Out of the Bag 2

Question 1

Summary

Answer 1

Section II is told from the perspective of an older speaker visiting a hospital. The speaker remembers a time when they were younger and nearly passed out from the incense fumes during a religious procession. He remembers another time when they nearly fainted as they were pulling grass at Lourdes, a Catholic shrine. As they were passing out, they had a hallucination of Doctor Kerlin finger painting images of people in a streamed-up window in the speaker’s ‘scullery’ (utility room) from their childhood and bringing ‘baby bits’ together in the sink. Then, the speaker wakes up.

Question 2

Poeta doctus Peter Levi says
Sanctuaries of Asclepius (called asclepions)
Were the equivalent of hospitals

Answer 2

Now the speaker is much more educated / changed perspective

Poeta Doctus – Professor etc.

Asclepius – God of medicine

Hospital – Healing and health

Question 3

In ancient Greece. Or of shrines like Lourdes,
Says poeta doctus Graves. Or of the cure
By poetry that cannot be coerced,

Answer 3

Lourdes – Healing and curing

Cure / Poetry -> All semantic field of healing

Question 4

Say I, who realized at Epidaurus
That the whole place was a sanatorium
With theatre and gymnasium and baths,

Answer 4

Epiduras – Greek theathre / Home of Asclepius / Healing both physically and spiritually / Medical treatment but also mental rejuvenation

Sanatorium – Cleansing

Question 5

A site of incubation, where “incubation”
Was technical and ritual, meaning sleep
When epiphany occurred and you met the god …

Answer 5

Incubation – Key word throughout

Epiphany – Showing forth / recognition of God / Revelation of God and healing / Gained via pilgrimage

Question 6

Hatless, groggy, shadowing myself
As the thurifer I was in an open air procession
In Lourdes in ‘56

Answer 6

Thurifer – Incense and atmospheric creation

Lourdes – Memory from before

Hallucinating Doctor Kerlin

Question 7

When I nearly fainted from the heat and fumes,
Again I nearly fainted as I bent
To pull a bunch of grass and hallucinated

Answer 7

Dreams and memories are being incubated

Question 8

Doctor Kerlin at the steamed-up glass
Of our scullery window, starting in to draw
With his large pink index finger dot-faced men

With button-spots in a straight line down their fronts
And women with dot breasts, giving them all
A set of droopy sausage-arms and legs

That soon began to run. And then as he dipped and laved
In the generous suds again, miraculum:
The baby bits all came together swimming

Into his soapy big hygienic hands
And I myself came to, blinded with sweat,
Blinking and shaky in the windless light.

Answer 8

There is a parallel with religion / Lourdes and Doctor Kerlin link together / His imagination mystifies Kerlin and religious mysterious also do the same

Miracles – Jesus and his religious miracles / real or imagination

Drawing men in the window glass bit by bit / Doctor piecing baby together bit by bit