Unacknowledged Legislators of the World

Frankly, Franky, you Frighten me.

2009-12-18T14:34:00.003-06:00

George Levine seems to have hit the nail on the head when he said, “ It is so common place now, that everybody talks about Frankenstein, but no body reads it,” (Levine, 3)
Prior to our in depth study of it in class, I was one of those everybodies. When we first started reading the novel, I was astonished at how radically different it was than all the previous notions of “Frankenstein” I had known. Growing up, I recall watching Boris Karloff, and his rendition of the “wretched daemon,” as an illiterate oaf, fumbling about with cumbersome awkward movements, green skin, and bolts coming out of his neck. As a little girl, I was under the impression that this was where they charged his battery pack, and Franky wasn’t much different than the energizer bunny, except that in contemporary pop culture, he is lumped with the likes of Dracula, and the ghosties and ghoulies of Halloween.
Initially, I was taken aback at how much I disliked the novel. I was on a 13-hour train ride home for Thanksgiving, trapped alone with my thoughts, and Victor Frankenstein’s narrative. He was like one of those passengers that sits next to you, someone you recognize as slightly famous, someone you think you have heard of, can’t believe you are sitting next to. When you say in passing, “Hi, Mr. Frankenstein is it? I think I have heard of you, how are you doing? How is your work?” he proceeds to elaborate and embellish his entire life story of litany and woe to the point you are sorry you asked. “Geeze,” you think to yourself, “I thought he’d be an interesting guy, but damn!” I felt icky, and had to excuse myself from the conversation numerous times to go to the dining car and catch my breath, call my mum, and scream a little. I don’t think he noticed. His entire person rubbed me the wrong way. His story amplified all too many negative human characteristics; he oozed narcissism, self-centeredness, and pride to name a few. I wanted to like him, but just got more and more frustrated with his drama. It seemed that all of his troubles were of his own crafting, literally, and I wanted to sit him down with a Zen Buddhist manual, some Zoloft, and introduce him to pragmatism. “Here, study this!” Still I could not stop thinking about the novel, and talked about it almost persistently. As much as I wanted to forget the sensational over-dramatization of Victor’s retelling, its influence endured, and I realized sometimes you learn more from something, or someone you dislike, than something you fancy.
That this story—not necessarily the novel—has gained such notoriety, and maintained such a legacy in Western culture is a telling sign of its fascination and appeal. When you Google “Frankenstein”, you get sixteen million hits, sixteen MILLION! Five major motion pictures have been made that pertain, in some fashion, to the monster of Frankenstein, and four hundred editions have been printed since the books anonymous inception in 1818.
What puzzled me most with this, and what I was continually asking myself, was “What is this staying power of Frankenstein? What lessons does this little horror story render that speak so poignantly to the subsequent generations that have encountered it, and why did the book, for me, create such a greater and deeper reaction of horror and distaste than all the movies and preconceived notions of Frankenstein I held, combined.”
Watching Boris Karloff , and the idea of a monster coming to life in some wacked out scientific laboratory didn’t scare me much as a little kid; a little spooky, yes, interesting, entertaining, but it was just make believe, and could never really happen. What is the most horrific feature of Mary Shelley’s novel is not the monstrosity of the creature itself; his watery eyes, or yellowish skin, that barely stretched over the muscle—though the thought of seeing that is rather distasteful. No, more terrifying is the subtle psychological implications (and warnings) the book reveals so well. (1) The monster represents the abject, and is a metaphorical archetype of the creation and externalization of our internal fears; a scape-goating of our internal monsters. (2) The grandiose nature of these fears—and their consequences—are augmented when isolated from society, having to face the extremes of your own nature alone, and (3) in returning to Levine’s initial conjecture, these lessons are slightly amiss when we think we understand the admonitions of Shelley’s Frankenstein from the movie renditions, with out ever having read the novel.
According to Elizabeth Young in her book Black Frankenstein, the story has a long history of being used as a political metaphor. “Consider, for example,” she says, “critiques of U.S. foreign policy in the wake of 9/11. In ‘We Finally Got Our Frankenstein,’ filmmaker Michael Moore compares Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the Frankenstein monster.” “We had a virtual love fest with this Frankenstein whom we (in part) created,” Moore states in the film. Moore considers Hussein one of the many monsters created by the U.S. government, including Osama bin Laden. “[He is] our other Frankenstein,” he says. “We like playing Dr. Frankenstein. We create a lot of monsters—the Sha of Iran, Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile—and then we express ignorance or shock when they ran amok and massacred people.” (Young,1) Perhaps it is not ignorance, as Moore states, but more the horror of our own evil possibilities, and the fear of confronting them.
In a 2005 U.S. Gallup poll, teens between the ages of thirteen and fifteen were asked what they fear, and one of the most frequently cited fears was terrorism. (Gallup, 350) The terrorists, we are made to believe, represent those external monsters that insight fear and “terror” and must be put down. We are still creating monsters according to Moore and Young, and since fear,in psychology is often linked with behaviors of escape and avoidance, (cite) the United States' war on terror provides a prime example for the cultural archetype of this external scape-goating of responsibility that is present in Frankenstein. Give Saddam “weapons of mass destruction” to fight the Russians and assume no culpability when he decides to alter his course of attack. Victor's obsession of his creation, literally “love fest” with his work, is soon abandoned when he realizes when he has done. He falls ill for months, and abandons his laboratory, perhaps hoping his nightmare was really just a nightmare, nothing more.
Beyond the fear of terrorism, and even more acute in humans is the fear of pain Is it is easier to create a monster external to us on which to place blame and conquer, than the fear of the pain we will endure of confronting the monsters with in the self, or owning up to the responsibility of them. Though Victor Frankenstein was in part schizophrenic in dealing with responsibility of the creature, he at one point stated “I am blameless,” (cite) for the destruction wielded by his creation, thus he tried to hide. When our monsters, as horrifying as they may be, lay outside of us, it becomes easier to disown them as part of ourselves, and blame them for all our tribulations than to accept our own culpability. At certain points through out the novel Frankenstein seems to accept his responsibility for his creation. Specifically with the murder of his younger brother William, and later the innocent death of Justine, Victor expresses the deepest grief and remorse. The night before her execution, Elizabeth and Victor visit Justine in prison. As Elizabeth speaks to Justine, trying to console her, Victor is despondent, and stuck grappling with his own self-designed horrors, to which he says he finds no avail:
During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison-room,
where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me.
Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow
was to pass the dreary boundary between life and death, felt not as I did,
such deep and bitter agony. (114)
Fears, and perhaps our innate“evil” tendencies (to try and live beyond our human limitations), as illustrated by Victor Frankenstein are augmented by isolation from society and community. Not only does Victor create in secret, with no witness but his the pages of his journal, he also never admits to his folly to any of his closest friends or family members. He avoids admitting his guilt because he fears the pain it would create. Still in not admitting his guilt, he is eaten alive by the monster of lonely anguish it create inside of him. After destroying the pieces of his second creation he says, “I left the room, and locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own heart to never resume my labours; and then with trembling steps I sought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the gloom, and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible reveries” (191) It is when he is left alone to to his own devices that he is able to create such horror, with no external voice of reason saying “Victor, should you really be doing this? Are you prepared for the consequences of your actions?” With out the presence of community he is able to equivocate his responsibility, letting it fester internally. Victor was more able to hide his hideous monstrosity because in the novel, no one was there to witness it,thus never had to fully take responsibility for it. It is when he is alone that he fashioned these creatures, and alone he had to deal with the internal turmoil they presented to him.
(3)The American Library Association and the National Library of Medicine have designed a new traveling exhibition that explores the literary, scientific, and cultural legacy of Shelley's novel. The exhibition examines Shelley's world and the evolution of the monsters as a cultural myth. “One of our goals,” says ALA project coordinator Susan Brandehoff, “is to encourage people familiar with the popular image of Frankenstein to read Shelley's novel. We'd like people to understand the original book as totally different from what's been done with the plays and films.” What is non-existent in the 1931 film by James Whale, the film that propelled Frankenstein into a cultural icon, is the juxtaposition of the isolation versus the community that is so overt in the novel. The film opens with “Henry” Frakenstein and his hunchback assistant “Igor” collecting “materials from a graveyard. Elizabeth, a university professor, and “Victor”—representing Henry, are all present when the monster comes alive. Frakenstein actually states, “One creator, three very sane spectators.” The monster is in the film also lacks the intelligence, moral character, and emotional complexity of the almost human monster in Shelley’s horror story. The near humanness of the monster makes him that much more horrifying because he acts as the doppleganger to Victor himself, and not merely some implausible science fiction character . In the novel we can observe this contrast between Victor, and the isolation he creates around himself, and even with in his community. The film is an inversion of Shelley's novel; almost an entirely different story with a different premise. The lessons of responsibility and isolation are not present in the film the way they are in the book.
What we learn from the novel is much more terrifying. Levine states that, “while Frankenstein is a phenomenon of popular culture, it is so because it has tapped into the center of western feeling and imagination...Frankenstein has become a metaphor for our own cultural crisis... it has become a vital metaphor, particularly appropriate to a culture...neurotically obsessed with 'getting in touch' with its authentic self and frightened at what its discovering ” (Levine, 3) Perhaps we are frightened at the recognition that we can not help ourselves to continually create monsters, and that we fear the culpability of our actions. But that this novel is, has tapped so deeply in western feeling, and such an exquisite metaphor for our own cultural crisis, a crisis that may never have a resolution, is what has kept this novel at the epicenter of western imaginations.

