Part 1: Narrative Traditions
1
Remembering the Past Rightly
Elegy and Ubi Sunt Tradition in Wendell Berryâs Fiction
Jack R. Baker
Wendell Berryâs short story, âThe Wild Birds,â begins with a rather ominous opening line: ââWhere have they gone?â Wheeler thinks. But he knows. Gone to the cities, forever or for the day. Gone to the shopping center. Gone to the golf course. Gone to the grave.â And it is probably lines such as these that set Berry at odds with some readers who cast a wary eye at fiction that veers too close to backward-looking polemic. In one fell swoop the narrator paints a grim picture of cities, shopping centers, and golf courses, ending with the full stop of the grave. Lines like these, the critic might say, are proof that Berryâs imagination is stuck in the past, propping up the vestiges of an agricultural way of life no longer viable in a modern world. And surely such nostalgia is unhelpful for those of us who live in the ever changing present; the world is mutable, we canât get back to what once was, we must press on, heads high, eyes forward. Indeed, if the critic reads beyond this opening line, he will find that the following pages are filled with further moments of lamentation and nostalgia as Wheeler Catlett looks out from the window of his law office over the landscape of Hargrave and is struck by how different, how desolate, and how devoid of life the world around him has become. And so readers of Berryâs fiction must come to terms with the reality that the voice of Port William often calls upon us to cast our vision toward things that have passed away, toward people who have gone to their graves. It is thus understandable that readers may find his fiction to be too concerned with the past, to be suffering from a myopic visionâstuck, like Danteâs diviners, with our heads on our shoulders, facing in the wrong direction.
But such would be an unfair critique of Berryâs fiction. And despite the somber tone at the outset of the story, it is a tone that is not ultimately pessimistic. Like much of Berryâs fiction, âThe Wild Birdsâ is concerned with the passing away of dear things and the thankfulness, forgiveness, and hope those in Port William (and we readers) nonetheless practice. To make sense of this claim, I will situate âThe Wild Birdsâ within the long tradition of literary lamentation that reaches back to some of the earliest surviving poetry in the English language and is poignantly elaborated in the particular example of ubi sunt literature. The poetic theme of the ubi sunt, which is closely associated with wisdom literature, explores in elegiac tone the limits of our mortality, the goodness of the past we remember, and the power of such to shape us for healthy lives in the present and to inspire in us hope. Thus, it is my argument that the nostalgia in Berryâs fiction is in fact teaching us to remember rightly those who have gone before usânot so that we might turn back the clocks to live in the fabled past, but so that we might find hope for today in remembering.
Nostalgia as Homecoming
For some time now in the English language nostalgia has been used to describe a sentimentalizing affection for the pastâa way of remembering that focuses on the good, but rarely enough on the bad. We might even feel that a person who waxes nostalgic has lost touch with reality. We canât change the past, so dwelling on it is a foolâs errand. But at one point in the history of our language, nostalgia carried with it a rather positive meaningââlonging for oneâs home.â And I think it is in this veinâwhen we think of nostalgia not as a quaint emotion, but as a deep desire for homecomingâthat we are right to describe Berryâs fiction as nostalgic. He is in good company if this is the case; for, the theme of nostos, or âstory of homecoming,â was common in Greek literature. Probably the most famous example of such is the Odyssey, which is an extended nostos, culminating at the great rooted bed around which Odysseusâ entire world has been built. Perhaps the most infamous is Aeschylusâ Agamemnon, which begins with a tragic nostos that inverts the virtues of the themeâAgamemnon, returned from war, is slain by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus in his own palace. Berry himself conspicuously ventures into the theme in his short story âMaking It Home,â which recounts Art Rowanberryâs much less eventful return from the war, yet culminates in a beautiful reunion in a field, reminiscent of the parable of the prodigal son. It is to these stories of homecoming, to the image of Odysseus weeping on the headlands of the island Ogygia as he pines for hearth and home, that we might trace the journey of our word nostalgia.
If we think of nostalgia, then, as a deep longing for home, a lamentation for a familiar order that has passed away, we are able to save it from the dustbin of shallow sentiment, recovering its long history as a part of those stories in which a protagonist imagines the restoration of something dear that has been lost. Because nostalgia is concerned with imagining the goodness of things as they once were, it is at its core an exercise in the virtues of patience, hope, and gratitudeâpatience because one must suffer the possibility that all may be lost, hope that though things have changed they might yet reveal their goodness in new and unexpected ways, and gratitude for those who have gone before that we might yet go on after. And so, as Wheeler Catlett looks out his window and suffers the loss of those who have gone before him and the way of life that followed them to the grave, he is also marked by their goodness in the worldâa goodness that lives on in him, their inheritor, as it will live on in Danny and Lyda Branch and Andy and Flora Catlett after him. Indeed, stories of nostalgia make us vulnerable; they inflict on us a double wound as we at once feel both the pang of loss for that which we have loved and the pang of joy for having loved it.
The Ubi Sunt Tradition
This deeply human theme of âjoy and sorrow as sharp as swordsâ is an ancient one in western literature, especially in English. In medieval literature, particularly medieval poetry, joy and sorrow for things gone is given life in the so called ubi sunt formula observable in poems reflecting on the transience of life and the vagaries and finality of death. The words âubi suntâ (âwhere are theyâ) begin a common poetic formula identifiable in poems across the Middle Ages: âwhere are those (ubi sunt) who have gone before us?â The formula is elegiac and rhetorical, calling the reader to reflect on the passing away of what once was good and beloved, often from the perspective of one who is in a state of suffering or loss.
Though the poetic theme may, on the surface, appear to be a sentimental lamentation for the past, it is something far more nuanced, for it is concerned with patience, hope, and gratitude in the midst of real loss. The ubi sunt is typically part of a redemptive cycle in which the poet begins by declaring his grief and suffering in the loss of the life he once knew and concludes in gratitude as the rememberer embraces a consolation which leads to hope that things one day might be made right, or at least that the lost way of life was good. The 13th-century Middle English lyrical poem, âUbi Sunt Qui Ante Nos Fueruntâ (Where are those who have gone before us?), is a prime example of this poetic theme. Composed of thirty-one stanzas, the lyric begins with the lamentation of the loss of good things, yet ends with the consolation found in placing oneâs faith in the protection of Mary, Heavenâs Queen, a faith that offers the hope of reunion with Christ âIn ioye wiĂŸ-outen hendeâ: