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  . . .