I resolved with more respect for Mary Shelley's monstrosity that when I initially ventured into the story.

* * * * *

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 2nd ed. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2001. Print.

Levine, George. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1979. Print.

Young, Elizabeth. Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2008. Print.

Gallup, Alec. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2005 . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006. Print.

Phenomenology Climbing Mountains: A Critique of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” via Merleau-Ponty’s “The Primacy of Perception”

2009-12-18T14:16:00.001-06:00

Calvin Monley

English A427-Romanticism

Final Research Paper

12 / 16 / 09

Phenomenology Climbing Mountains: A Critique of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” via Merleau-Ponty’s “The Primacy of Perception”

Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” is one of two notable compositions the poet produced in the first half of 1816 (Reiman 26). Written in July of that year and inspired by Shelley’s view of Europe’s tallest mountain from a bridge spanning the River Arve in the valley of Chamonix in southeastern France, the poem is a rich debate and synthesis of much enlightenment epistemology. Shelley capitalizes on an inherent tension between “questions about the human mind, its powers, and the limits of knowledge” and “the sheer destructive power of the mountain” (Norton 763) that flows out his experience of viewing such an overwhelming sight. The poet resolves this tension by distilling the idea of a universal mind, a prime mover external and apart from the world, a power that goes unobserved, symbolized by the top of Mont Blanc. This mind is sublimely beyond human comprehension, though Shelley’s idea of poetic inspiration offers at least some people a way to tap into universal knowledge and to see as the mind sees. As Dr. Schwartz points out, there is a tension, too, in this resolution because the universal mind is decidedly disinterested in the world it has created, poetic genius is necessarily engaged in that world. However, this is acceptable because if Romantic poetry is about anything, it’s tension and contradiction.

The ideas “Mont Blanc” presents are interesting and philosophically import in so far as they are characteristically romantic. However, the role of this paper is not to defend them, but to critique them in the light of French phenomenology, specifically the philosophy of perception of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. We will begin by fleshing out the epistemology and poetic theory that “Mont Blanc” presents us with, comment on its philosophical context, and then go to town on it, armed with ideas presented in Merleau-Ponty’s “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences.” In doing so, we find that the existence of human consciousness is in no way dependant on any universal mind, and that the universal mind is in no way necessary for the mutually exclusive paths of “awful doubt” (77) or “faith so mild” (77) to present themselves. Poetic inspiration has its root not in participation in the universal mind, but in the mystery of being revealing itself through perception.

“Mont Blanc” is a poem of 144 pentameter lines, irregularly rhymed and divided into five separate sections which taken together form a cohesive argument (Reiman 26). In outlining this argument, we will rely heavily on the summary offered by Shelley scholar Donald Reiman. In part I,

Impressions of the “universe of things” (external nature, the world outside the human mind) flow through the passive universal mind, as a great river flows through a ravine; the stream is fed by two active forces, of which the “source of human thought”...is to the great “universe of things” as “a feeble brook “(7) is to a “vast river” (10) (Reiman 26).

Part II finds Shelley giving an apostrophe to the ravine of the River Arve, representing the universal mind (Reiman 27). The world flowing through it is symbolized by the River Arve (Reiman 27). The human mind, “my own separate phantasy” (36) and “Once legion of wild thoughts” (41) is characterized by self-consciousness, the human subject reflecting on himself (Reiman 27). This is the meaning of “[floating] above [the] darkness [of the Ravine]” (42) (Reiman 27). Self-consciousness is “feeble and limited” in its search for knowledge, so much so that it can only discover “the secrets of nature” through a “plunge back into the unconscious pool of the universal mind” (Reiman 27). This is where poetic inspiration is useful. Only in the “still cave of the witch Poesy” (44) can images “of all things that are” (46) be accessed (Reiman 27). Poetic inspiration makes recollected images return to “the breast/ from which they fled,” (47-8) making things real again (Norton 764). The universal mind is the source of poetic inspiration and poetic inspiration is the only way to access the universal mind. Hence, because not everyone has poetic genius – humanity needs poets to illuminate the depths of the universal mind so that ordinary people might understand their world and make sense of their lives.

True to the Kantian idea of a limit, Mont Blanc poses a problem to human understanding, but it is a problem poetic genius can transcend. Hence, Shelley is surprised at first by his ability to “see for the first time the meaning of Mont Blanc” (Reiman 27). He wonders for a while whether divine illumination or some mental capacity unlocked only in dreams has brought him thus far (Reiman 27). Mont Blanc is “still, snowy and serene” (61). It is uninhabited and unobserved. Though it was created by geological processes, it does not show it (Reiman 27) for as Shelley says, “all seems eternal now” (75). The mountain’s raw power to, through its glaciers, destroy the homes of both men and animals, uproot and crush trees, and shift massive amounts of land leaves human consciousness in awe and with only two options. Either we despair at nature’s indifference to human existence or we reconcile ourselves with it via the humility of “a faith so mild” (77), the celebrating of our own insignificance and mortality. The power has the capacity to overthrow tyranny (Reiman 27), but the voice of the power is only audible to those who have the capacity and patience to listen, like poets. The message that the power communicates is that every living creature “Within the daedal earth” (86) is subject to a cycle of birth and death, to creation and destruction. This includes man. The power itself dwells apart and “is not mortal and not subject to change” (Reiman 28). Thus,

God is not simply a very big man. [There] is an unbridgeable gulf between everything that man experiences with natural creation and the originating “Power” that exists beyond the limits of human cognition” (Reiman 28).

