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Home , Edwin Thumboo, Long hair in Singapore, Merlion, Singaporeans, Singaporean literature

Volume 3, Issue 1, August 2010 | 5

with the tensions and interrelations between the poems From Ulysses To The that will provide a breadth and depth of commentary on the notion of national identity, what it means to be : Hypertextuality Singaporean and the relationship between images/art/ And A Singaporean and politics. Canon Not only does the notion of an encourage us to read the Merlion poems in relation to Singaporean poetry has one major one another as a collection, the poems themselves have motif: the Merlion. As poets insert close textual relations to one another. These relations themselves in the national canon in are defined as intertextuality, textual links between reaction to ’s “Ulysses two texts. In the case of the Merlion poetry however, by the Merlion” (1979), they contest one there are evidently more than two texts; there are at least 40 poems that have as their subject the same another in creating meaning from the motif. If intertextuality refers to textual links between icon. What does this body of literature two texts, hypertextuality “marks a field of literary tell us about hypertextuality, the works the generic essence of which lies in their relation literature of politics, and the politics of to previous works” (Allen 2000: 108) and requires literature and the canon? more than two texts to create a group of works. In his work Palimpsests (1997), Gérard Genette identifies numerous literary techniques in which writers can Christine Chong transform a hypotext (the earlier text) into a hypertext (the derived text) such that readers read or remember the hypotext through the hypertext.

I argue that it is through the literary transformations “How has an improbable creation come to take identified by Genette and through the hypertexts’ on the hopes and aspirations of a nascent nation? literary contestation with the hypotext, that political This book, with poems by nearly 40 poets, zeroes contestation happens. Working from the first in on the Merlion and what it ultimately says Thumboo poem, I will show how the subsequent about Singapore and .” poems employ the various techniques identified by Genette to subvert the earlier poems, slowly shedding Blurb from Reflecting On The Merlion: An Classical, Elizabethan and Romantic references for Anthology of Poems (2009) more playful postmodernist tones. Not only does this development mirror the literary history of the Western he blurb from the anthology of Merlion poems, tradition of literature, it similarly replaces more published in 2009, asks how the Merlion, “a traditional notions of nationality with increasingly nifty symbol— modern and postmodern ideas. This transition Tthought up in 1964 by a certain Mr. Fraser Brunner” reflects not only more diversity and development in (Thumboo and Yeow 2009: 10), created for tourists Singaporean poetry but also an increased daring in by a non-local, managed to develop into something expressing suspicion of the status quo—both socio- so intricately linked with the national identity of political and literary. Singapore and a motif so greatly commented on by local poets. This is a question worth asking indeed. The Western Hypertextual Eastern The blurb then suggests that it is “this book,” and not any individual poem, which might provide an answer Hypotext: Edwin Thumboo’s “Ulysses by on what “Singapore and Singaporeans” mean. Indeed, the Merlion” to base a nation’s sense of identity on an image constructed for global more than local consumption Edwin Thumboo, the poet of the first Merlion seems problematic, yet an entire anthology has poem “Ulysses to the Merlion” (1979), is one of the emerged based on this already shaky foundation. editors of the anthology Reflecting on the Merlion. The blurb recognises that just as it is not the Merlion His poem is positioned before and separate from itself that can give us a genuine sense of national the division of Section One and Section Two in the identity, any one particular Merlion poem also fails Contents page, signifying that poem as the pioneer to deliver a satisfactory understanding of Singapore’s and suggesting its position as the hypotext to all the “hopes and aspirations” or an adequate commentary other subsequent poems. While Thumboo’s poem is on “Singapore and Singaporeans.” Instead, it is only indeed the hypotextual Merlion poem, “Ulysses to the through dialogue between opinions, the contestation Merlion” is, in fact, a hypertext of the Ulysses motif in of ideas and the multiplicity of voices that one can the English literary tradition. get a thorough sense of what national identity is. It is precisely “the book,” an anthology, that presents us USP Undergraduate Journal | 6

