Slaughterhouse Five / Ode on a Grecian Urn

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Slaughterhouse Five / Ode on a Grecian Urn

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1WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:39 pm

Poet of the Parthenon. V. Nabokov invites the interested reader to approach his reading with no preconceptions of the work in hand and to read the text itself as closely as he can. One interesting titbit that comes from a close reading of Slaughterhouse Five is the aura around Billy Pilgrim's first escape through time, as he leaned against a tree in the Argonne forest near the end of World War II. Billy Pilgrim was 'bleakly ready for death' and was trapped. He could not go forward, nor backward, nor stay where he was. This is Vonnegut's description:

His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring. He was like a poet in the Parthenon. / This was when Billy first came unstuck in time.

What can this reference to a 'poet in the Parthenon' mean?

2WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:41 pm

John Keats, not John Wayne. John Keats was also called a poet in the Parthenon and the phrase immediately takes us to his Ode on a Grecian Urn. Is this the meaning of Vonnegut's reference? Vonnegut makes a direct reference to Ode in Cat's Cradle, but more tellingly, the frozen images of the urn are represented precisely in the Tralfamadorian novel:

. . . each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message—describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

This is how Billy Pilgrim travels through time and also how Kurt Vonnegut structures Slaughterhouse Five.

* * *

Vonnegut dedicates Slaughterhouse Five to Mary O'Hare and promised her that it would not be a glorification of war, there would be no part for John Wayne in it. Is it just a coincidence, then, that Billy Pilgrim shares his name with the Duke's "Pilgrim"? Would Wayne (as Tom Donophon of Liberty Valence) call Billy by the honorific, "Pilgrim"?

3WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:56 pm

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
    Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
    Of deities or mortals, or of both,
         In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
    What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
         What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

4WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:44 pm

That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? . . . Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.

5WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:45 pm

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

6WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:45 pm

The saucer was one hundred feet in diameter, with portholes around its rim. The light from the portholes was a pulsing purple. The only noise it made was the owl song. It came down to hover over Billy, to enclose him in a cylinder of pulsing purple light.

The guards peeked inside Billy's car owlishly, cooed calmingly. The had never dealt with Americans before, but they surely understood this general sort of freight. They knew that it was essentially a liquid which could be induced to flow slowly toward cooing and light. It was nighttime.

7WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:57 pm


Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
         Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
     She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
          Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

8WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:46 pm

In time, Montana came to love and trust Billy Pilgrim. He did not touch her until she made it clear that she wanted him to. After she had been on Tralfamadore for what would have been an Earthling week, she asked him shyly if he wouldn't sleep with her. Which he did. It was heavenly.

9WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:46 pm

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
    Forever piping songs forever new;

10WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:46 pm

Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones—to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. If this sort of selectivity had been possible for Billy, he might have chosen as his happiest moment his sundrenched snooze in the back of the wagon.

The trees were leafing out. . . . Birds were talking. / One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, Poo-tee-weet?

11WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:57 pm

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
    Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
         Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
    That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
         A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

12WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:47 pm

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

13WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:59 pm

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
     To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
    And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
    Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
          Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
    Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
         Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

14WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:48 pm

Billy cried very little, though he often saw things worth crying about, and in that respect, at least, he resembles the Christ of the carol:
The cattle are lowing, / The Baby awakes. / But the little Lord Jesus / No crying he makes.

The Americans arrived in Dresden at five in the afternoon. The boxcar doors were opened, and the doorways framed the loveliest city that most of the Americans had ever seen. The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd. It looked like a Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim. / Somebody behind him in the boxcar said, Oz. That was I. That was me.

Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city is capable of doing when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one. / There was a broad river to reflect those lights, which would have made their nighttime winkings very pretty indeed. It was the Elbe.

It had to be done, Rumoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. / I know, said Billy. / That's war. / I know. I'm not complaining. / It must have been hell on the ground. / It was, said Billy Pilgrim. / Pity the men who had to do it. / I do. / You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground. / It was all right, said Billy. Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore.

15WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 3:59 pm

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
    Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste,
          Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
     "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
         Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

16WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:48 pm

So—, said Billy gropingly, I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too. / Of course. / But you do have a peaceful planet here. / Today we do. On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments—like today at the zoo. Isn't this a nice moment? / Yes. / That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones. / Um, said Billy Pilgrim.

17WilfGehlen
okt 17, 2009, 3:49 pm

Vonnegut reprises Billy Pilgrim's moment in the Argonne with a post-petite-mort moment when he returns to bombed-out Dresden from the suburbs.

Billy sat in the back of the jiggling coffin. His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring. He was happy. He was warm. . . . his happiest moment his sundrenched snooze in the back of the wagon.

18WilfGehlen
Redigeret: okt 17, 2009, 5:05 pm



The urn that Keats wrote on may have been, not an actual urn, but a reference to the British Museum, which interred the Elgin Marbles taken from the Parthenon. The images in the frieze from the Parthenon may depict symbols of Hellenic ontological myths, an apt accompaniment to Slaughterhouse Five.

19margad
nov 2, 2009, 3:05 pm

What a beautiful, unlikely but apt comparison! Ode on a Grecian Urn is a favorite of mine, and though I haven't read Slaughterhouse Five, you do a great job of suggesting parallels.

Keats's idea that true happiness is so fleeting that a real state of happiness can only be achieved by freezing a moment in time is so poignant. I can see that Slaughterhouse Five expresses a very similar idea, that perhaps we can achieve happiness only by closing our eyes to the monumental suffering around us.

There may be an important distinction between these two works: I think Keats may have been melancholy enough to have truly believed that a frozen moment of happiness might be a satisfying solution to the problem of suffering. Vonnegut (from the passages you've chosen) seems to be suggesting that we must, to be full human beings, remain aware of suffering and engage with the problem it represents - any happiness that results from closing one's eyes to reality must, in the end, be hollow and unsatisfying. I'm treading on thin ice by trying to interpret this novel without having read it, though!

20VLombardi
jan 10, 2017, 12:08 am

This is a very interesting interpretation, especially since Vonnegut uses the Céline quotation in Chapter 1 that definitely echoes "Ode on a Grecian Urn". I am wondering, however, if you have any sources for Keats being called "a poet in the Parthenon". I did a quick search but could not find it anywhere. Thanks!