The cycle, and thus the power, is as much creative as destructive. The devastating glaciers “are also the source of the River Arve, which is “breath ad blood of distant lands” (124) (Reiman 28). Part V described the power itself, again symbolized by the summit of Mont Blanc (Reiman 28). This power creates much to be observed, but itself goes unobserved (Reiman 28). It is indifferent to human existence, above it and beyond it. However, the final three lines invert this and give primacy to the human imagination, especially the poetic imagination. As Reiman says, “The prismatic human imagination, however, has the ability to reflect and refract the cold blank whiteness of benighted snow into the beautiful colors of the rainbow, giving joy to men during their lives and a hope for survival beyond the grave” (Reiman 29).

Tracing the different sources of the epistemology of “Mont Blanc” and evaluating the originality of Shelley’s ideas would itself make an interesting paper. For our purposes it is enough to talk briefly about the broad philosophical context Shelley was writing in. Romanticism, as a philosophical and artistic movement, grows out of and in reaction to enlightenment philosophy, particularly philosophy of subjectivity. We are not talking of subjectivity in a moral sense, but in an epistemological one. To be a subject is to possess consciousness, awareness of self and of the external world. A pivotal moment in western philosophy is the “subjective turn” beginning with the publishing of Descartes’ Meditations in 1641. In the second meditation Descartes proclaims “cogito ergo sum” and turns philosophy away from inquiry into the objective, external world and towards what it means to be a thinking and knowing subject. Descartes asserts that to doubt the world and even one’s own existence is itself an affirmation of one’s own existence. Doubting is an act of thinking, and one cannot think unless one exists. From then on, philosophers become intensely interested in the conditions of knowing, of whether knowledge arises out of experience or pure thought, and whether anything can be known with certainty. Some such as Leibniz and Spinoza assert that knowledge comes from categories of pure reason independent of experience while skeptics like Hume believe that all we can know is sense experience. The most significant enlightenment figure writing on the conditions of subjectivity is, without doubt, Immanuel Kant. Kant wisely strides a middle ground between empiricism and rationalism, between realism and idealism. Kant posits that knowledge begins in sense experience, but is not reducible to it. The moment we experience anything though our senses, categories of a priori knowledge flow through our consciousness and give order to our sensations. Through this process a posteriori knowledge is constituted. Especially relevant to our analysis is the Kantian idea of a limit. A limit concept is a wall beyond which human knowledge cannot reach – the summit of Mont Blanc. It is a point at which knowledge (sensation ordered by understanding) fails. For instance, we cannot picture a universal mind because we know only our particular minds and cannot conceptualize independently of them. However, the idea of the sublime, of sublimity, is that which can step to the other side of a limit, can look back on itself inside the limit. This is the role Shelley would assign to poetic genius. As Professor Schwartz says, through the idea of “Mont Blanc” Shelley is able to summit Mont Blanc the mountain and give primacy to the poetic imagination.

Now, a bit about phenomenology. Phenomenology is a significant twentieth century philosophical movement developed in both reaction to and synthesis of the legacy of the “subjective turn” in western philosophy, the entire enlightenment tradition, and the modern social sciences. The movement develops out of the transcendental, post-Kantian philosophy of Edmund Husserl and goes in a wide variety of directions, but a few core ideas remain common to every philosopher properly called a phenomenologist. These are: the primacy of lived experience, eidetic essences, and intentionality and they will be explained as they become relevant to our criticism of “Mont Blanc.” French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “The Primacy of Perception” is a classic phenomenological work. It explains in fifteen pages his fundamental phenomenological conviction that perception is the “original modality of consciousness” (MP 12). Humans, before any abstract thought or reflection, simply perceive. Perception, like all phenomenological consciousness, is characterized by intentionality. I cannot grasp pure perception. I can only grasp an object which is external to my own consciousness. Conscious states are never empty. I dream a dream; I think a thought. Consciousness is always related to that which is not itself. Objects present themselves as wholes in my perception. I always grasp them from a limited perspective, but they are wholes. I can change position and see things from new perspective, but no amount of movement will exhaust an object. The unseen side of an object, too, is grasped by perception, grasped in its absence.

I grasp the unseen side [of a lamp] as present, and I do not affirm that the back of the lamp exists in the same way that I say the solution of a problem exists. The hidden side is present in its own way. It is my vicinity (MP 14).

Perception is my window to the external world. I perceive via my body in the world and the world itself appears to me as possibilities for action. Merleau-Ponty, like Kant, walks a middle line between idealism and realism, rationalism and empiricism. There is an external world, but our mind shapes it through structures of consciousness presenting the first level perception. Perception is not simple sensation, nor is it pure understanding. It is a seamless blend of sensation ordered by understanding. We exist in a world with others, and we access their subjectivity via our perceptions. In short:

By these words, “the primacy of perception” we mean that the experience of perception is our presence at the moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us; that perception is a nascent logos; that it teaches us, outside all dogmatism, the true conditions of objectivity itself (MP 25).

With all this in mind we are finally in a position to critique “Mont Blanc.” Note that we are not claiming the privilege Merleau-Ponty gives to perception to be complete truth. The paper is simply entertaining that privilege for the purposes of a lively and interesting critique of Shelley. Merleau-Ponty would, above all, take issue with the primacy “Mont Blanc” gives to the universal mind. For Merleau-Ponty, our individual consciousnesses are our primary knowledge of the “Everlasting universe of things” (1) that is the external world. We gain knowledge not by some mysterious participation in a greater intellect that our own, but simply through the structures of our own consciousness. Self-consciousness does indeed arise from an interaction “between mind and matter’ (Reiman 27), but that mind is our pre-reflective perception of the world. Our self-consciousness is as intentional to raw perception as are objects in the world. Sartre, another phenomenologist, terms this “the pre-reflexive cogito.” Merleau-Ponty would probably like the feeble brook” (7) to “vast river” analogy because perception, while it does access being, is never exhaustive and a single perception always opens wider doors. But he would not agree with the passivity Shelley assigns to the human mind. Perception, for Merleau-Ponty, is an intentional, active grasping of the external world. We perceive as living bodies and the perceived world always opens up possibilities for action in thought, word and deed.

For Merleau-Ponty, “Mont Blanc” the poem ideally would serve to celebrate the infinite and beautiful perspectives the mountain offers, perspectives ”pregnant with form” and meaning (MP12). The twin perspectives on man’s place in nature that the poem offers: “awful doubt” (77) or “faith so mild” (77) are not contradictory truth-values. Rather, in the process of perception by which meaning and truth reveal themselves, these are reconcilable contradictions.

There is a vain form of contradiction which consists in affirming two theses which exclude one another at the same time and under the same aspect. And then there are…contradictions present at the very heart of time and of all relationships…the justified contradictions of transcendental logic. The objection…would be admissible only if we could put a system of eternal truths in the place of the perceived world, freed from its contradictions (MP 19).

Indeed, Merleau-Ponty would probably celebrate the contradictions and tensions between irreconcilable ideas present in romantic literature, because these contradictions are unavoidable realities of the perceived world and the meaning it reveals. Merleau-Ponty might very well place poetic inspiration at the point where the perceiving subject searches for a way to totalize and unify perception and the meaning therein. Thus romantic poetry would be a poetic ideal because it is riddled with contradiction and process, just like any attempt to unify perceptions in the world. But all this is pretty speculative.