Thumboo’s poem is conscious of both its political agenda of establishing poetry as relevant in hypertextuality and intertextuality, referencing the public sphere. traditional poets like Keats, Marlowe, Yeats and Homer (Gooneratne 1986:13). “The bounty of these However, the literature of politics does not stand seas,/ Built towers topless as Ilium’s” (Thumboo apart from the politics of literature and it is best 1979: ll.25 – 26) is an almost direct quotation from to first acknowledge that one must be aware that Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus account of “Ulysses” is “an argument for continuity within a Helen of Troy possessing the face that “burnt the certain textual tradition” (Rowlinson 1993: 241), itself topless towers of Ilium” (Marlowe 1604: V.i.97 – conscious of its status as a hypertext of the Western 98). Thumboo’s Ulysses, conscious that his name literary tradition. Thumboo consciously engages with “circulates at large” (Rowlinson 1993: 239), says, “I the Western hypotext of Ulysses when his Ulysses … made myself” (Thumboo 1979: l.13) and says “I am become a name” (Thumboo 1979: l.11). situates himself firmly with the Ulysseses of Homer, The persona refers to Ulysses’ fame as circulated by Virgil, Dante, Horace and Tennyson. Homer, Horace, Dante and Tennyson; they “refer to a single fictional person whose life exists in different In fact, I argue that Thumboo’s Ulysses is a versions” (Rowlinson 1993: 241). Moreover, the use hypertextual extension (Genette 1997: 254) of of the dramatic present tense also seems to suggest Tennyson’s poem titled “Ulysses” in that it extends that this process of canonisation is ongoing (Pearsall or builds upon the logic of the hypotext. Structurally, 2008: 182). Indeed, just as Tennyson’s Ulysses is a both poems are dramatic monologues with two hypertextual reworking of Dante’s Inferno, Horace’s distinct voices. There is an uncertainty about the shift Epistles and Homer’s Odyssey, Thumboo recognises in the voice of the narrator of Thumboo’s poem, “… that since the canonisation is “ongoing,” his Ulysses the poem speaks in two voices. The second part invokes can be easily incorporated as part of this Western technology and commerce, multiracial harmony and tradition. metamorphosis” (Patke 1998: 28). Indeed, the change in tone in the fourth stanza to the last is drastic and The Ulysses of Thumboo is highly similar to that the occasion of the poem breaks down: Ulysses, the of Tennyson; in fact, they may very well be the same wide-eyed tourist, could not know so much about persona. Just as Tennyson’s “Ulysses” echoes the earlier Singapore when he has just arrived. Kirpal Singh Ulysseses, Thumboo’s “Ulysses to the Merlion” echoes also highlights this transition in which “something Tennyson’s through the similar use of “unequal” and quite radical has happened in the poem” (Singh “race” in close proximity. 2002: 297) but, like Patke, does not give an adequate explanation for why the poem “speaks in two voices” Despite unequal ways, (Patke 1998: 28). Perhaps going to its hypotext may explain Thumboo’s intention. “Ulysses” also has two together they mutate. voices, the first half denoting the private, interior self, and the second the public discourse and persona. In Explore the edges of harmony. Thumboo’s poem, the first and second half are divided by a shift from the use of the pronoun “I” to “they” Search for a centre. and the shift performs a similar function, moving from the personal to the public. The two voices also Have changed their gods. reflect the agenda of the Thumboo—to shift poetry from the personal into the public arena. Kept some memory of their race. (Thumboo 1979: ll.29 – 34, emphases mine) These structural similarities then locate the poets’ concerns as similar. Indeed, Thumboo agrees with Tennyson’s mode of poetry that deals with public themes. Is it mere coincidence that the most famous Match’d with an aged life, I mete and dole poem by Thumboo, the “closest Singapore has to a poet laureate” (Lim 1989: 537 – 538), has such strong Unequal laws unto a savage race. (Tennyson 1833: ties to a poem by the British poet laureate? Lee Kuan ll.3 – 4, emphases mine) Yew, then Singapore Prime Minister, said in 1968 that “Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford” (Lim 1989: Also, Thumboo’s materialistic four-part version 528). I argue that Thumboo modelled his poetry on of “They make, they serve,/ They buy, they sell” Tennyson’s artful mode of blending the private and (Thumboo 1979: ll.27 – 28) has a similar rhythm to public in poetry, such that he, like Tennyson, can Tennyson’s Romantic vision “To strive, to seek, to be a responsible social being, making poetry viable find, and not to yield” (Tennyson 1833: l.70). In both in a hostile environment that did not encourage poems, the extent of Ulysses’ travelling and his dual literature. It should be clear that reading Thumboo’s experience of enjoyment and suffering are emphasised poem in relation to its hypotext sheds light on not through the repetition of “travel”: Tennyson’s “I only Thumboo’s literary intention but also his socio- cannot rest from travel; I will drink/ Life to the lees. Volume 3, Issue 1, August 2010 | 7 All times I have enjoy’d/ Greatly, have suffer’d greatly” From Hypotextual to Hypertextual: The (Tennyson 1833: ll.6 – 8, emphases mine) is echoed Merlion Speaks in Lee’s “The Merlion to in Thumboo’s “I kept faith with Ithaca, traveled,/ Traveled and traveled,/ Suffering much, enjoying Ulysses” a little” (Thumboo 1979: ll.9 – 11). Both Ulysseses also tolerate suffering for the Romantic cause of being parodies Thumboo’s paratextual able to both record and become of . While dedication “for Maurice