood memories in her novel, At Weddings and Wakes. Usually, a door is the iconic representation of a threshold, transporting either the characters or the reading audience to a new episode or revelation. However, McDermott’s doorways represent stability, a way for a child’s mind to capture a moment in time and hold it in place to reminisce or perhaps learn about oneself or the influential people who enter and leave via the strategically placed doors. For example, she begins the book with a vivid description of the narrator’s childhood front door: 

Twice a week in every week of summer except the last in July and the first in August, their mother shut the front door, the white, eight-panel door that served as backdrop for every Easter, First Holy Communion, confirmation, and graduation photo in the family album, and with the flimsy screen leaning against her shoulder turned the key in the black lock, gripped the curve of the elaborate wrought-iron handle that had been sculpted to resemble a black vine curled into a question mark, and in what seemed a brief but accurate imitation of a desperate housebreaker, wrung the door on its hinges until, well satisfied, she turned slipped away from the screen as if she were throwing a cloak from her shoulders, and said, “Let’s go.”   

On their odyssey through the city transportation system, the mother and her children encounter the subway entrance, described to reflect the child’s perspective: “And then bars, prison, bars, a wall of bars, and, even more fantastically, a wall of revolving doors all made of black iron (pp. 6-7).”  As they reach the Brooklyn apartment, another vivid description of doors provides the reader with a sense that this memory is one that the child paints in her mind to recall the important relationships of her mother. They connect the mother’s memory with that of the child’s: 

Key in hand, they climbed the steps again and let themselves in through the double glass door framed in heavy wood, across a tiled vestibule that held the cool stone smell of a church, and then into the dim hallway where the air was brown with the reflection of the dark wooden floor and the staircase, with the odor of stewing beef and boiled onions… 

One flight and across a narrow hallway with silent doors on either end, another flight, their mother’s shoes tapping on each tread and the dull yellow light now passing through an opaque lozenge of white skylight. An identical hallway (voices from behind the far door, again those rushed incomprehensible syllables struck throughout with startling exclamations), another flight, the light growing stronger until it spread itself like a blurred hand over the tops of each of the dulled and hazy light there was only a single door and the hallway on either side of it was filed with a clutch of cardboard boxes and paper bags…. (p. 1)

The single door gave off the purr and rattle that made it seem thick and animate to the children, with an internal life all its own. There was the scratch of the delicate chain, the metallic slither of its bolts, the tumble and click of its lock, and then, slowly, the creak of its hinges…. The face that appeared between the door and its frame was thinner than their mother’s and so, for the children, offered no resemblance – despite the same pale blue eyes and light skin and narrow mouth that was, as was their mother’s, fighting to resist a grin. ( pp. 12-13) 

Toward the end of the memoir, the father’s presence reveals a sense of humor in relation to a door, all the while, creating a puzzle in the children’s minds as he points out: 

She and her brother passed the corner parking lo of the Presbyterian church, crossed another side street, and then the catty-cornered doorway of a small bar (about which their father would say, with the same consistency that he made his cemetery joke but with a far more serious air, “ in all the years that we’ve lived here I’ve never passed through those doors,” filling his children with a vague admiration and a cautious sense of gratitude for what it was he had managed to avoid). (p. 151)

The iconic doors lend a sense of spirituality in McDermott’s novel as each door seems to have a personality of its own, a stability that intrigues and stimulates the childhood imagination that seems absent in the adults’ consciousness. This cognizance carved within the various slabs of wood, configured to keep out and keep in, actually create an experiential plane perceived by the children through their senses of sight, smell and especially sound, albeit occasionally, a dissonant harmony prevails between the squeaking movements of the doors’ hinges. 

'Harmony of the Spheres' and Iconic Realism

I took these photographs in Ireland.

The following is an excerpt from a paper I presented at the Mid-Atlantic Conference for Irish Studies, years ago. It was the initial introduction of my semiotic theory to a public audience. I've placed information about this same topic on my other blog, which can be reached by clicking on the photo to the right.  

Human beings have an inherent need to interact with one another. Yet, they often find themselves struggling with what appears to be the truth of their perceptions. This ambivalence leads to the categorizing of experiences as a way to manage personal reactions. Philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Carl Jung, as well as mathematicians, such as Pythagoras and Kepler, have clarified this management in terms of music, more specifically, the mystical music of the spheres.

This concept illustrates that human communication parallels strict mathematical components associated with harmonics. To clarify the concept of harmony (music) of the spheres, one can consider a musical tone that contains the original resonating frequency with overtones creating precise harmonic variations.

Pythagoras’s theory contained the idea that there was a distinct mathematical configuration, establishing a relationship of the harmonic distances between the planets. These harmonics were considered the substance of a planetary influence on the human psyche. Centuries later, Johannes Kepler clarified this theory with his discovery that harmonic energy emanates from the sun, and there exists an exact harmonic relationship between each planet. Philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as Immanuel Kant, connect Kepler’s theory to the concept of human consciousness.