The final question in our analysis, and one this paper does not claim to answer, is what to do with the Kantian Sublime. Note that this paper is entitled “Phenomenology Climbing Mountains,” not “Phenomenology Summiting Mountains.” As Angela Leighton points out, “ it is the purpose and greatness of ‘Mont Blanc’ to dare the unimaginable…[to] quest for origins; for that Power which, through infinitely apart, might nonetheless be apprehended by the imagination” (Leighton 70). Shelley’s solution is a sublime transcendence of the limits of the particular mind into the depths of the universal mind. Merleau-Ponty would take issue with the universal mind, but what he would make of speculation on a deistic God, a power apart from and cause of the external world we perceive – this is an open question. Is the sublime necessary for apprehension of such of power, or is human cognition capable of it alone? All that can be said with certainty is that, whatever position Merleau-Ponty would assign the sublime and whether he would think it accessible only through poetic genius or not, it would all be apprehended through perception. To try to envision the top of Mont Blanc, to try to envision of universal mind or first mover, is to perceive them in our imaginations, is to make ourselves present before them. As Merleau-Ponty says:

I cannot even for an instant imagine an object in itself. As Berkeley said, if I attempt to imagine some place in the world which has never been seen, the very fact that I imagine it makes me present at that place (MP 16)

Works Cited

Leighton, Angela. Shelly and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems. Cambridge

UP: Cambridge, 1984.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences”.

James M. Edie translator.

Reiman, Donald H. Percy Bysshe Shelly. Updated ed. Twayne Publishers: Boston, 1990.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D The Romantic Period. Jack Stillinger and

Deidre Shauna Lynch ed. W.W. Norton and Co: New York, 2006. (Please note that this

source references supplemental material to “Mont Blanc”, namely footnotes.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Mont Blanc”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D

The Romantic Period. 8^th ed. W.W. Norton and Co: New York, 2006. (Note that this

source will be intertextually cited without author and by line number).

Romantic Literature: The Fault and the Unfulfilled

2009-12-18T14:13:00.001-06:00

Caitlin Smith

Professor Janelle Schwartz

Romantic Literature

Friday December 18, 2009

Final Essay

Romantic Literature: The Fault and the Unfulfilled

There are many themes throughout Romantic literature. From death and destruction to reminiscing and internalizing, both the authors of Romantic literature and the characters within Romantic literature create worlds which exude dark perspectives on reality. One of the most important Romantic themes is the fault in imagination. It is a character’s immeasurable passion of their imagination that drives the story line to destruction. Unlike other genres of literature, the Romanic imagination is so powerful that not only does it cause destruction, but it actually denies both the author and character(s) any release from the destruction. Therefore, because of the fault in imagination, Romantic literature remains Romantic because it will always be unfulfilled.

Seen within different types of Romantic texts from poetry to prose, there are constantly main characters that carry the intense imagination. The imagination of each character is seemingly harmless at the beginning; at times the imagination is actually a good thing. However, as the imagination grows throughout the story, readers see that the imagination is the driving factor that turns the plot into foreboding directions. While intentions maybe are good or even neutral, main characters are consumed by their desires and it soon reveals the destruction behind something that is supposed to be beautiful. This is the fault in the imagination – the boundlessness of the Romantic mind and therefore destruction caused by their passions.

In William Blake’s, The Book of Thel, the imagination is consuming to Thel, the main character. Thel represents the image of purity and beauty, much like what imagination is supposed to be. However, as she sits as an immortal in the Vales of Har she wonders what the meaning of life is (as well as her own life). Her imagination grows and calls for her to know what is beyond her home and her flock. As a result she meets the personified Lily and Cloud. Talking to each, they direct her to the Worm because she still is unsatisfied. Seeking out the Worm, Thel is better shown what life really means, but first sees the external ugliness of him. Thel describes the Worm as an object beneath her and all others, “Image of weakness, art thou but a Worm?/…I see thee lay helpless and naked, weeping,/ And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mother’s smiles” (Greenblatt 101). This observation probably causes Thel to wonder even more. After speaking to more attractive creatures like the Lily and the Cloud it is daunting to her why the ugly Worm would have the answer she is looking for and they did not. Through the Clay, the Worm describes his existence and his great purpose. Despite what Thel wants to hear or expects to hear, the Worm shows that his life’s work is more important than that of the Lily or the Cloud because he is death and life. The Worm shows that he is the destruction of all beings and the rejuvenation of all beings. When Thel is then presented with the gates of Hell it is described that, “…[Thel] saw the secrets of the land unknown./ She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots/ Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:/ A land of sorrows and of tears where never smile was seen” (Greenblatt 101). Here, Thel experiences the terror and reality of life which is death. Her response is to hurry back to the Vales of Har screaming.

Some theories suggests that she goes back to the Vales of Har unsatisfied and forever traumatized with the Worm’s presentation of the underworld. Other theories suggest that Thel is so traumatized that she actually forgets what happened. In this case, because she forgets what happens with the Worm, she is doomed to repeat the process over again. Especially because of her immortality, she is hurting herself for eternity. So, just as the Worm is a transitory symbol for life and death, Thel is caught in a transitory state with no hope of escape. Since could not stop her curiosity from questioning life, her fault in her imagination causes her destruction to herself. This cycle denies her closure or an ending to her story. This causes her to remain a Romantic character.

From Romanticism: A Critical Reader, edited by Duncan Wu, William Blake’s ideas on the sublime are related the passionate imagination, like that of his character Thel. According to Blake, the experience that a character feels when their imagination’s desires are at the point of satisfaction is apart of the sublimity in the discovery. “As the moment of astonishment, where the power of the sublime manifests itself, the mind becomes utterly open to the influx of what it beholds, and yet this flood of power into the mind produces no kinetic transfer of energy to the mind’s faculties, but rather the reverse - a suspension of internal motion, a total arrest. As first appearing entirely permeable, the mind instantly becomes impenetrable, like a container packed to the choking point” (Wu 19). This is why Romantic characters feel such desperation to fulfill their imagination’s needs to the point of disregarding all others. Their minds go into “suspension” and they are so enveloped in their wish fulfillment that they do not even realize what kind of destruction they have done to themselves.

Like Thel, another infamous Romantic character uses his imagination to go farther beyond the limits of where any man should. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Romantic novel that follows the plot of a man whose creativity and intelligence cannot be contained and therefore revealing his fault. Victor Frankenstein, like Thel, is a character that at first is presented with positive regard. Frankenstein is seen as intelligent, worldly, and ambitious. However, his imagination leads the story into very dark places because he goes so far as to play God. This fault, in creating the monster, leads him to depression, his family and friends to die, and his life to have an unintended meaning – a warning to other imaginers. Instead of gaining the respect and honor that he intended to have from his scientific discoveries, his life has become twisted and unnatural. The point that he crosses, the moment the monster is created, makes him aware of what his imagination really sought after. Since the monster is created as mirror image of Frankenstein, as man is the image of God, the monster also has access to these magnified feelings. After years of abandonment the monster and Frankenstein finally meet and the monster shows surprising insight, “Of what strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain…” (Shelley 146). Frankenstein, also knowing this, at several points even tells the captain of the ship that saves him, Robert Walton, why he should take Frankenstein’s story and implement it into his own life. This way Frankenstein may achieve some form of redemption by helping save Walton from his own imagination. Explaining this fault in the imagination, the introduction on Victor Frankenstein’s character by D.L. MacDonald and Kathleen Scherf says, “Instead of slowly endeavoring to life up the veil concealing the wonderful phenomena of living nature; full of ardent imaginations, they [the characters] have vainly and presumptuously attempted to tear it asunder” (Shelley 24). The imagination in the novel spends little time on when Frankenstein actually crossed the line, but rather, it shows the slow destruction and tearing resulting in that crossing. Even at the end, when Frankenstein finally dies and the monster has his last words, there is still no closure. The monster – the tangible essence of the fault in Frankenstein’s imagination – concludes that he will commit suicide. However, because readers never actually see the death of the monster, the fault in the imagination still lives when the novel concludes and readers are left with dissatisfaction. Unless the monster had killed himself within the confines of the text, Shelley’s characters, audience, and Shelley herself would have been given closure.