Baker” with “on the Tennyson’s Ulysses declares “I am become a name;/.../ latter’s visit in Edwin Thumboo’s ‘Ulysses by the Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men/ And Merlion’,” setting up her poem’s occasion as similar manners, climates, councils, governments” (Tennyson to and as a response to Thumboo’s poem. By doing 1833: ll.11 – 14), Thumboo’s Ulysses has Met“ strange so, she intentionally ties the reading of her poem people singing/ New myths; made myths myself to Thumboo’s, using paratextuality to signify that (Thumboo 1979: ll.12 – 13). Thumboo’s poem is a major source of signification for Lee’s poem. Using a similar form of the dramatic The mirroring of Tennyson in Thumboo’s use of monologue, Lee’s “The Merlion to Ulysses” (1997) the dramatic monologue in a two-part structure, the is instead spoken by the Merlion “to” Ulysses, now textual echoes and the concerns of the persona mark the silent. The shift of the speaking subject from Ulysses Ulysses of Thumboo as the same Ulysses of Tennyson. to the Merlion is called to the reader’s attention by the I argue that Thumboo’s “Ulysses by the Merlion” is a switch in the positions of their names in the title of textual extension (Genette 1997: 254) of Tennyson’s the poems; instead of privileging Ulysses, the Western “Ulysses,” in that it extends or builds upon the logic of literary tradition and its Romantic ideals, Lee silences the hypotext. Thumboo’s Ulysses extends the desires Ulysses and animates the Merlion, privileging the of Tennyson’s Ulysses who, at an old age, expresses Merlion, the PAP and its pragmatic ideas. a desire for continual adventure. Thumboo extends the narrative time and logic of Tennyson’s Ulysses This giving speech to, or animating a previously in his old age and makes Ulysses move eastward to minor character in a hypotext, is what Genette the isle of Singapore to see the great “lion of the sea” refers to as transmotivisation (Genette 1997: 330). (Thumboo 1979: l.14) instead of westward “to touch Transmotivisation takes place through a closer the Happy Isles” (Tennyson 1833: l.63). Instead of scrutiny of the previously enigmatic motives, opinions dying and ending his adventures, Tennyson’s Ulysses and thoughts of the minor character to inform and easily becomes Thumboo’s Ulysses who gets one deepen our understanding of the hypotext, or at more adventure in Singapore, a kind of epilogue in least provide an alternative interpretation of the his old age. The formal extension of the persona in hypotext. When Lee gives Thumboo’s previously the hypotextual poem into the hypertextual one has silent Merlion a motive, she privileges the agendas, implications on the way Thumboo’s poem has been opinions and thoughts of the Merlion as worth read as anglophilic. examining; the response of the Merlion to Ulysses is of value and important. It is through this animation This extension of Tennyson’s Ulysses into of the Merlion that the Merlion is constructed as Thumboo’s poem reflects Thumboo’s emphasis on the the hypertextual figure in its own right, displacing English literary tradition as not only a source upon Ulysses as the main hypertextual character. By setting which a local poet must draw to carry weight, but as up the Merlion as the structural opposite of Ulysses a tradition that is desirable; one that the Singaporean through transmotivisation, Lee fashions an active poet should like to insert himself into. One key response, a voice that allows the Merlion to assert implication of this hypotextual extension into the itself against Ulysses, and by extension the Western hypotext of the Merlion poetry is that the Singaporean literary tradition, the Western gaze and the values it literary tradition should develop as an extension represents. and a continuation of the English literary tradition. Thumboo believes that local innovations in poetry Indeed, Lee’s Merlion is almost aggressive in its “should not take the new writing away from the main attitude towards Thumboo’s Ulysses. Unlike the creative tradition in English” (Thumboo 1977: 23). homage that Thumboo pays to Tennyson when he The motif of the East meeting the West in “Ulysses echoes his , textual allusion to Thumboo’s to the Merlion” is present when Ulysses arrives in poem in Lee’s reflects instead the suspicious attitude Singapore and gazes with wonder at the “powerful of her Merlion to Thumboo’s Ulysses. In “The Merlion creature of land and sea,” but this is complicated by to Ulysses,” the vocabulary of the Merlion makes it the fact that the Merlion is silent. The extension of clear that its rhetoric is that of the ruling party of Thumboo’s Ulysses from Tennyson’s privileges the Singapore, the People’s Action Party. Privileging Western tradition over the East, which is only gazed pragmatism, meritocracy and discipline over Western upon, passive and enigmatic, reinstating Orientalist “decadence,” Lee’s Merlion echoes Thumboo’s structures. valorising word “many,” in Ulysses having “sailed many waters” (Thumboo 1979: l.1), and subverts it to contain a negative connotation of inefficiency and USP Undergraduate Journal | 8 disorganisation; Ulysses instead has made “too many characteristics and values of its “creators” (Lee 1997: detours” (Lee 1997: l.1). While Thumboo’s