Continuing Education: Literary and Historical Guide
by
Mo
Disclaimer: The movie belongs to Fox. The X-Men belong to Marvel. Commodore Perry belongs to history. Oliver, Yasuko, Yukio and a bunch of other characters in Westchester, Saskatchewan, Belarus and elsewhere are the products of my fevered imagination. Well, by this point, so are Scott and Logan, to some extent. I hope their basic characters are still evident but they have grown and changed somewhat with all I've put them through. I think Bryan Singer could still recognize them, but he might wonder what the hell they're doing.
Adult Education and Continuing Education are two brief story series featuring characters I've written quite a bit about before. Throughout my stories, I portray Scott Summers as: a mutant superhero, really good at giving blow jobs, a funny guy with a joke for most any occasion, and an English teacher. So the stories are full of quotes from poems and other literature, primarily reflecting Scott's literary interests. It has been my practice to publish a literature guide at the end of each series, providing a little information on the works quoted as well as urls to read the complete works, where available.
These two series are a little different. In addition to the literary references, there's a fair amount of historical content, since these stories deal in part with Logan's experiences in nineteenth-century Japan. So, this guide covers some of the historical background as well as the literature referenced. As was the case for the other literature guides, this document contains spoilers for the series and should be read after reading Adult Education and Continuing Education.
Literature Referenced:
Poems
Robert Burns. John Anderson, my Jo. This is a lovely, life-affirming poem of long-term loving. Told in first person it is a love poem to one John Anderson, an elderly man loved by the same person for many years ("Jo" means sweetheart or lover). The narrator tells of when they were young together and John's hair was "like the raven," contrasting that with now that he is old and grey, and offers "blessings on your frosty prow, John Anderson my Jo." Scott quotes the poem to Logan in talking about coming to grips with the fact that he and Logan don't have the option of growing old together. He says he can't expect Logan to heap blessings on Scott's frosty prow while remaining forever young himself. It's not clear what Logan's views on the subject are, though, since at least with Yasuko he had formed what was intended to be a long-term relationship, in spite of the knowledge that she would grow old and he wouldn't. Read the poem at http://www.robertburns.org/works/268.html.
George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron). When We Two Parted.A poignantly sad poem about clandestine lovers breaking up. Byron says that they parted "in silence and tears" at the beginning of the poem and ends it by saying that, should they meet again at some distant point, "How will I greet thee? With silence and tears." Scott is presumably thinking of this poem when he uses the phrase "silence and tears" in connection to what appears to be the last time he and Logan will have sex. You can read the poem at http://www.bartleby.com/101/597.html
John Donne. For Whom the Bell Tolls.This is the poem that Scott is teaching when Charles returns from Washington in Adult Education. It begins with the famous line "No man is an island." Its presence in the story is a reminder that Logan has pretty much lived as an island for much of his life and is planning on going back to that solitary existence. Scott, however, wants desperately to maintain their connection. The wording of the line "Each man's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind" sparks a discussion of inclusiveness and specificity in poetic language and causes the class of young mutants to muse on whether they are truly "involved in mankind" or only involved with their own subspecies. You can read the poem in its entirety at http://djryan.tripod.com/inspirations/poems/bell.html
Carl Sandburg. War Poems. Scott mentions that Logan wrote an essay on imagery in poems of the Great War. He doesn't specify which poems Logan discussed, but it's a good bet that at least some of them are in Sandburg's Chicago Poems collection. This volume, published in 1916, includes 11 poems of that war. Two of them, "Murmurings in a Field Hospital" and "Killers", were featured in some of my earlier stories. Logan had described Scott's reciting the former poem to him as something he would always remember, with both of them seeing Logan in the badly wounded soldier who wants only playthings. I think it likely that, given Logan's aversion to blind obedience to orders, he might also have particularly been moved by "And They Obey." The entire text of Chicago Poems is available online in a few places, including at http://www.bartleby.com/165/index1.html. Scroll down to poems 67-77 to find the war poems.
William Shakespeare. Sonnet 23. In this poem, Will pleads with his young lover (known as the Fair Youth) to understand the depth of his love even when he doesn't express it or does so imperfectly. Scott quotes the poem to say that he doesn't need Logan to give him declarations of love, for he has learned ñ as Will asked of his lover ñ to "read what silent love hath writ." Logan replies that it's not just an inability to express love that he suffers from, but also to feel it. Scott is at this point confused by the mixed messages Logan is sending him since his behavior seems to suggest intense feeling, not a lack of such.