Finally in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, not only is one Romantic character is responsible for the fault or the unfulfillment, but two. Catherine and Heathcliff are doppelganger figures who can neither live with each other nor live without each other and so the novel beings at the end of their story with a continuum of what already happened to these two characters. Catherine is dead and Heathcliff is left lonely, heartbroken, and malicious. The reason the characters are at that point is because of their imagination towards each other. Their passions consumes them, causing them to make poor decisions which lead them to the point when the novel beings. Much like the style of Frankenstein, Bronte shows that the consequences of the fault in the imagination are much more important to Romantic literature than when the fault occurred.

Both Catherine and Heathcliff make bad decisions; Catherine chooses a life that Heathcliff cannot follow and Heathcliff decides to leave Wuthering Heights. This moment in the novel is where their breaking point was. Specifically Catherine’s imagination of Heathcilff convinces her that she is beyond loving him, but rather she the very essence of him. To Nelly, the maid, Catherine says, “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always in mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again…” (Bronte 82). This point in Catherine’s imagination, directed through Love, is the moment that the fault is brought to light. It is odd because Love’s essence is traditionally thought of as a connecting or a bringing together of souls. In Bronte’s Romantic idea of Love however, it is turned into the essence of consumption and eradication. As James Phillips, author of the article “The Two Faces of Love in Wuthering Heights”, “Wuthering Heights is an analysis of love. Almost clinically the novel sets apart what is intertwined and clarifies what is confused. The process of distillation engenders insupportable tensions and cruelties, as the contingent and empirical are played off against the necessary and – in Kantian terms – transcendental. Emily Bronte goes to extremities, not or order to indulge Romantic hyperbole and histrionics, but rather in order to exhibit the distinct components of love whose individual nature might otherwise go unrecognized” (Phillips 97). It is the very nature of Catherine and Heathcliff’s love that destroys all happiness of their lives and ultimately poisons the lives of their offspring within Wuthering Heights.

This fault of their imaginations not only causes such poison, but unrest for the characters. After Catherine’s death she is doomed to be an apparition, haunting the grounds of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff’s death is intangible at first, coming far before his physical body decays. He lives a life of torment and regret, and is further pushed into oblivion by Catherine’s haunting. Because while Catherine is dead, her coming back results in feeding off of each other’s brooding, never allowing it to die with her, but living within Heathcliff like a parasite. This passion is so powerful that even at the very end, though Heathcliff finally does physically die, the Romantic story is strong enough to live on; villager’s claim that they see both their ghosts, young Catherine and Hareton are about to marry and possibly enter into destruction as well, and the story of Catherine and Heathcliff is dwelled on by Lockwood, Nelly, and Joseph far after it should have ended. Because of these aspects, the story of Catherine and Heathcliff, like their ghosts, will never find rest or come to an end. This is why the fault in their imagination causes the unfulfilled Romantic Love story.

Through these stories like Catherine and Heathcliff, Frankenstein, and Thel, the pain and the cyclical patterns of Romantic literature are apparent. None of these characters find a settling point because they led themselves down a path where eventually all they find is hopelessness. As Thel is bounded by her immortality and trauma, Frankenstein is bounded by his monster, and Catherine and Heathcliff are bounded by their Love. This binding, caused by the fault of the imagination, carries them into endlessness and unfulfillment. As Frankenstein says, “The cup of life was poisoned for ever; and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me” (Shelly 206). I wonder if he knew that those two eyes were the fault and the unfulfillment.

Bibliography

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004.

Fulford, Tim, Debbie Lee, and Peter J. Kitson. Literature, Science and Exploration in

The Romantic Era, Bodies of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Greenblatt, Stephen, M.H. Abrams ed. [et al]. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D: The Romantic Period. New York: W.W. Norton and Company

Ltd., 2006.

Johnson, Mary Lynn and John E. Grant. Blake’s Poetry and Designs. New York: W.W.

Norton and Company, 2008.

Phillips, James. “The Two Faces of Love in Wuthering Heights.” Bronte Studies, Volume

32. (2007): 96-105. EBSCO Host. University of New South Wales., (accessed December 15, 2009). <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=10&hid=9&sid=d1e98bee-ea8b-40d3-965d-37f850975130%40sessionmgr13>

Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein; Or The Modern Prometheus, Second Edition. Ed. D.L.

MacDonald and Kathleen Scherf. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1999.

Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: A Critical Reader. Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1995.

The Influence of the French Revolution on Romantic Literature

2009-12-16T18:58:00.001-06:00

Romanticism neither has a set beginning or end, but it does have an inspiration point for many early romantic authors. Enlightenment ideals of human rights and liberty led to the French Revolution, which resulted in Counter-Enlightenment and opened the doors to a new literary movement known as Romanticism. The influence the French Revolution had on Romanticism is clear in many well-known Romantic authors texts including William Blake, William Wordsworth, Edmund Burke, and Percy Shelley. The high hopes going into the French Revolution and the devastation that occurred internalized in these creative minds resulting in a new literary genre inspired by disillusion and false hope.
The French Revolution began in 1789 and lasted until 1799. During this time there was radical political and social changes being made a fought for. The French Revolution marked a time in history when France went from having an absolute monarch to a republic to a constitutional monarchy and also ruled by two different empires. The French Revolution has many suspected causes but historians still debate whether or not there is a specific one. The main causes recognized by historians are the Ancien Regime, economic disparity, financial crisis, and social and political factors that people didn’t agree with.
The Ancien Regime also known as the Former or Old Regime was established in France during the Valois and Bourbon dynasties. Under this government system, known as “absolutism,” France was divided into three groups of people known as the Estates of the Realm. The First Estate was the Roman Catholic clergy, the Second Estate was the French nobility, and the Third Estate included the rest of the population without any recognition of national citizenship. France was united under the slogan “one king, one law, and one faith.” At the end of the 18th century the clergy made up about zero point five percent of the population and the members of nobility made up about one to one point five percent of the population leaving 98 percent of the population to feel inferior. Since the Parliament of Paris met at Versaille and was always kept private, this caused turmoil with the people who were left in the dark in relation to decisions of their country. When Parliament decided to increase taxes to pay off their debt from multiple wars fought by Louis XV, the already poor population became inspired to take control of what was going on in government.
Other then the unbalanced government system, widespread famine and malnutrition was taking place across France. Although famine spread to other parts of Europe, the French people were already upset with the way government was set up and were able to use this as motivation to demand or force a change in the government.
Inspired by the Enlightenment, ideals such as absolutism were resented, along with nobility and clergy having privileges and control over public life, but eagerness for freedom of religion, mainly by Protestants, liberty and republicanism for France.
After a long and devastating Revolution filled with highs and lows for the people France concluded to function as a constitutional monarchy where the king would share his power with an elected Legislative Assembly. They met for the first time in October of 1971 but a year later the new government system failed leaving France again in a state of confusion.
William Blake saw the results of the French Revolution in London, a city where he spent most of his life. Blake wrote “London” in 1792, which portrayed a society that was distraught over the status quo. The picture that is painted for the reader is one in which “all souls and bodies were trapped, exploited and infected.” (Korner) In the very beginning of the poem Blake says that the streets and the river Thames are “charter’d” showing the reader the early capitalistic nature of government, that the streets and river are privately owned. He describes the people as visibly weak and showing signs on sickness and misery. In the second verse Blake really pushes his point of the common suffering by all by repeating the word “every” five different times. He says:

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear:

Then he goes on to describe specific examples of what people were dealing with at the time. The chimney sweep, in lines 8-9, was a figure that was known for multiple reputations including one of crime and lawlessness. Because their work was seasonal they were often known to beg or commit crimes and the church saw them as a menace and were fearful of what they were capable of. Another interpretation is that Blake was making a stand against the Catholic Church who was known to take part in child labor, many of them being sweeps. The final verse shows the cycle that seems never ending of misery being passed down. The young harlot, like the young chimney sweep, is deprived of loving her baby because the child was conceived as a result of commerce not love and this misery will be put on her child and their child, etc,. Along with her misery being passed to the child, she passes on disease to the wealthier men who she works for, who then pass it on to their wives. The seemingly never-ending cycle of misery and emptiness that the people in the poem portray are a direct reflection on the failure of the French Revolution to inspire hope like it was supposed to.
Another famous romantic author who was inspired by the French Revolution was William Wordsworth. His fourteen part Prelude, a reflection on his life experiences, he spends time discussing his time in France and the effects of the Revolution. In 1790, one year after the storming of the Bastille, Wordsworth traveled to France to witness the spectacle of “human nature being born again.” He begins his time in France in Book Ninth Residence in France and takes the reader through his journey visiting the historical sights of the Revolution. Wordsworth says, “I saw the Revolutionary Power, Toss like a Ship at anchor, rocked by storms.” He recognizes the power of it, but also the fact that it wasn’t exactly what people had planned. Storms weren’t predicted but happen in any case, and although the revolution sparked change, storms leave a mess behind just as the revolution did. He later states in Book Tenth that the “truth is most painful to record!” Wordsworth demonstrates the false hope people had in Book Tenth in line 400:
“Such ghastly visions had I of despair,
And tyranny, and implements of death,
And innocent victims sinking under fear,
And momentary hope, and worn-out prayer,
Each in his separate cell, or penned in crowds
For sacrifice, and struggling with forced mirth
And dungeons where the dust
Was laid with tears.”
In this section Wordsworth gives life to the people in history books, he shows the reader what they were feeling by such vivid descriptions and thorough passion. The time Wordsworth spent in France contributed immensely to his most acclaimed work of his life-time. Not only does Wordsworth recap what he experienced in France at such an interesting time of history but he uses his creative mind to bring to life the people who lived through this period of turmoil and change.
Percy Bysshe Shelley also made his contribution to literature in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Shelley’s England in 1819 portrays the kind of society that came out of the failure of the French Revolution. He talks about the kings saying they are
“Rulers who neither see nor feel now know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.”
Shelley shows the rulers being disconnected from their people, not caring about them but sucking the life and worth out of them until there isn’t anything left. The people are left with nothing, barely the land they walk on while the rulers are blinded by their wealth and don’t feel any repercussions from their selfish behavior.
Many more of the romantic authors were inspired by the events of the French Revolution. The devastation that was felt when the revolution didn’t equate to immediate improvement for the average person was deeply internalized by these authors because they couldn’t do anything about it physically. With these ideas of revolution but no means to attain it, they were able to produce passionate works of art through literature and express the feelings that other people couldn’t get across.

Works Cited

Stillinger, Jack, Lunch, Deidre Shauna,
Greenblatt, Stephen, Abrams, M.H., eds.
The Norton Anthology, English Literature: The Eight Edition, Volume D: The Romantic Period

Korner, Simon. “William Blake’s London.” http://21stcenturysocialism.com. January 8th 2008.

Woods, Alan. “British Poets and The French Revolution. Part Two: Wordsworth and Coleridge The Death of an Ideal.” www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature. July 2003

Neely, Sylvia. A Concise History of the French Revolution. Rowman & LittleFieldPublishers, Inc. 2008. Print.

2009-12-16T17:22:00.003-06:00

Danny Garrett

December 15, 2009

Dr. Schwartz

Romantic Cultures Research Project

The Beauty of Blakean Contraries in “The Little Black Boy”:

Why the Romantic Blake Opposed Slavery?

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”- William Blake

Whenever a well-seasoned Romantic student hears “William Blake” and “slavery” paired together, the mind automatically envisions Blake’s provocative and gruesome slave-execution engravings published in John Stedman’s Narrative (1796). The particular image of a young Samboe female leaves an indelible mark: against her precious will, both of her wrists are tightly tied to a tree; she would be fully naked were it not for a thin piece of cloth covering her genitalia; her facial expression is of pure fear; and lacerations cover her dark flesh from head to ankle. This engraving, along with 15 others (some of which were no less horrifying), awoke the British public out of a morally degraded slumber, a state-of-mind ignorant to the British slave trade’s horrors.

The slave trade of Great Britain, and those of other European countries, transformed the indigenous African and surpassed the Muslim trades. Exporting roughly “2.5 million out of 6.13 million slaves in 1701-1800,” in response to the expanding demand of British plantations and sugar colonies, Britain became the largest national trade (ORO). At the time, economic arguments in support of the system reigned supreme, attesting to the investment capital the trade brought, which contributed to Britain’s industrial revolution. Such arguments did not go unnoticed by abolitionists from William Wilberforce in Parliament to Thomas Clarkson in the pulpit. Charged with fervor, their anti-slavery arguments were intellectually influenced by religious revivalism and the secular Enlightenment. Religious thinkers opposed slavery based on religious egalitarianism; whereas, Enlightenment thinkers opposed slavery based on a basic Lockean concept that society was composed of distinct, self-governing individuals, where society’s primary function was to provide the optimum conditions for the individual pursuit of enlightened self-interests. This gave birth to concepts of freedom and equality. The abolitionist arguments eventually won out. So, by 1807 the British Parliament (through the Slave Trade Act) prohibited British vessels from participating in the trading of humans. And in 1833 (through the Slavery Abolition Act) slavery in all British territory was ended. But where do the Romantics, especially Blake, fit in this history? What is the relationship between Britain’s greatest artists and the epic violence of slavery, described so astutely by Coleridge in 1808 as “the wildest physical sufferings” combined with “the most atrocious moral depravity?” Or by Shelley as “the deepest stain upon civilized man.” What did raped African women; restrained and tortured male and female slaves by iron shackles, handcuffs, thumbscrews with torture keys, three-feet long muzzles, and collars; and lynched or burned-alive Africans—ultimately humans being treated as property and livestock—have anything to do with a Romantic writer’s peaceful reflection in a grove or sublime reactions to Mont Blanc or magical lands like Xandu?