Ulysses l.36) whom it asks Ulysses to respect. “Allusions to has “[k]ept faith with Ithaca” (Thumboo 1979: history and myth are discarded; the Merlion of the l.9), Lee’s Merlion requires verbal professions to be poems instead foregrounds its own artificiality with matched by physical presence and tangible economic an injunction to ‘remember to respect my creators’” contribution: “How long since you proved/ Productive (Kang 2008: 7). and loyal, Properly at home?” (Lee 1997: ll.9 – 10). While Thumboo’s Ulysses neutrally comments that Lee’s Merlion also seems to question the validity of having spent “[s]even years with Calypso” is one of Thumboo’s argument that Ulysses would be impressed the obstacles that kept him from Ithaca, Lee’s Merlion by the Merlion and expresses a skepticism in the takes a more judgmental attitude and accuses Ulysses amazement behind Thumboo’s Ulysses’ statement of having been “[w]edded to adulterous adventure” that “Nothing, nothing in my days/ Foreshadowed (Lee 1997: l.11). The alliteration expresses a scorn that this/ Half-beast, half-fish” (Thumboo 1979: ll.19–21). condemns Ulysses for betraying his wife, home and The repetition of “nothing” emphasizes his awe while responsibilities. Such a critical attitude is reinforced the comma after the first “nothing” evokes the rhythm when Ulysses’ complaint of “Suffering much, enjoying of a spectator breathless with wonder. But the Merlion a little” (Thumboo 1979: l.11) becomes his own fault, scoffs at his naiveté: “Look how easy it is to sell you since it was an “Ill-planned journey” (Lee 1997: l.8). my story?/ Are you the warrior, or the gull?/ You seem Transmotivising the Merlion has allowed it to set amazed? Properly impressed?” (Lee 1997: ll.28 – 30). up a binaristic set of values in which Ulysses stands The rhetorical questions make the Merlion’s approach as its opposite; with two differing opinions on the condescending, escalating the sense of superiority same individual’s circumstances, the tension between the Merlion has over the “feckless wanderer” (Lee the ideals of the PAP and that of the West are more 1997: l.35). Also, this transmotivisation raises issues strongly emphasised. of postcolonial theory: the Eastern object is given the agency to reject the orientalising gaze of Ulysses, the While Lee’s Merlion rejects comparisons to the Western subject. “dragon, phoenix, Garuda [and] naga, those horses of the sun” because they are too ideal, it encourages While Thumboo’s poem valorises the West and comparisons to Ulysses, establishes itself as his equal: the State, Lee’s ironises both by transmotivising the local Merlion and ventriloquising the pragmatism So – the important things of our world, of the state via its voice. Lee’s response sets the stage not just for intertextuality in Singaporean You must admit poetry but hypertextuality, “a field of literary works the generic essence of which lies in their relation to Have not changed much at all. (Lee 1997: ll.30 – previous works” (Allen 2000: 108). Prior to this, only 32) Thumboo’s character of Ulysses is hypertextual, his Merlion stood alone in the literary landscape. Lee “Our” establishes the two figures as sharing a animates the character of the Merlion and establishes mythical dimension but also establishes them as equally the Merlion as a hypertextual literary figure and complex and problematic. This transmotivisation Ulysses is soon almost left behind. of the Merlion rejects the simplistic approach to the Merlion by imbuing it with a personality and character From Monologue to Duologue: The that is hard to pin down. The Merlion proudly declares at the end that it is “the scion of a wealthy race” and Dramatics of Alfian Sa’at’s “Merlion” wears “the silver armour of my moneyed people” (Lee 1997: ll.33 – 34). Here, Lee takes the shine evoked If Thumboo’s “Ulysses by the Merlion” (1979) in Thumboo’s poem to be associated with material extends the Ulysses hypertext and by doing so, shine and success only. While Thumboo’s vision of situates the Merlion in the Western canon, Lee’s “The Singaporeans has elements of Romantic idealism: Merlion to Ulysses” (1997) constructs the Merlion as a hypertextual figure in itself via transmotivisation. They hold the bright, the beautiful. Alfian Sa’at’s “The Merlion” (1998) then effectively dramatises the tension between these two poets Good ancestral dreams by creating two speaking personas in his poem, changing the form from that of monologue to that of Within new visions. a duologue, but focusing on the same themes of the West versus the East. Such a summary of arguments So shining, urgent. (Thumboo 1979: ll.37 – 40) already in place is what Genette terms condensation, while the change of the form of the poem would be Lee’s Merlion associates “bright” and “shining” termed transstylisation. with pragmatism, “silver”, “armour” and “money.” The Merlion in Lee’s poem takes on the voice, It is via condensation that Sa’at focuses the tension Volume 3, Issue 1, August 2010 | 9 between Thumboo and Lee as essentially about West comparison to the Sphinx and the sophisticated phrases versus East. Though the two earlier poems address like “post-Chernobyl nightmare” and “unaccustomed issues of the Western canon, Western ideals of limpidity” (Sa’at 