The minstrel, by the time the story opens, has drained eight of the nine amphorae of their wine and replaced it with his fictions. The nine containers are associated with the nine muses and their history parallels that of literature. The first two were "cargoed with rehearsals of traditional minstrelsy," the third "freighted with imagined versions of the 'first act of our generation,'" and the fourth through sixth amphorae were filled with "effusions of religious narrative." The seventh contained long prose fictions and the eighth comic histories of the mistrel's spirit. So literature beginnings, sacred hymns, lyric poetry gave way to the contemporary introspective novel. And finally, the last amphorae (or muse) is filled with a new kind of literature a combination of tragedy and satire. "I saw too much of pity and terror merely to laugh; yet about the largest hero, gravest catastrophe, sor-didest deed there was too much comic, one way or another, to sustain the epical strut or tragic frown." The minstrel's art is enhanced by his isolation; isolation is a state experienced by man as he lives in a complex and confusing world and that isolation can be elevated to become the core of creativity. The twist in the center of the Moebius strip, "Lost is the Funhouse," is the discovery of awareness. Ambrose labors to uncover a secret, to find an identity. The funhouse is everything from life to a house of fiction. As Ambrose, the author finds himself lost in expression as the plot "winds upon itself, digresses, retreats, hesitates, sighs, collapses, expires." Both Ambrose and the narrator wish they had never entered the funhouse. But they have and will therefore "construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator(s) though (they) would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses were designed." The funhouse as a world of language has the narrator stymied, and Ambrose's search remains unanswered as the signs in the funhouse tell him nothing of self, but refer to articulation. "A Slip of the Lip Can Sink a Ship." Identity is found in articulation; it is a construction of language. Barth's style of presenting the age old themes in "Lost in the Funhouse," search for identity, growing up, love, art, is a new technique of explaining itself. Rather than try to ignore or even conceal the customs of narrative art, he draws attention to them to make his fiction different. We should be much farther along than we are; something has gone wrong; not much of this preliminary rambling seems relevant. Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way? In "Life Story," another of the pieces intended for print, the author is fiction. He is the story itself in the process of being written. At the outset of the narrative, the story seems to be about a writer, but it eventually discloses itself as being the writer. The narrator has an author, a reader, and characters. And as narrator and narrative, the hero recognizes the fact that his life depends on his marketability. "Because your own author bless and damn you his life is in your hands!" As the subtitle of the book explains, and the author's note discusses, there are also works enclosed that are intended for tape and live voice. Presenting the selection entitled (or un-entitled) "Title" as a stereophonic recording in identical authorial voice with the live authorial interlocutor places the modern author in a complex position, expounding on the duality of his role he is detached, living by writing, and is the spokesman for his fiction. The narrator is encountering difficulty in composing the story. He has a problem filling the blank of his title as he has come to loathe "our place our time our situation, our loathsome art, this ditto necessary story. The blank of our lives." But in debating that he cannot fill in the blanks he has written a story filling in the blanks. There is no possibility of silence as despair is driven away by speech. There is only the unending cycle of articulation and the constant search to "say it in a new way." Barth suggests that "Autobiography" be delivered on monophonic tape with a visible but silent author. The main character of this work is a story that has been conceived by the writer with a tape machine. The story complains and laments that it did not ask to be created, it cannot end on its own and after dragging into nonsense is finally silent. The narrative explores the absurdist's embracing of despair. Why, after being created, is a man abandoned? Why, if there is no meaning to his existense, is he allowed to exist? "Put an end to this, for pity's sake!" The theme is not new, but the idea that a tape recorded voice is experiencing a reasonable reaction to an unreasonable world is certainly an innovative and capturing technique. Lost in the Funhouse is a commentary on the art of fiction. It is not discreetly so, as the works are deliberate interruptions of the conventional styles of narration. John Barth, his search to discover a new but valid and enduring art form, and the resulting collection of fiction for print, tape and live voice are evidence that there is a new way to present old material (through the medium of fiction) and that there is indeed room for improvement on and modification of narrative tradition. THE SHARING by Kristine Bjorklund Mamanakis Once, in the silence, I looked up To see you pray, Your thought searching tomorrow. The past, written in your face, Was a million doubts Laid to rest. I saw you walk the streets of Some small town, Wondering at the calling And passing of your time. I saw you struggle For the meaning I seek At your hand. Once, in the silence, I looked up To see you watching me, Your thought searching the future Of my past For answers To lay my doubts to rest. I walk the streets of My small world, Wondering at the calling That I should pass your time, And I struggle for the meaning I take from your hand. DAYDREAM by Robert J. Away How frail the moment like a white Butterfly crazily fluttering across The purple field, or like A young boy's shout that fails As it falls upon the air of noon. So God creates each moment And hangs it by a thread. So every lover God suspends Between the living and the dead. 10 The Aardvark Review Volume 2, Number 1 Ogden City Hall VIRGINIA WOOLF: THE POETIC MOLD OF IMAGINATION AND INNER REALITY by Frank Cook Septimus Smith is the insane young man in Virginia Woolf s novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Her treatment of Smith as a character is enhanced by her use of poetry within the novel which represents a form within a form. The depiction of the inner consciousness of Septimus Smith would appear as an intrusion in the traditional narrative plot pattern. However, the intrusion of poetry into Virginia Woolf's narrative is a valid one, because it makes a statement about the actual existence of an inner reality. The poetry brings attention to the capacity of the twentieth century mind in terms of imagination and also to the necessity of the twentieth century mind to find forms that will nurture that imagination. Septimus Smith is characterized as being insane based upon the accepted view of normality in his culture. The denotative meaning of the word "insane" is "disordered in mind to such a degree as to be unable to function safely and competently in ordinary human relations." The inability of a disordered mind 'as it is found personified in the character, Septimus Smith' to deal with reality is analogous to the inability of nineteenth century literary forms to deal with twentieth century inner realities. The shaping of Smith as a character is parallel to the shaping of an inner vision in literature. Septimus Smith could not "feel" and paradoxically he "felt" too much. "He developed manliness; he was promoted; he drew the attention, indeed the affection of his officer, Evans by name." When Evans was killed in the war "Septimus far from showing any emotion or recognising that here was the end of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably." The emphasis on reason is repeated is Septimus' explanation of his mental dilemma which he says is the fault of the world since "his brain was perfect." His focus upon reason was one cause of his insanity. Apart from the causes of his insanity is its cost: "He could not taste; he could not feel; beauty was behind a pane of glass." The description of Septimus seeing beauty through a pane of glass is given by his wife Rezia. Her description, however, is external to Septimus' inner vision of beauty. The inner reflections of every stimulus that touches Septimus are sensitive and intense. His inner vision is one of extreme imagination. When he sees a plane making letters out of smoke in the sky his imagination runs rampant with beauty: it was plain enough, this beauty, this exquisite beauty, and tears filled his eyes as he looked at the smoke words languishing and melting in the sky and bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible charity and laughing goodness one shape after another of unimaginable beauty and signalling their intention to provide him, for nothing, for ever, for looking merely, with beauty, more beauty! This internal view of Septimus' reality is a powerful statement about the aesthetic purpose of art and literature. Beauty! A quality which gives pleasure to the senses and exalts the mind. A quality which has been traditionally dealt with in art and literature as an external force is now viewed through the lens of Septimus Smith's disordered mind. If Smith's view of beauty and reality remains external then the extra dimension of inner sensibility in Woolf's novel will be untouched. Dr. Bradshaw's assessment of Smith as insane includes the summary that Septimus has lost his sense of proportion. Bradshaw's view of proportion is totally an external one: walking hospitals, catching salmon, begetting one son in Harley Street by Lady Bradshaw, who caught salmon herself and took photographs scarcely to be distinguished from the work of professionals. Worshipping proportion, Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, share his sense of proportion This passage is not only poetic in and of itself, but it also necessitates Woolf s use of poetry to direct her reader inward. As Dr. Bradshaw is examining Septimus it is discovered that "he attaches meanings to words of a symbolic kind. A serious symptom, to be noted on the card." This serious symptom serves as an excellent tool (the tool being poetry) which causes Septimus to mold his imagination; an imagination which, forged into the form of Woolf s poetry, illuminates a concrete inner vision of beauty to the art forms of the twentieth century. The inadequacy of external or scientific models to deal with the extremes of modern imagination is revealed by Rezia when she reflects upon the possibility of having a son like Septimus: One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that. Her plea is for lasting emotions. The imagination of Septimus Smith is viewed as being out of control; it eddies "now this way, now that," because it does not reside within the forms that are acceptable to the reasonable element in human nature. But Rezia's plea is not for the cause of rationality but rather for the cause of durable emotions. The extreme edge of Septimus' imagination becomes a statement concerning the appropriateness of its form. The cadence of his thoughts, their color, their motion and sound, and their internal rhythm are all created by Woolf to allow the reader to turn inward. Not only do they invite an inward journey but they also validate it. Septimus gives a view of reality that would be distorted and insane if it appeared in a traditional form. However, it becomes orderly and structured within Woolf's poetry: Volume 2, Number 1 The Aardvark Review 11