From Ulysses to the Merlion: Hypertextuality and a Singaporean
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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 Merlion: Hypertextuality Singaporean and the relationship between images/art/ And A Singaporean poetry and politics. Canon Not only does the notion of an anthology 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 Edwin Thumboo’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 Singapore 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 Singaporeans.” 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 Singapore Tourism Board 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 myths 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.