Week 5

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

Eldorado ` Edgar Allan Poe

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!" 

   The knight or the seeker of whatever sort must be bold and stout of heart, or the ultimate gold may forever elude him, or her.  Or so E.A. Poe seems to suggest in the poem above, in the meeting between weary and aged knight and "pilgrim shadow"(line 15), each mindful, it seems, that the legendary Eldorado is not of this world at all.

The Rose Family                                 by Robert Frost

The rose is a rose,

And was always a rose.

But the theory now goes

That the apple's a rose,

And the pear is, and so's

The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows

What will next prove a rose.

You, of course, are a rose -

But were always a rose. 

In a world of continually changing ideas and attitudes and definitions, the poet Robert Frost playfully suggests here in "The Rose Family" that some things do not change. The original nature of the one whom he addresses in the poem, the "you" referenced in line 9, is and always has been, metaphorically, a rose.

Like Sylvia, the shy girl character in "A White Heron," who finds companionship and solace and joy in the woods among small animals and birds and who in the end will not betray them for anything or anyone, there is here recognition of some essential goodness, beauty, and truth of sorts.

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  Next week essay 3, posted last week, is due in class.  We have gotten behind in our readings and discussions and so some of the material I will cover here may not get much air time in class.  Be reminded that the recitation due week 11 requires you memorize and recite a 14-line poem or passage from a longer poem.  AT getlit.org and poetryoutloud.org you can review some of the stellar performances of students doing just such performance work.  I hope the assignment is fun and enriching for you.  Choose a poem you feel you have a strong connection with or that draws you in powerful ways.

Week 4

The Dove. a Symbol of . . .

The following free verse poem is by Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse during the American Civil War.  In it he sees beyond the immediate violent conflict between North and South in recognition of the "divine" humanity of all involved, and the healing inevitably to come.  Notice his long, free verse lines, stretching out from among the shorter and providing an expansive, heightened sense of feeling:

Reconciliation

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near;	5
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Narcissus, by Caravaggio

Welcome back to class.  I hope you are all doing well.  

     Today we pick up where we left off last week, reviewing the autobiographical narratives by Charles Bukowski and Sarah Orne Jewett's fiction "The White Heron," writers from very different eras who yet tell stories about the travails of growing up that in certain respects are similar.  We will discuss the similarities and differences in class, but here I will indicate some of the similarities in theme that I have noted:

• A narrator/protagonist who feels himself in opposition to family and others and thus feels isolated or alone and vulnerable to some degree
• A narrator/protagonist who struggles to find and assert himself and in so many ways feel strong
• A narrator/protagonist who discovers where his powers lie and exercises them
• A narrator/protagonist who considers the consequences of his actions, and regards with sympathy  the weak, meek, and humble
• A narrator/protagonist who seeks understanding, even wisdom, through reflection, reading and writing
• A narrator/protagonist who shows awareness of the social mask and who hides certain aspects of his self
• A narrator/protagonist who invites readers to see the challenges of growing up by relating key memories and experiences from that journey

We do not see in Bukowski's work the kind of conversation with God that St. Augustine enacts in his autobiographical Confessions.  We do not see elements of prayer and religious devotion.  Bukowski's work is not a religious confession nor a conversion narrative; in fact, we would all have to read more of his work to understand his spiritual or religious ideas and attitudes clearly.  He is, it seems to me, clearly seeking the Truth of his experience and trying to convey it in his narrative work, however unflattering the light he shines upon himself and others.  This, too, the articulation of Truth, is St. Augustine's aim.

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If we have time we will look at the autobiographical excerpts by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), where she records her memories of Sioux life in South Dakota, including the influence of her mother, the natural world around them, the legends and rituals of her tribe, and her meeting with white missionaries.  In addition, The Navaho Night Chant offers a look into the way that poetry and chanting come together in a ritual of healing and transformation intended to return its participants to a renewed sense of vitality and wholeness.