The enslavement of Africans struck the dynamic, hopeful, and radical Romantic poets of England as the most blatant example of human oppression. Though their poetry and prose is blatantly anti-slavery in message—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley—did not take quick political action. These writers, given the failed French Revolution, viewed political solutions as inevitable failures, and political poetry as philosophically vacuous, for it is unable to uncover deeper truths about the human condition. Also, a majority of English radicals likely viewed the oppression of the English working class and the hellish life of the laboring masses during the Industrial Revolution as more important. However, the Romantics were still vocal. In substance, they did not simply advocate Enlightenment ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Rather, and quintessentially Romantic, the writers sought for a society of unfettered imaginative possibility. Slavery is diametrically opposed to the liberated imagination. For Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, as well as Byron, Shelley, and Keats, slavery was not only morally wrong and politically despotic but also psychologically destructive to the enslaver and to the enslaved. According to Romantic scholar Debbie Lee, the Romantic imagination is not “self-centered; it produces a decentralized self with extremely weak ego boundaries, which involves a denunciation of the self in order to understand, with compassion, nature” (Lee 3). In other words, imagination is empathy. Blake’s notion of “self-annihilation” and Keat’s claim that the poet has no “self” espouses this idea. This empathetic theory of imagination produces a powerful humanitarian sentiment and focus on the Foucaultian other, specifically the physical and mental suffering of African slaves. William Blake’s imagination does precisely this.

Contraries or contradictions are usually frowned upon. In logic, they are an incompatibility between two or more propositions. Contraries plague the thoughtful metaphysician and the pensive epistemologist in their cramped university offices. But in Blake’s “Little Black Boy,” published in the Songs of Innocence (1789), contraries deserve a poetic royal seat from ideas and ideology, propaganda and poetry, white and black, civilization and savagery, good and evil, enlightenment and darkness, to Christian and heathen. For Blake, Man is a source of contraries, institutionalized religion, socially imposed forces, and alterable perception—a sense-imprisoned being that only sees imitations, never originals. This description includes all of humanity, even the well-to-do, upper-class English parliamentarian. If someone of this privileged status has such a atrocious, innate nature, what exactly is the African slave, which on top of this innate, negative nature is physically and mentally tortured and colonized? Recent studies have not done justice to the anti-slavery ideological context in “The Little Black Boy,” perhaps because this poem in appearance seems to reflect the racist assumptions underlying much of anti-slavery writing during Blake’s time. In actuality, Blake addresses the racist attitudes informing most anti-slavery literature of the period by opposing it with subtle abolitionist messages in the poem.

Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” is a perfect compass to guide one through the philosophical underpinnings and textual dubiousness of “The Little Black Boy,” as both poems possess thoroughly ironic vocabulary and innate trickery. In Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” children possess ever-expanding energy, imagination, unfettered innocence, and a malleable mind. Not yet a sense-imprisoned being, the child is the main image for Blake, an essential role model for Man. In the late eighteenth century, The Religious Tract Society and its offshoot, the British and Foreign Bible Society, distributed small religious treatises in foreign countries as well as throughout British society. In 1814, they published a series of children’s books to indoctrinate the poor British children into believing basic religious principles and the perfection of the present societal order for the English working class and non-white people. The children of Blake’s time were the “subject of an internal colonization program unprecedented in British history, designed to contain the threat of an educated reading public through programs of mass education” (Richardson 239). It was also a popular tract industry aimed at silencing intellectual radicals. As an added discomfort, children were viewed as primitive and uncivilized humans that needed to be properly trained and educated if they were to fit into the industrialized society. For Blake, this was mental colonization of the child’s mind. This explains why Blake situates “The Little Black Boy” in the tradition of children’s religious poetry, representative of such writers as Watts, Smart, Wesley, and Barbauld, using didactic characters and mass distribution for publication.

The anti-slavery literature of Blake’s time reached its peak, in terms of publication, in 1788. It heavily relied on the constant description of Africa and Africans as culturally “benighted,” savage, uncivilized or “untutored,” unenlightened, and dark. The image of Africa as the “dark” continent metonymically extended the blackness of African skin to African culture. In Anne Yearsley’s “Inhumanity of the Slave Trade,” an enslaved African father is described as “horrid,” “dark,” and “unenlightened” (qtd. in Richardson 247). In Leigh Richmond’s “The Negro Servant,” a children’s book distributed by the Religious Tract Society, the African servant changes from “the once dark, perverse, and ignorant heathen” to a “now convinced, enlightened, humble and believing Christian (qtd. in Richardson 247). Exemplifying the “simplicity and sincerity of real Christianity, he testifies: “God let me be made slave by white men to do me good… He take me from the land of darkness, and bring me to the land of light” (qtd. in Richardson 247). European condescension plagues these works.

The first stanza of “The Little Black Boy” should shock the reader, for it seems to confirm the racist stereotypes propagated by contemporary anti-slavery and slavery literature, describing Africans as born in a savage “southern wild,” with a negative, evil black skin color “bereaved of light” opposed to an angelic, innocent white skin pigment, which happens to be the color of souls. The African child’s own speech confirms the Eurocentric attitude pervading anti-slavery discourse of Blake’s time. Cleverly, Blake is setting up the opposing forces between racism and non-racism, as he does with Heaven and Hell in the “Marriage” to make a larger point. It is only in the second stanza where one begins to sense Blake’s true ideas on Africans. During Blake’s period, the phrase “untutored savage” held currency in the poetic world to describe Africans, so Blake’s emphasis on the African mother’s teaching “underneath a tree” is extremely significant, dispelling European myths about Africans. Even David Hume believed that Africans were untaught and uncivilized, according to his infamous remark: “no ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences” (qtd. in Baum 6). The great empiricist must have never experienced Hausa’s intricately designed mosques and palaces, Igbo masks and sculptures, Mbari architecture, Atilogwn dance troops, or Nri Kingdom bronze castings. Hume’s views were not uncommon among Europeans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Africans were frequently portrayed as a people without a civilization, language, law, tradition, and rationality; they were culturally backwards and mentally defective.

In stanzas three through five, the mother’s religious ideas seem to reflect a natural theism, juxtaposing a single God with the “sun,” “flowers,” “trees,” “clouds,” and “groves.” Teaching that God lives in the “rising sun,” though, may link to pagan sun worship, a conventional attribute of the “noble savage.” Once again, Blake may be experimenting with contraries. In this line, Blake could be surreptitiously comparing Christianity to Mithraism, a Persian sun-god religion. Assuming this is so, would not that fact make the Europeans “savages” in their attempt to Christianize the Africans? Still running with the “sun” as God and His Kingdom metaphor, the mother’s description of Africans having “black bodies” and “sunburnt faces” implies that black people are closer to God, for these bodily characteristics develop when exposed to the sun’s rays. To protect Africans from this divine, excessive light, black skin acts as a “shady grove.” Though the child quotes his mother’s African teaching, he still has Christianity ingrained in his mind, which he probably learned from missionaries, slave masters, plantation mission schools, or in England by way of previous enslavement in the West Indies. Displaced from the “southern wild” to a region where he is exposed to European racist ideas, the black child fortunately retains his mother’s African teaching--which did not present blackness as a negation or “bereaved of light” but as a “shady grove.”