1998: l.5, 16) perhaps parody the Romanticism, Western figures of power against the language of poets who pose intellectual questions pragmatism of the PAP and the postcolonial subject eloquently and with flowery language. Yet the speakers taking ownership of its voice, Sa’at creates two personas never get to the underlying “meaning” of the poem; to personify the binaries the Thumboo and Lee poems the horror (“Can you imagine...?), the confusion deal with. The Westernised Singaporean and the (“what a riddle”) and the speculation (“Could it be Singaporean Singaporean, the poet himself, debate that...?”, “Perhaps”) never reach any conclusions, with each other in the poem and Sa’at clearly situates and the poem ends anticlimactically with an almost his loyalties with Lee. He deviates from the structure absurd wish that the Merlion had paws. Perhaps it is of his predecessors by employing a duologue instead via this transstylisation and condensation that Alfian of a monologue, perhaps anxious to differentiate proposes the inability of any poet to speak on behalf himself as a poet and playwright. Sa’at has confessed, of the Merlion; poets will interact with one another, in retrospect, that his poem is “too reactionary,” a they will ask questions, speculate and suggest, but the form of “literary patricide, triggered by the anxiety Merlion will always elude any ultimate fixed meaning. of influence” (Sa’at 2005: 17). He has written that “Ulysses by the Merlion” is “a poem written in the Too Many Merlion Poems: A Symptom of early days of -language poetry an Anxiety? - consumed as it was with the antiquated grand narratives: the collective ethos, notion of the public, and the role of literature in nation–building” (Sa’at Among the later Merlion poets, Paul Tan writes 2005: 17), therein showing awareness of having to that “we are choked with poetry” (Tan 2000: l.1). engage with national issues in this motif. ’s Merlion is tired of “posed/ poems by ponderous poets like Thumboo, Lee and even young Indeed, Sa’at’s poem reflects less certainty about how Sa’at” (Shiau 2000: ll.4 - 5) while laments the Merlion figures in the rhetoric of nation building. that “we wallow in metaphors” (Pang 1998: l.30). The Merlion no longer speaks, nor does a figure like Conscious of this almost overused motif, Gui Wei Ulysses speak to it. Instead, two Singaporeans look Hsin’s dedication in “Telemachus By the Merlion” and speculate on the silent and enigmatic Merlion is exceedingly long: the poem arriving “(after Edwin which the poem, structured by a series of seven Thumboo, Lee Tzu Pheng, Alfian bin Sa’at, Felix questions: “how does it move? / Like a torpedo? Or Cheong and Alvin Pang),” and the word “after” in does it shoulder itself...?”, seeks to unravel. The move the paratext reflecting the fact that he writes both in from the monologue to the duologue foregrounds a and against the canon of the already existing Merlion more complicated view of the Merlion, as a site of poetry. contestation on which poets, like the speakers in the poem, look at the silent Merlion and try to interpret The anxiety generated by a consciousness of it. The tension between the two speakers is dramatised one’s poetic predecessors, the impulse for the with “A pause” and “Another pause” (Sa’at 1998: 1.43, “literary patricide” that Sa’at speaks of, is literalised 44), with a playful pun on “paws.” These are indented in Gui’s use of Telemachus as the title character in as single line stanzas causing the poem to bear his dramatic monologue. Following the form of the similarities to the structure of a play. The dramatic monologue, Gui amplifies (Genette 1997: 262) the monologue in Tennyson, Thumboo and Lee has Classical possibilities of Thumboo’s Ulysses with the now become a dramatic duologue, a performance in new persona of Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, to which the “acquired accent” (Sa’at 1998: l.45), “blond reflect Gui’s own anxieties about the influence of his highlights in [his] black hair” (Sa’at 1998: l.39) and literary predecessor, Thumboo. Similar to an Oedipal “blue lenses the shadow of a foreign sky” (Sa’at 1998: complex, Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence l.40) function as costume, signifying the Westernised (1973) theorises that new work is created because of local. As a dramatic duologue, the poem can be read as the impulse for younger poets to kill off their literary a performance of the poetic interaction between two fathers and dispel their shadowy influence over them poets, a presentation of the clash between Thumboo’s and their work. Gui takes on this tension between Western sentiments and Lee’s more local sentiments. the father-son relationship, analogous to that of the literary predecessor and later poet, as Telemachus While the overall tone of Sa’at’s poem abandons complains about his father to his mother. the formal language of its hypotexts, being more casual with conversational expressions like “I mean, If the literary predecessor is the father and the you know, I mean” (Sa’at 1998: l.36), it also reflects source, Gui’s poem has two literary hypotexts: an uncertainty about the Merlion’s meaning. The Thumboo’s for structure and Homer for content. Westernised Singaporean speaks in dense