Music of the spheres represents the harmonics of human thought whereby one idea, emanating from a human being, extends to another throughout the centuries, and overtones or nuances of thought create a new harmonic of the original conception. This new harmonic, then, resonates with another interpretation, and soon, there are many new concepts formed that connect with the original resonating thought.

Although the concept of 'music of the spheres' illustrates that human communication parallels strict mathematical components associated with harmonics, iconic realism is a literary principle whereby an artist uses an iconic, yet real figure to represent another aspect of reality within the culture. This principle clearly resonates throughout literature as a means to express truth in a way that contains meaning while maintaining elements of the mysterious. Indeed, iconic realism intones throughout Sydney Owenson’s national tale, The Wild Irish Girl, written from a feminine cultural point of view shortly after the British Act of Union 1801.

Sydney Owenson engages in the construction of iconic realism through her interface with the concept of literary harmony elicited from the initial resonance of Irish revolution. She creates characters as iconic representatives of the consciousness that exists in her historical reality, leading her audiences to a recognizable semblance of truth and a basis for future writers to harmonize with the transitioning, historical significance of human consciousness.

Such resonance, which distinguishes between intense reality and strength of the human spirit through iconic realism, occurs in Owenson’s novel, demonstrating the necessity for humankind to relate to one another on a realistic rather than a symbolic level. As she reacts to her despotic environment, Owenson’s technique of using iconic structures in allegorical representations of Irish reality resonates through such 20^th century writers as William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. (Lakatos 2007)

"Dixit Dominus" (With gratitude to Mozart) and Iconic Realism

Cochlea from Medical Dictionary- The Free Dictionary

When I was in high school, I was blessed to attend a two week music workshop at the University of Georgia. I began by playing oboe in the orchestra, but switched to sing in the advanced choir. It was much more rewarding to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed singing Alto to Mozart's Dixit Dominus as one of the classical pieces we sang for the cumulative concert. 

 

In the poem below, I demonstrate my semiotic theory of iconic realism by writing a description of the hearing process, but one aspect of that process is unexpected: the cochlea is dormant. This human ear is deaf. Thus, this perfect individual will never hear...Dixit Dominus. (It is God's Word.) I have placed the iconic representation of hearing with an iconic composition, Dixit Dominus, to bring awareness of the beauty in all of humanity, particularly in those individuals who cannot hear. 

Dixit Dominus 

The chorus swells; waves rush in,

their flow controlled 

by the canal's turbid banks. 

Membrane pulsates - 

Malleus, Incus, Stapes

vibrate

through a liquid universe.  

Electrical impulses meander

in and out and around 

minuscule hair cells within.

Majestic cochlea sits on its throne,

dormant. 

Eighth nerve to the brain reaches out.

Mozart sheds a heavenly tear. 

This perfect one will never hear ~

Dixit Dominus.

© Jeanne I. Lakatos

To hear Mozart's Vesperae solennes de Confessore, Dixit Dominus, click onto this link: 

https://youtu.be/H7QbViCuGfU

Click onto the link below to see an animation of sound felt along the basilar membrane in the cochlea:

https://youtu.be/dyenMluFaUw

Emily Dickinson and Iconic Realism

Portrait of Emily Dickinson painted by William Rock

Chinese calligraphy painted by Huang Xiang 

Click HERE to go to their site. 

(Calligraphy is from Dickinson's poems: "The Soul selects Her Own Society,"

"My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close" and "Presentiment")


Calligraphy Translations:
 

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door;

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariot's passing

At her low gate;

Unmoved,

an emperor kneeling

Upon her mat.
I've known her from an ample nation

Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention

Like stone.
I never saw a Moor

My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If immortality unveil

A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

Presentiment

is that long shadow on the lawn

Indicative that sun goes down

The notice to the startled grass

That darkness is about to pass

By displaying the countenance of this reclusive poet in the midst of so many cultural icons, these two artists, Huang Xiang and William Rock, illustrate iconic realism of Emily Dickinson's poetry. In this painting by William Rock and the calligraphic representation by Huang Xiang, the iconic presence of Emily Dickinson's simplicity that this honorable position illustrates is iconic realism. 

The poet and her own poetry surrounding her are iconic. Yet, one would not normally see a portrait of Emily Dickinson, surrounded by Chinese calligraphy. This combination illustrates the impact on human cognizance and the importance for humanity to look inward because through Dickinson's travail, enlightenment has been revealed to many. Moreover, the use of blue and purple bring to mind the spirituality that surrounds this poet's expression: in her eyes, around the 'upper floor' of her mind, and in her heart.

Structure and Interpretation

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci

from Google Images

From my first book, page 19: 

However an audience incorporates and assimilates information gained from perceiving a work of art, each member of the audience will structure the information in order to create interpretation. The wide scope of interpretation evolves with the audience's perception of the art form, which characterizes the multiple associations within a singular work of art. 

For example, the interpretation of Mona Lisa's eyes from each subsequent century since her debut has rested on her ambivalent countenance. Although content remains fixed, the historicity of the audience determines the variety of interpretations of her smile or any work of art for that matter.