                                                      Tintern Abbey (12th Century)

I have also a selection of poems I'd like to address, time permitting.  They will serve to underscore the narrative themes in the prose pieces we are reading, provide review of earlier themes and concepts,  and will move us along to the next works.  One is "Tintern Abbey," a romantic poem in blank verse by William Wordsworth:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html   At the following link you may read background and see in photos the beauty of the abbey:  http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html

Posted below is the description of essay 3, which is due week 6:  

 Essay #3, due week 6: Compose a 600-700 word (minimum length) essay that introduces the text(s) by title and author and proceeds to support a thesis point or claim about the text(s). You may address poetry and/or prose selections but two or more selections must be addressed under a comprehensive thesis, the essay unified by the thesis, with each serving to develop and support your thesis. Include some description of the formal structure of the poem and/or prose elements, for example, stanza form, line length and rhyme pattern, use of repetition or anaphora, use of narrative structure, setting, plot, character,  conspicuous sound devices, imagery, figurative elements (such as metaphor, simile, symbol, personification).  Remember, narrative always involves the perspective or point of view of the narrator (first person or third person typically, as well as plot, setting, character development, tone or mood, and central thematic concerns. Lyric poems may have little in the way of narrative or story, though they always have a speaker and the speaker provides perspective, along with whatever other voices may be presented in the poem.  Provide support and evidence for your claims in the form of textual summary and direct quotation, formatted in the MLA style, with line citations. Avoid using quotation unnecessarily or dropping quotations in without commentary. Integrate short quotations into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted. Title your essay (do not use the poetry or prose story title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present). Double‐space the lines. 

Week 3

                                                      Vulcan, Greek God of the Forge

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” 

― Charles Bukowski

Today we will finish "The Hunting of the Snark," by Lewis Carroll and associated readings and then on to the short prose stories by Guy de Maupassant and Charles Bukowski, with the focus on childhood, adolescence . . . growing up.    "The White Heron," by Sarah Orne Jewett is another that, like the first two, takes as its subject childhood and growing up, its pains, particular burdens and joys, family, social isolation, and the role of authority, often male-identified, in the protagonist's life. All are stories of initiation into experience and knowledge of one sort or another. The Confessions, by St. Augustine,  is the oldest complete autobiographical work we have and describes somewhat the author's religious conversion and confessions of sin and guilt. He is at pains to show to God and man how he has learned to see God's just and guiding hand in his life, even in those times his life was given over to what he calls wickedness. We may read excerpts; the full text is available at http://www.online-literature.com/saint-augustine/confessions-of-saint-augustine/.

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In Charles Bukowski's  “Son of Satan,” a semi-autobiographical account, the author tells how a group of boys alleviate the boredom of day in the suburbs by torturing an erstwhile playmate, Simpson, a kid rather quiet, different, the narrator says, perhaps simply weaker than they in some way, “a loner. Probably lonely.” Not so different in fact, we can imagine. But the narrator takes his offhand boast of having lain with a girl under the narrator’s house as a challenge, territorial perhaps, though they know in all likelihood it was just a boast, “a lie” Simpson had come up with in hearing them talk of such things. After a brief “trial” they hang him from his porch.

      Before Simpson comes to serious bodily harm, the narrator cuts him down, and then the narrator goes for a long walk, feeling lost, “vacant” and somewhat remorseful. His shoes are thin and “hurt [his] feet.”  When he says that the “nails started coming through the soles,” we might imagine the story of Christ, whose feet were nailed to a cross. When he gets home his father is waiting for him, and he wants answers. But the boy, perhaps unable to explain, and afraid, chooses instead to fight his angry father, who for all he knows, might kill him. In the end, the boy is hiding under the bed, hoping to elude the big man’s grasp, waiting.

      The power and influence of parents and other authority figures is something we contend with throughout our lives as we come into our own. The story, to me, illustrates something of the cruelty, suffering, and longing for relief that mark a human life. The narrator is coming to terms with these experiences in the only way he knows. The fight between him and his father, their coming to blows, appears a crucial departure in his young life.

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Homework:  Poetry Essay #2, due week 5:  Compose a short essay of 250-350 (three paragraphs ought to do it) words on a poem from the handout.  Introduce the subject piece by title and author, describe briefly what the poem is about, its form (free verse or rhymed, stanza type and number), and proceed to your thesis idea, which is an arguable claim, an interpretative claim/opinion you have arrived at after consideration of the text’s structure and sense.  Support or prove your thesis idea in the body paragraph(s) by reference to specific lines and words in the poem text and explanation of their meaning.  Provide a brief conclusion that underscores your central focus and point.

Integrate short quotations (less than four lines) into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted.  Remember, all use of original wording should be enclosed in quotation marks or otherwise indicated as original source material.  Title your essay (do not use the poetry title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present).  Double‐space the lines.  Bring the printed copy to class week 4, or email it to ndoyle@aii.edu if you cannot be in class to submit it.