language, In terms of form, Gui’s poem does an imitation of asking a series of questions which probe at what the Thumboo’s: it is a dramatic monologue with two Merlion is with a quick pace with run-on-lines. The voices. As the analogy between the father-son/earlier USP Undergraduate Journal | 10 poet-later poet structures the poem, Gui is then generate possibilities of meaning for the Merlion, thus Telemachus and Thumboo Ulysses, both derived from opening the Merlion’s meaning up for use, or abuse. and yet anti-Ulysses. Telemachus’ “I have circled many waters” (Gui 2004: l.2) echoes and combines the first Via amplification of the Classical possibilities lines of Thumboo’s poem, “I have sailed many waters” of Thumboo’s Ulysses, Gui creates a Telemachus (Thumboo 1979: l.1), and Lee’s, “You have made too character that reflects on both his classical and many detours” (Lee 1997: l.1). literary fathers. The critical strand of this poem is then addressed via the combination of these different In fact, it is the detouring from the original that literary sources and critical terms in the poem in what Bloom has referred to as one of the ways to conquer is termed pastiche. Self-conscious and self-reflexive, the Anxiety of Influence. Gui’s poem is intentionally Gui’s poem launched a flurry of literary responses a pastiche, and the intertextuality in Gui’s poem on the forum of The Quarterly Literary Review extends beyond using Thumboo and Homer as a Singapore (or QLRS, an online literary journal source, beyond citing literary works, and encompasses serving the literary scene in Singapore), sparking off literary critical theory, drawing attention to the poem a playful wave of poetic reactions. The next group of as both a piece of art and a critique of art itself. poems I will discuss are responses to Gui’s poem and one common intertextual pattern they use is that they Gui’s poem contains traditional references like all go back to the hypotext, Thumboo’s “Ulysses to the “wine dark sea” (Gui 2004: l.36) from Classical Homer’s Merlion,” and amplify the Merlion’s other Classical The Illiad and “[T]he word fleshed in stone” (Gui possibilities. 2004: 1.40) from John 1:1 in the New International Version . But then it deviates from the previous The Postmodern Merlion: Burlesque, poems with its conscious references to modernist poetry. “This fragment of abrupt imagination,/ shored Travesty and Pastiche against the ruins of independence” (Gui 2004: ll.11 - 12) echoes T.S. Eliot’s “These fragments I have shored The poems that follow Gui’s have postmodernist against my ruins” (Eliot 1922: l.430) and parodies the elements such as irony, self-consciousness, meshing notion of Singapore’s national identity with regard to of high and low culture, pastiche and parody. If independence, while the “shored” becomes more literal postmodernism is what Jean-Francois Lyotard in as the Merlion stands on the shore of Singapore. It is The Postmodern Condition (1979) defines as an this combination of Homeric, Biblical and modernist “incredulity towards metanarratives,” then the playful, poetry that makes Gui’s poem Telemachian: it has subversive attitude of the following poems reflects a traces of the old but also incorporates the newer, distrust of the grand narrative of Thumboo’s “Ulysses younger literary movements. by the Merlion” and the subsequent way the “literary tradition” in Singapore has taken the Merlion as This amplification of the hypertext as a natural literary symbol too seriously, and works to subvert this and chronological development, as Telemachus hypotext. Parody, which Genette defined as “a limited, from Ulysses, results in an extension of the literary even minimal, modification” (1997: 212), is apparent sources and references chronologically as well. While in this last group of poems when each poet takes up a Thumboo’s influences are clearly from the Renaissance thread of the prior hypotext and works it to a logical and Romantic periods, Gui references modernist extreme. This element of parody is a reaction when poetry of the early twentieth century and even literary poets have “lost the nostalgia for the lost narrative” theory from the 1960s onward. These references to (Genette 1997: 493) and elevate “all language games literary theory function as meta-criticism and draw to self-knowledge” (Genette 1997: 500). This loss of attention to how his poem critiques his predecessors, reverence for the hypotext results in a self-conscious just as Telemachus complains of Ulysses. The “[P] sense of play, which takes the form of language games. anoptic presence” (Gui 2004: l.25) refers to Foucault’s The Merlion, the literary and political significance it concept of surveillance of the state and suggests that signifies, now becomes an object for games, for play the Merlion functions as an extension of the state, and for self-reflexivity. using its eyes as a mode of surveillance watching over its citizens. “[D]ifferance” (Gui 2004: l.26), and the Toh Hsien Min’s “Thetis by the Merlion” picks up phrase “always already” elsewhere (Gui 2004: l.29) are the reducible point of Gui’s anxiety of the son. Thetis, Derridian concepts which suggest the impossibility an aquatic deity who has the ability to metamorphosise, of arriving at a final meaning