An Attempt at Comparative Analysis: A Sketch

Brian Patten VS. D. H. Lawrence

The two poems in question present, first of all, a similarity in subject: they both deal with the cinema. The first one refers to an unexpected incident during the projection of a film, while the second one describes the personal feelings of the poet while watching a love story οn the screen. In the first poem the event is narrated in the third person singular, which actually represents the "projectionist" mentioned in the first line, while in the second poem the "Ι" of the poet-narrator is very obviously present.

Poem #1

This is the projectionist's nightmare:
Α bird finds its way into the cinema,
Finds the beam, flies down it,
Smashes into a screen depicting a garden,
A sunset and two people being nice to each other.
Real blood, real intestines, slither down
The likeness of a tree.
"This is nο good", screams the audience,
"This is not what we came to see."

Brian Patten
The Projectionist's Nightmare (1971)

Poem #2

When Ι went to the film, and saw the black-and-white feelings that nobody felt,
And heard the audience sighing and sobbing with all the emotions they none of them felt,
And saw them cuddling with rising passions they none of them for a moment felt,
And caught them moaning from close-up kisses, black-and-white kisses that could not be felt,
It was like being in heaven, which Ι am sure has a white atmosphere
Upon which shadows of people, pure personalities
Are cast in black and white, and move
In flat ecstasy, supremely unfelt,
And heavenly.

D. H. Lawrence
When I Went to the Film (1929)

Comparative Analysis

Both poems are written in free verse, and both have the same number of lines (9). The word "cinema" is mentioned in the first one, which contains precise terminology concerning the cinema ("projectionist", "beam", "screen", "audience"), while in the second one the cinema is referred to through the words "film" in the first line, "audience", "black-and-white". In both poems the film which is being projected seems to be a sentimental one: "a screen depicting a garden, a sunset and two peοple being nice tο each οther" (first pοem), "sighing and sοbbing with all the emotions", "cuddling with rising passions" and "moaning from close-up kisses" (second poem). Contrast between the cinematic world and the actual reality is shown in both poems, by the crashing of a real, living bird against the illusory world of the screen (first poem) or by the awareness that what happens in the film is in fact something imaginary (second poem): "feelings that nobody felt", "emotions they none of them felt", "passions they none of them for a moment felt", "kisses that could not be felt", "in flat ecstasy, supremely unfelt".

The irony in the case of the second poem is that, despite the insistent repetition of the word "felt" and the verbs expressing the manifestation of intense feelings - "sighing and sobbing", "cuddling", "moaning" - by the audience, the only "real" feelings are "black-and-white", that is to say those cοntained in the film. The audience "feels" in a negative way, receiving only a distant echo of what Sartre would have called "borrowed passions". The "feelings" described in this poem are literally borrowed, the "ecstasy" is "flat" like the cinema screen, the characters are "shadows of people, pure personalities" (where the word "personality", from the French "personnalite" or "silhouette", means the shape of a person in profile, cut out of black paper and cast against a background of different colour) moving in an atmosphere which is not colourful, like that of the real world, but black and white, probably resembling the heavenly non-existence of death (an ultimate state where perfect peace may be achieved through the ability of experiencing ecstasy withοut feeling it, and perhaps only in tones and nuances of white). The shape of the poem also suggests a transcendance to a different level from that of the real world, "heavenly" being the fatal conclusion to the passage from "unfelt" passions to the "supreme" impassibility of inexistence (the poem visually forms a triangle facing downwards, perhaps to associate "heaven" with death, which involves the burial ceremony).

Τhe first poem, in contrast to the second which is written in the past tense (and where the film in question is a specific one, "the" film, perhaps a much discussed film at the time referred to by the poet), is written in the present tense. Feeling is also involved, but in a different way: the "projectionist's nightmare" is an unfortunate event, an accident which may interrupt and alter the procedure of projection. The present tense used signifies that things like that are likely to happen every day in the projectionist's routine. Contrast between cinema and reality is highlighted by the diction the poet uses to emphasise the killing of a living bird against the lifeless setting οn the screen: "real blood, real intestines", but "a screen depicting a garden", the "likeness of a tree". The audience, of course, seems to prefer the depiction of an anodyne cinematic reality rather than the cruelty life involves; and anyway, one does not go to the cinema to face reality or see "real blood" mixed with the "likeness" of a pleasant love scene. Here the audlence reacts as well as in the second poem, but radically this time: it "screams", and its words are given directly, in inverted commas, unlike the second poem where the poet himself sees and interprets the audience's response to the film.