Topic suggestions:  
the poem as symbol or allegory of imagination and its powers

the poem as meditation on nature's shows 
the theme of life's progression– childhood, adolescence, maturity 

the uses of allusion –mythological, biblical, historical– in poetry                       

A Guide to the Study of Literature:  Explore the pages and links at the site below, where you will find helpful introductory material and insightful essays and responses to the themes and topics readers have discovered in literature.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/read_lyr.html

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

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Week 2

     

Angkor Wat, Cambodia    Photos by C. Houge

The photo above captures somewhat the emerald mystery of Nature and "her" spiritual secrets.  The temple of Angkor Wat (12 c.) is a part of the world's oldest and largest Hindu religious site and incorporates an architectural element called the Temple Mountain which represents Mount Meru, the home of the Gods.  The snaking tree here in the center of the photo appears to threaten the fragile edifice.

The short fable by Leonardo Da Vinci called "The Nut and the Campanile" also articulates the dynamic of creation, growth, age, and ruin:  a nut escapes being eaten by a crow and finds shelter in a crevice of a wall of the campanile.  Happy to shelter one that acknowledges "the grace of God," an admirer of beauty and nobility, and moved by the nut's story of having lost its place beneath the "old Father" and the nut's plea "do you, at least, not abandon me," the wall extends its compassion.  The nut (seed), sheltered and rooted in darkness, reaches for the light and grows to great height and in time displaces "the ancient stones."  

    The campanile or belltower in the European tradition was most often a part of a church and was rung several times a day to call the faithful to prayer, to remind them of the incarnation of God.   In civic life, a belltower might warn, among other things, of natural disasters or danger.  Thus we may see in Da Vinci's story, an allegory of the fragility of human constructs in the face of nature's powers and, to my mind, the poignancy of the conflict between humans and nature, a source that giveth and taketh all, and that is loved and feared.

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     In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: 

 nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.  Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture.  But his operations taken together are so insignificant [. . . ] that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result "("Introduction").  

The works or operations of humans in their totality cannot compare with those of nature, he claims, as all our Arts are meagered by nature's grand show.   

     Later he speaks of an "occult relation" between man and nature, a sense of delight and wonder, but warns that "nature is not always tricked in holiday attire" and what appears lovely today may tomorrow be "overspread with melancholy." He says, "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit."  And "Nature is the symbol of spirit."  

     He makes it clear that the inward, subjective human experience of nature shapes our views of nature;  we humanize nature; our imagination clothes nature in various dress–boon companion, indifferent Other, enemy menace.  But he urges the higher, ideal conceptions:   "Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness."  And, too, "Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue," and "in art does Nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works."  

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                                                                    Guido Cagnacci  Allegory of Human Life

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge  said that "poetry reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities." We discussed this idea last week in looking at the doubleness or duality of various familiar concepts:  nature/art; temporal/eternal; mortal/immortal; mutable/immutable; one/many; yin/yang; black/white; good/evil.  In art we find representations of nature's creations, and of human creation–the art work is itself a human construct.  In the painting above, the artist has depicted a largely nude woman,  flowers in her right hand, an hourglass in the other, and a human skull supporting her arm.  Above her head is the image of an ourobouros, a snake swallowing its own tail, an ancient symbol of eternity, and of the natural cycle of continuous birth and death, creation, destruction, and recreation that is fundamental to life as we know it.

Poets and other artists (scientists too) invite us to look and to see more deeply into the nature of human experience and the world around us, encouraging us to pay attention so that we may appreciate the infinite array of natural wonders all around us.   William Blake shows the power of attention and imaginative connection in a series of paradoxes in "Augeries of Innocence":  "To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower" is one way he expresses this capacity for seeing beyond the given, seeing the limitless connections between life forms.  

We looked or will look at Oscar Wilde's short story "The Artist"(http://www.literaturepage.com/read/wilde-essays-lectures-121.html);  in this story Wilde dramatizes the opposition between The Pleasure that Abideth for a Moment, and The Sorrow that Endureth for Ever.  In the story, the artist is an archetype of the creative human, one who will "fashion an image" from imagination and the stuff of experience to express something of what we feel inwardly or subjectively in our life's journey.  The materials Wilde's artist uses, as with creative endeavor of whatever kind, are those that have been used before, or can be found in raw natural form, for new-fashioned expression.