of what the Merlion is cursed that her son will be greater than her father. signifies since meaning is always deferred till the next Toh extends the logic of the poem: Thetis’s desire Merlion poem comes along to challenge that meaning. for chastity makes the Merlion the perfect thing to The “feckless signifier” (Gui 2004: l.27) combines metamorphosise into if she wants to hold on “to [her] Lee’s “feckless wanderer” (Lee 1997: l.35) with the purity and [her] unenvisionable hopes” (Toh 2004: Saussurean notion of the empty signifier, suggesting l.14) since the “mute mongrel” (Toh 2004: l.2) is so that the Merlion’s meaning is unstable. Rather, it is still and unfathomable that nobody can defile her. interdeterminately anchored to other signs which can Toh draws attention to the enigmatic nature of the Volume 3, Issue 1, August 2010 | 11

Merlion by comparing it to a goddess with the ability 1.99). In each case, the “noble style” becomes “vulgar;” to metamorphosise. While the tone of the poem the mermaids now “”snivel” instead of “sing” and the is sombre, Toh parodies the extreme material and “bang” is replaced by the Merlion’s inability to “roar.” symbolic impenetrability of the Merlion and figures it On top of the literary travesty of Eliot, the poem also as a goddess trying hard to retain her chastity. incorporates and satirises contemporary efforts made by the government to improve Singapore, reflecting Alfian Sa’at, on the same online forum, extends the more critical yet playful attitudes of the poets the idea of metamorphosis and chastity and responds toward the political. The title refers to a cabaret that with “Tits on the Merlion? Or, alternative Hellenised opened (and closed down) in Singapore as part of title: Circe as the Merlion.” Genette’s definition an effort to market the city-state as more liberal and of burlesque travesty, which through trivialisation sexually open. Invoking modern science’s terms of (1997: 213) “modifies the style without modifying the genetic engineering, the ‘cubs’ on are bigger subject” and applies a “vulgar style” to a “noble subject” than the parent one at the Esplanade. The Merlion (1997: 22), should be considered here. Assuming the suggests that it may also be “part of someone else’s Merlion started off “noble” with Thumboo’s treatment baby campaign” (Chia 2004: l.14), a snide reference to of it, Sa’at treats it with irony and degradation. Unlike the Singaporean government’s desperate need to get Thetis who wants to metamorphose into the Merlion Singaporeans to produce more babies to ease the effects to preserve her chastity, Circe turns into the Merlion of an aging population. Instead of being a champion because both are whores who use their powers to of the nation’s agenda, the Merlion has become a make visitors (Ulysses or the “Jap” tourists) stay manipulated victim of the government’s attempts longer. The language is no longer noble but colloquial, at promoting procreation, genetic engineering and with Singaporean expressions like “like to anyhow sexual liberation. touch” (Sa’at 2004: l.14). The terminology used is that of the modeling industry and photographers: boob- Ng Yi-Sheng’s poem, titled “Anthology,” is a jobs and spotlights are used to draw parallels between condensation or summary (Genette 1997:239) of all the function of the Merlion and a model since both the Merlion poetry, a parodic listing of juxtapositions “stand still/ for hours and not say anything…” (Sa’at of random words with the Merlion poking fun at 2004: ll.1 - 2). This parody of not only the hypotext, Thumboo’s “Ulysses by the Merlion” (Ng 2009: but also the thematic vocabulary of the modeling l.34), “Telemachus by the Merlion” (Ng 2009: l.32) industry, trivialises the Merlion. Instead of a national and even the poet himself “Yi-Sheng by the Merlion” icon comparable to Thumboo’s “dragon, phoenix,/ (Ng 2009: l.38). This self-consciousness and effort Garuda” (Thumboo 1979: ll.45 – 46), the Merlion to “debate the present from a position within it” is a commercial whore who exploits and seduces the (Easthope and McGowan 2004: 182), using a poem to tourists. critique other poems, is characteristically postmodern. By inserting random characters in alphabetical order Grace Chia’s “The Merlion at Crazy Horse,” also to be positioned “by the Merlion,” Ng suggests that contributed to the same QLRS forum, picks up on the Merlion is an empty signifier whose meaning the thread of the sexuality of the Merlion from Sa’at’s is derived only from what it is juxtaposed against. poem and posits that like other mythical creatures References range from the Classical to the local to (unicorns are “horny,” centaurs are “an ass,” mermaids the historical to popular culture, suggesting that the are “voluptuous”), the Merlion should be identified by Merlion has been manipulated by not just the state, one characteristic trait. Chia chooses to focus on its but also by poets for their own purposes. lack of gendered traits, which she vulgarly translates into transsexuality, made apparent in the fact that it Toward a National Motif: The Canon of is uncertain who the cub’s “fa...mo..other parent is” (Chia 2004: l.12). Having “been sexless so long” (Chia Merlion Poetry 2004: l.7) refers to both not having had sex and not