Play
William Shakespeare. Hamlet.Scott quotes what is arguably the most famous speech in Shakespeare's most famous play, when he says "There's the rub" with reference to having to involve Charles in their plans for Sabretooth. The line occurs in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy in Act III, Scene 1. Hamlet compares death to sleep but then ponders on the possibility that there may be disturbing dreams in death, rather than peaceful eternal sleep, saying
"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub"
I used the same line for the title of the story in "Night and Day" in which the whole household was dreaming at once. Hamlet is available online in many different places. An excellent site with very readable text and some useful commentary as well, is www.shakespeare-online.com. Hamlet can be found at http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamletscenes.asp.
Miscellaneous
Declaration of Independence
In Scott's poetry class, the discussion of John Donne's poem broadens into a larger discussion of inclusive and exclusive language in literature. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" is brought up by one of the students as an example. It is, of course, the first line of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Scott points out that it's not strictly poetry but that the language is very poetic.
A very well-presented and comprehensive treatment of the Declaration can be found at http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/decmain.html.At this site, provided by the National Archives and Records Administration, you will find the text, a photo of the original Declaration, extensive information on its history and comparisons with other major national documents of the U.S. Of particular interest to Scott's poetry class would be the essay at this link: http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/decstyle.html which explores the Declaration of Independence as a work of literature. Although I agree with Scott that Jefferson's language is very poetic, it's the end rather than the beginning of the Declaration that strikes me as most poetic and most compelling. I find it most applicable, as well, to the world of the X-Men. Charles Xavier's followers, too, might well find themselves saying that, to further their own cause, "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
Plato. Symposium.Symposium, perhaps the best known of Plato's dialogues, has appeared in several of my Scott and Logan stories. Logan appears to have been captivated by the concept of an "army of lovers" from the first time Scott introduced the idea to him, in We're Not What You Think. The phrase comes from Phaedrus' speech in the dialogue, which is basically a record of different ideas of the nature of love. Often referred to as "literature's most famous dinner party" Symposium purports to be a collection of one such party's various views on what love means. In the second story of Adult Education (Night School) Scott quotes from Phaedrus's speech to draw parallels between the ancient Greek warrior lovers and the samurai ones. He talks about the Greeks having viewed same-sex love relationships as having roles tied to the partners' relative ages much like Logan describes those of the Japanese. The entire dialogue is available in a well-designed site, at http://plato.evansville.edu/texts/jowett/symposium.htm. See historical notes below for more information on parallels between the ancient Greek view of homosexual love and the Japanese concept of shudo.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo. Hagakure: the Book of the Samurai. This early 18th century work is considered a major text explaining bushido, the way or philosophy of the samurai. Logan quotes from Hagakure when he tries to explain to Scott why he needed to kill Yukio. I have been unable to find an online English translation, but this site: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/9151/hagakure.htm offers a few quotes and the Wilson translation is widely available in bookstores and libraries. For more on bushido and the samurai way of life as applied to same-sex relationships, see the historical notes below.
Historical Notes
The Perry Expedition
In Continuing Education, Logan tells Scott that he was in the U.S. navy and assigned to the warship Susquehanna during the Perry Expedition to Japan in 1854. Commodore Matthew Perry led an expedition to Japan that resulted in that country's first treaty with a Western nation, the Treaty of Kanagawa. The treaty marked success in the U.S. effort to open Japan's ports up to western ships and is generally viewed as the beginning of the end of a long period of Japanese seclusion.
There's a lot of information available online on the Perry expedition. Of particular interest because of its vivid descriptions is a first-person account at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1854Perry-japan1.html. The descriptions in this passage are culled from Commodore Perry's notes and reflect the viewpoint and prejudices of the invading Commodore. It would be interesting to read a first person account of one of the Japanese observers of the scene as well.
Perry had an artist and photographer among his crew and the images that were brought back were among the first that citizens of the US saw of Japan. The pictures and an account of the entire expedition were published as a book by an order of Congress. A number of these illustrations can be seen at http://www.kauailink.net/~kfa/perry.html. Another useful site for pictures of the expedition is http://www.grifworld.com/perryhome.html. This one appears to be written with an elementary school audience in mind, but has good reproductions of some of the original expedition illustrations.
Shudo, Mishima and Homosexual Behavior in Japan
Logan reveals in Continuing Education that as a youth he had been the lover of a samurai named Yukio. He says that homosexual behavior was not only accepted but very much encouraged among the samurai and that it was called "shudo". He knows what he's talking about. Note this quote from The Love of the Samurai discussing shudo (the shortened form of wakashu-do, a phrase meaning "the way of the young man") in the Japanese society Logan knew:
"It is especially in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries that it flourished greatly under the rule of the samurai, in a period when the traditional civilization of Japan reached its perfectionÖFar from being condemned, it was considered more noble and more gracious than heterosexuality. It was encouraged especially within the samurai class; it was considered useful to boys in teaching them virtue, honesty and the appreciation of beauty, while the love of women was often devalued for its so-called 'feminising' effect. A great part of the historical and fictional literature was devoted to the praise of the beauty and valour of boys faithful to shudo."