I reproduce here below definitions of Nature and Art:

 NATURE

1

a : the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing : essence 

b : disposition, temperament

2

a : a creative and controlling force in the universe

b : an inner force or the sum of such forces in an individual

3

: a kind or class usually distinguished by fundamental or essential characteristics <documents of a confidential nature> <acts of a ceremonial nature>

4

: the physical constitution or drives of an organism; especially : an excretory organ or function —used in phrases like the call of nature

5

: a spontaneous attitude (as of generosity)

6

: the external world in its entirety

7

a : humankind's original or natural condition

b : a simplified mode of life resembling this condition

8

: the genetically controlled qualities of an organism

9

: natural scenery

ART     A definition of  Art,  from Carl Jung's "The Poet":  Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.  The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. . . .

     A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal.  A dream never says:  "You ought," or:   "This is the Truth."  It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and we must draw our own conclusions.

And from Annie Dillard's "About Symbol": All art may be said to be symbolic in this sense:  it is a material mock-up of bright idea.  Any work of art symbolizes the process by which spirit generates matter, or materials generate idea.  Any work of art symbolizes juncture itself, the socking of eternity into time and energy into form.  

                                                                                                                                     Christian Houge

As I stressed last week, in poetry and prose figurative language is used to make imagery, patterns of represented objects, feelings, and ideas that appeal to our senses–of sight, sound, movement inward and outward, scent, taste, touch, and mind or thought.  Poets and prose writers seek language means to express everyday experience in uncommon, extraordinary ways and their work, at its best, invites us to see the world anew, in all its original wonder, or with the eyes of a child whose sight has not been tarnished by experience or age, nor dulled by habit and routine.  The Romantic poet William Wordworth and others who followed (like William Carlos Williams) sought an aesthetic rootedness in common experience and ordinary people and things. The modern movement known as Imagism in fact made it practice to strip poetry to clear concrete physical details that were to "speak for themselves," as if to free reality from ideology, dogma, doctrine, what have you.  The imagists were influenced by Asian poetry, haiku and tanka, which you probably remember from grade school.  Haiku is unrhymed and typically limited to three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and expressive of some aspect of Nature's seasonal show.  I reproduce some here below:

 Haiku   (lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, considered a closed form)

After spring sunset

Mist rises from the river

Spreading like a flood.

                                                Chora

A bare pecan tree

slips a pencil shadow down

a moonlit snow slope.

                                                Etheridge Knight

From the bough

floating down river,

insect song.

                                    Issa (1763-1827)

The bougainvillea

Beckons with its flowered stem

Of sunlit fuschia

Yellow butterfly

Fluttering over the roof

Against the blue sky

                        --Vincent Bellito, student

the dalai lama

sitting lotus on the floor

on my girlfriend’s shirt

                        --Matt Dee, student

Rain kicks down my door

Like quarterbacks settle scores

Tougher than ever before

                        --Michelle Rodriguez, student

Week 1

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.   –John Masefield (1878-1967), British poet

                                                           

Welcome to the Introduction to Literature (ENC1102) class here at the Art Institute.  As your instructor, I will post description of course material and assignments and discussion of key terms and selections presented in class (and additional material too, perhaps).  You should visit the site to stay abreast of material and apprised of any changes to assignments or selections to be covered.

Course Description:  The course is designed as a study of some of the various genres of literature–lyric and narrative poetry, fictional and non-fictional narratives, and dramatic works in performance.  The themes, forms and conventions of the various works we read will provide means of discussion, and written and oral performance.

Themes:  “Nature” is perhaps the primary thematic focus, and a wide field of play, for there is no escaping Nature, the ultimate source and end of all things human and non-human.  What is Nature actually, and what is not?  We look at nature through the lens of "Art," an entirely human construct, one which includes philosophy, religion, history, science and, importantly, language.  In so far as humans are nature’s creatures, however distinct, highly evolved, and increasingly removed from direct contact and awareness of the Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, and all the world's “creatures great and small,” we are yet defined and bound by our relationship to the natural world, the Cosmos, out of which we emerged, as did all things, some 13 billion years ago, when the Big Bang occurred, according to scientific calculations. 

       

We are born, grow to youth and maturity, age, and then die . . . and in this our lives reflect the age-old succession of the seasons and life elemental.  A continual process of creation and destruction, as the old gives way before the new, and what is past becomes an archive of artifacts, and stories, whereby we can trace our origins, and wonder and speculate about the mysteries.  In fact, As William Faulkner wrote, the past is never dead. The vital function that artists perform in creating art works, their evocations and explorations of the material and spiritual realms, provide an endless source of inspiration and wonder.  I am hoping you find it so, at any rate.