having a particular sex and is a travestic reference to This theory of hypertextuality is relevant to Eliot’s Tiresius, a hermaphrodite oracle, in The Waste the Merlion poems because of the self-conscious Land. relationships that the later poems have with the earlier poems. While the later poems work from the Indeed, Chia’s poem is a pastiche, a “mixture of hypotext, they also have to differentiate themselves diverse imitations” (Genette 1997: 89), and combines from it. The techniques, angles and formal changes references to the mythical creatures with modern that poets undertake to make their poems new but literary references, mostly from T.S. Eliot’s poetry. still relevant to the hypotext has also been commented “[M]ermaids,/whose sniveling songs (each to each)” is on by Genette. Indeed, one way the poems create a parody of “I have heard the mermaids singing, each space for themselves is through these formal changes to each” in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” between the hypertexts and the hypotext. (Eliot 1917: l.124) while the ending, “Not with a roar but with a whimper” (Chia 2004: l.21) alludes to While the hypertextuality of the Merlion poetry is Eliot’s “Not with a bang but a whimper” (Eliot 1925: the first indication of a literary tradition, it also charts USP Undergraduate Journal | 12 the role of poetry in relation to the Singaporean state. canon, to each other and to contemporary events and The Merlion in Singaporean literary culture started notions of national identity reflect how the literature off with grand and lofty aims – trying to engage the of politics and the politics of literature converge in the state and a sense of belonging for Singaporeans – then Merlion poetry. developed over time into more personal meditations on the relationship between the state and the individual. The last few poems eventually parody the seriousness with which Merlion poetry is regarded, resulting in self-conscious, playful poetry which sympathises with the Merlion as an object of political and even poetic manipulation.

The necessary artistic tension between the poems can also be created through intentional differences in literary influences and political attitudes. The history of the Western literary canon is reflected in the chronology of the poetry, with each movement or influence informing the poet’s attitudes and our reading of the poem. Thumboo’s idealism and belief in the power of a “national poetry” is highlighted by his great debt to the Romantic poet laureate Tennyson while the references to Shakespeare and other canonical writers reflect his poetic bias towards the Western tradition. While the middle poets work against each other and echo each other’s words, later poets like Chia parody T.S. Eliot’s poetry, moving the sphere of the Merlion poetry into that of the postmodern, with an increasing scepticism towards the metanarrative. The literary contestation of the hypertextual poetry is addressed by the Oedipal fears of Telemachus, drawing not only on Homer’s, Tennyson’s and Thumboo’s Ulysses but also on Freud’s theory of the Oedipal Complex. Also citing literary critical theory, Gui draws attention to the way in which the poetry of the Merlion both generates and is already a subject of literary criticism.

The notion of pastiche, a combination of influences, with reference to contemporary local events, reminds the reader that these Merlion poems relate to one another not only as contesting literary texts, but as contesting commentaries on the politics of Singaporean identity. The formal changes, and in particular the manner in which intertexts are used, also reflect both historical and thematic changes in the development of the Merlion anthology. Thumboo first sees poetry as something that confers a national identity: the Merlion is constructed as a symbol that Singaporeans can identify with. Lee contests this and Sa’at stages their conflict. As each poet submits his Merlion poem to the canon, he or she participates not only in the poetic dialogue but also in the debate of what the Merlion means to Singapore, how art can have a place in politics, and what he or she has to say about national identity and poetry. As such, only through a study of the entire hypertext of the Merlion poetry can a clear picture of the dialogue of national identity be outlined. Just as the Merlion is half-fish, half-beast, the hypertext of the Merlion poetry is half literary, half political contestation; the complex relations the poems have to the Western literary Volume 3, Issue 1, August 2010 | 13 References victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/ulyssestext.html (accessed 2 April 2009). Thumboo, Edwin. 1977. “Developing a distinctive style in local Allen, Graham. 2000. Intertextuality: Critical Idioms. ; writing: Notes and speculations.” In Developing creative New York: Routledge. writing in Singapore. Edited by Nalla Tan and Chandran Chia, Grace. 2004. “The Merlion at Crazy Horse.” Online Nair. Singapore: Woodrose Publications. 19-29. courses. posting. Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Forum: nus.edu.sg/course/ellthumb/site/doc/8.html (accessed 19 “Another Merlion Poem! (sorry…)”, 11 August www.qlrs. 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