The idea of homosexual behavior as a more masculine undertaking for men than the love of women provides an interesting contrast with the prevalent view in the West of male/male sex as feminizing men. Another striking contrast is in the way shudo, also known as nanshuko, was contextualized in the society. Erotic and educational partnership with an older man was considered an important stage in a youth's development (this is much like the Ancient Greek model, as Scott points out to Logan). Later on the same youth would be the older partner to a young man and still later he would marry a woman. The cultural construct does not view homosexuality as an identity but a set of behaviors. By contrast, the concept of sexual orientation as inextricably tied to identity is one that is pretty much the cornerstone of modern Western gay liberation.
Scott and Logan can, in some ways, be seen as representing those two differing views of homosexuality. Logan sees male/male sex as behavior, as something he has done at different points in his life for different reasons, but not as a part of his identity. In Canadian Nights he rejects Scott's suggestion that he, Logan, is bisexual, saying that the term has no meaning to him. Scott, on the other hand, sees his sexual orientation as a core element of his identity, both when he is living in the closet and later on when he comes out. His identification as gay exists over and above his sexual behavior. As he says to Jean in Canadian Nights: "If I never had sex again for the rest of my life, I'd still be gay."
It's worth noting, though, that the predominant cultural construct is never the only one extant in a culture. Logan's view of his sexual behavior as separate from and unrelated to identity is certainly not unknown in the West. And the idea of distinct core identities, people whose souls were either hetero- or homosexual, is evident in Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, even though the dominant cultural construct in ancient Greece was to view homosexual behavior as an expected part of a man's life and not related to his self-concept.
Yukio Mishima, for whom I've named Logan's samurai lover, can be seen to represent both sexual orientation as identity and the samurai view of shudo. Mishima is considered by many critics to have been the premier Japanese novelist of the twentieth century. An extraordinarily talented man, he was a prolific writer who also sang professionally and acted in and directed films. His first novel, Confessions of a Mask, believed to be largely autobiographical, tells the story of a man deeply troubled by his homosexuality, trying hard to hide his orientation from family and friends. Mishima was a homosexual and viewed himself as a modern day samurai trying to recapture Japan's lost military might. Perhaps part of the attraction of the samurai life for him was the idea that shudo could be not the shameful secret portrayed in his first novel but "something important" as Logan says in Continuing Education.
Mishima is known for his politics almost as much as for his writing. He led a reactionary movement typified by his private army ñ the Shield Society. The combination of homosexuality and right-wing politics gives Mishima some points of commonality with the gay neo-cons now writing extensively in the West. Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) along with his young lover, Masakatsu Morita, in 1970 after occupying a military office in Tokyo and giving a speech deriding modern Japan for capitulating with the West.
For readers interested in learning more about these topics, here are some useful online and hard copy references:
http://www.geocities.com/countermedia/9.html Yukio Mishima: a 20th Century Samurai. This website summarizes Mishima's life and death and discusses the interplay of his homosexual orientation and the shudo tradition.
http://www.androphile.org/S/Culture/Japan/ summarizes the history of shudo, with some comparison with the ancient Greek model.
Neil Miller. Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present.(Vintage Books, New York, 1995) An ambitious project to try and accomplish in one volume, but Miller does his valiant best. The main focus of the book is on the Western homosexual tradition, but there is a chapter on Japan and it focuses on Mishima.
John Whittier Treat. Great Mirrors Shattered: Homosexuality, Orientalism and Japan (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1999)This book is a first person account of a gay American's year spent in Japan as the AIDS epidemic spread. It's a rather rambling volume, but interesting for its depictions of differences in the contextualization of homosexuality in the United States and Japan. Touches only briefly on the shudo and the samurai tradition of same-sex partners.
Tsuneo Watanabe, Jun'ichi Iwata. The Love of the Samurai : A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality.( Gay Men's Press, London; 1989) Frequently cited as a seminal work on the history of male/male sex in Japan. Covers the shudo tradition from its origins to its late nineteenth-century decline. Includes illustrations taken from an ancient Japanese scroll depicting men in samurai garb having sex.
All references to characters belonging to the X-Men Universe are (c) and TM the Marvel Comics Group, 20th Century Fox and all related entities. All rights reserved. Any reproduction, duplication or distribution of these materials in any form is expressly prohibited. No money is being made from this archive. All images are also (c) and TM the Marvel Comics Group, 20th Century Fox and all related entities; they are not mine. This website, its operators and any content used on this site relating to the X-Men are not authorized by Marvel, Fox, etc. I am not, nor do I claim to be affiliated with any of these entities in any way.