The course material invites you to consider representations of nature, and our relationship to the natural world, and to each other, family, society, culture.   Indeed, we may see nature as antagonist, ally, or morally neutral, even amoral, reflective of processes far beyond our ability to comprehend, in which savagery, destruction, suffering and death stand equally with kindness, creation, joy, and life.  Life comprises a great many conceptual opposites and their reconciliation is a life's work.  The poems and stories illustrate just such work. We think in categories of opposition: life/death; light/dark; good/evil; finite/infinite; material/immaterial/spiritual; mutable/immutable; temporal/eternal; transcendence/immanence; the One/the Many.  We have the given and what we make of it verbally or linguistically, conceptually.  Art manifests the human imagination and spirit in its attempt to recreate, name, and understand the world and the life lived in it.

We live in time, and in space, and the phases of life and nature provide rich subject matter for writers reflecting on the experience of living.  Nature, in fact, appears a mirror and a touchstone of the Self and human experience.  We are part of universal nature, and we bring our particular human nature to it, with our griefs, our joys, our forebodings, aspirations, and imaginings.  The Book of Nature informs us to the extent we take the time to read it and to acknowledge how it shapes us. A falling leaf, a sudden snowfall, the stars shining in the blackness of space–these speak to us.  Indeed, it is a story of "supernatural" dimensions in human imagination, and thus the religious and spiritual experience is necessarily a theme we will address. 

Eternal, Infinite, Immutable, Immortal, God, the One, and their polar opposites–the temporal, finite, mutable, mortal, human, the many–we shall see how these concepts are embodied, literally and symbolically or figuratively in various works.  We shall see how some artists have articulated the search for Truth, God, the impact of Beauty, the experience of the Sublime.  Literature gives us a window into the human experience that is not to be missed.  

As regards symbols and stories, myths and legends, whether of ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, India  the Judeo-Christian world, Native America, or the contemporary U.S., Joseph Campbell wrote that they refer “primarily to our inner selves” and not to “outer historical events” (Thou Art That 28), that they are psychological archetypes known to all mythologies.”  Beyond the necessities imposed by our animal nature, he writes, is “another order of living, which the animals do not know, that of awe before the mystery of being, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days” (29).

And so when we read “To see a World in a Grain of Sand,” by William Blake, we may sense the great mystery of the heavenly, infinite, eternal realms evoked by his focus on the familiar, small by comparison, microcosm of sand particle and wild flower. By metaphor and symbol we bridge in language inner and outer worlds, subject and object, the personal and the cosmic.

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In writing about literature, you will reproduce in summary or direct quotation lines of text to illustrate and to ground your descriptions and interpretations in the precise language used by the poet.  You will want to show readers how you have arrived at your conclusions about its construction and meaning.  Use quotation marks around the word-for-word phrasings and lines and a slash or virgule to separate lines of text that run no more than three successive lines. Blocks of text four or more lines in length should be indented or offset 10 spaces, without use of quotation marks.  

In "Snow Toward Evening," Melville Cane shows the surprise and delight of an unexpected turn in the weather.  The poem begins thus:

         

                      Suddenly the sky turned grey.

                      The day,

                      Which had been bitter and chill,

                      Grew soft and still.     (1-4)

                                         

The lines above, by virtue of end rhyme, appear as couplets of uneven length that come to a hushed, extended close with the words "soft and still."  The next line is a single word, "Quietly," from which the remainder of the poem hangs, as if suspended, like the "petals cool and white," the snow that falls "from some invisible blossoming tree" (lines 7, 6).   The airy dance of flakes is wonderful, a kind of epiphany, a manifestation of divine grace.

HOMEWORK:  For homework please read the poetry and prose selections in the packets distributed week one, beginning with the first entries and working forward.  Read also the introduction and "Nature" section of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature.  Take notes on key ideas and lines.  These will be useful when you start writing in response to the texts.

Note:  the following site, which I have permission to use from the author, contains much helpful background information on reading poetry, the formal elements of poetry, key themes of English Romanticism, readings (interpretative presentations/essays) of selections, etcetera. It appears as a link on the upper right pullout drawer of the blog page, A Guide to the Study of Literature.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/read_lyr.html

This first page may be updated to cover week one's lecture and discussion before we meet again for class week 2.  Until then  . . .