In typical Blake fashion, “The Little Black Boy” is structured as a Hegelian dialectic, composed of a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis: the thesis is the child’s iteration of the eighteenth-century racist stereotypes alive in Europe in the first stanza; the antithesis is the mother’s African teaching, as quoted by the child; and the synthesis is the child’s ability to create a culturally, autonomous mixture of African and Christian teachings without the colonialist chains in the last two stanzas. The poem’s two concluding stanzas move beyond the missionary propaganda in the first stanza and the mother’s African teaching in the middle stanzas by collapsing blackness and whiteness together as twin attributes of “cloud,” which annihilates the hierarchical relation of the black and white child. As is apparent, these notions were not received through Sunday school or plantation missionary efforts. In typical Blake fashion, the whole picture is inverted, similar to when Hell writes Proverbs in the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” The African child is now an instructor and authority to the English child: “And that I say to little English boy.” At this point, the African boy synthesizes pro-slavery colonialist ideology and his mother’s African teachings to produce a self-affirming discourse or autonomous perspective of his own. In this synthesis, the imposed hegemonic Christian beliefs are emptied of its content, and supplanted by the African religious doctrine taught by his mother. As a result, the African boy is no longer inferior to the English boy. The black boy’s protective, brotherly shading of the English boy from the heat implies that the English boy’s pale skin is not used to the divine heat from “God’s love,” as a consequence of the English’s cruel treatment to Africans. However, the synthesis becomes a message of transcendental, spiritual freedom where humanity is united “when I from black cloud, and he from white cloud are free." In this transcendent synthesis, white and black skin are equally opaque since the physical human body does not exist, and ideology, whether pro-slavery or anti-slavery, does not exist since the physical mind does not exist.

Given this analysis, it is no secret that Blake is harshly criticizing the hypocrisy of the anti-slavery movement with its colonialist language and pathetic religious tracts in this poem. In “The Little Black Boy” the African child is treated as an equal human being. Blake’s job, as the poetic genius, in the “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” was to bring Man out of existential confusion and reveal what is hidden beneath through intellectual reform. He did so by playing with contraries. Blake does the same thing in “The Little Black Boy.” Blake’s Romantic imagination, which is the essence of empathy, allowed him to see past the frivolous pro-slavery arguments during his time, and see human oppression at its worst. Not wearing mind-forg’d manacles, he pushed for the end of slavery once and for all.

Works Cited

Baum, Joan. Mind-Forg’d Manacles: Slavery and the English Romantic Poets.

Connecticut: Archon Book, 1994.

Lee, Debbie. Slavery and the Romantic Imagination. Pennsylvania: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Oxford Reference Online. British Slave-trade. 12 Jan. 2008 <http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.loyno.edu/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t43.e31 81&srn=2&ssid=887100897#FIRSTHIT>.

Richardson, Alan. “Colonialism, Race, and Lyric Irony.” Literary Reference Center

(2002). <http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.loyno.edu/lrc/detail?vid=5&hid=107&sid=7d35a732-c385-4b14-b4ce 2557e15d4c9e%40sessionmgr113&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#AN9610220150-10>.

Alpine Intervention:

2009-12-16T15:47:00.002-06:00

The Effects of the Swiss Clime on the Works of Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley

The assumption that Romantic poetry and prose presents nature and the natural world in an ornamental, delicate manner is both naive and misinformed. The works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley disprove any such supposition with vivid portrayals of nature which work to displace the relation of nature and man as one of object and observer. Instead, nature appears in their works Mont Blanc, Manfred, and Frankenstein as an active subject; a force by which mankind can be irreversibly affected and a presence from which humankind should learn to reevaluate themselves. A certain lack of control of the natural world permeates these works and as the pieces' prime human movers struggle against such an idea, man is presented in all his follies. Yet such revelations are meant to be transformative and are integral to a revolution in one’s own perception. Nature gives man a sort of ultimatum: stop fighting the cycle and find solace in the natural world, a place which will foster sustainable human progress, or continue on a destructive path which leads to eventual digression.

The aforementioned poets, Lord Byron and the Shelley’s, are well-known for their communicative literary circle and their summer spent on Lake Geneva in 1816, from which great works were spawned. Byron’s residence, Villa Diodati became an intellectual haven, protected from the violently shifting weather that the Alpine surroundings seemed to be casting down upon them. Their brief travels in and around the mountain region exposed to them a captivatingly concentrated diversity of ecosystems and natural landforms which they had never before conceived. For their unpolluted imaginations, a “youth [that] has been past as theirs in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests in the visible world…the freshness of a diviner nature,” a summer like the one at Villa Diodati was exactly the poetic stimulation these writers needed (P. Shelley iv). The most revealing factual record from that summer, History of a Six Weeks Tour, which illuminates the immediate sentiments felt by Mary and Percy Shelley upon exploring the Swiss Alpine region. In the history’s main text, Mary Shelley describes the landscape:

Range after range of black mountains are seen extending one before the other, and far behind all, towering above every feature of the scene, the snowy Alps. They were an hundred miles distant, but reach so high in the heavens, that they look like those accumulated clouds of dazzling white that arrange themselves on the horizon during summer. Their immensity staggers the imagination, and so far surpasses all conception, that it requires an effort of the understanding to believe that they indeed form a part of the earth (94).

The magnitude of the setting, reflected in the gravity of Mary Shelley’s language indicates the momentous effect the setting was having upon them. The Alpine setting acquainted the writers with a new sort of relationship between man and his surroundings that was far from what they had known in England. Suddenly they found themselves in a landscape where man had to mold to the confines set by nature, where civilization had to adapt to life in the rich enclaves of narrow valleys lay between stark rocky inclines, and where the weather could change in an instant, possibly heaving avalanches of rocky snow down upon human populations. Their descriptions of the villages they stayed in are often curt while their depictions of the natural setting are lengthy and verbose, confirming that the impersonal, commanding presence of the natural setting had all but completely seized their attention.

What is not commonly known about that “wet ungenial summer” of 1816, which was spent mostly indoors, is that the inclement weather was caused by the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia, which discharged such quantities of dust into the stratosphere that the entire world noted darker skies and noticeably cooler temperatures for a three year span (Phillips 61). The group would have been aware of the catastrophic natural phenomenon, and the combination of the weather and the looming mountain clime must have made them feel rather insignificant, while the natural environment seemed to be growing all the more insurmountable.

Such reflections become significant when placed alongside the literary works that were inspired by the Swiss mountain region, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Mont Blanc being the most immediate reference to the sojourn on Lake Geneva. Shelley’s immediate veneration of the colossal mountain quickly spirals into a complex interweaving of perceptions as the poet stands upon a bridge over the river Arve which seems to flow “through the ravine as influences from the material world flow through the mind” (Dean 1). The query then becomes who is affecting whom; is the natural scene imposing on the poet’s consciousness, or is the poet projecting his perceptions onto the natural scene which reflect them back to him? Lines from the poem would indicate that the natural setting is not simply an inactive mirror for the human mind, but itself an essential participant whose actions go mostly unnoticed. References to “The secret strength of things/ which governs thought” and the wilderness’s “mysterious tongue/ which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild” seem to point toward the underlying goings-on in nature which are always ready to teach man its wisdom, he must only dip into a universal natural consciousness to access it (ll. 76-77, 139-140).

Shelley’s recapitulation of viewing Mont Blanc in the History of a Six Weeks Tour indicates how momentous the occasion was for him:

I never knew—I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness…and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untamable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above -- all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest” (Shelley 152).

Importantly, he finishes by naming nature as the poet, right after he implies that it was as if the observer himself was creating the impressions that the scene before him creates, countering his own statement. It is evident then, that when the lines of the poem that read “The everlasting universe of things/…where from secret springs/ the source of human thought its tribute brings,” that inevitably, nature is working to impress upon man certain knowledge which is manifested in the beauty and immensity of its worldly presence (ll. 1, 4-5). By the fourth stanza, the poet is realizing, through the image of gray clouds covering the mountain’s summit, that he may never be able uncover the beginning of the mountain, reaffirming its eternality, while the artificial world created by man can be easily wiped away with the mountain’s icy glaciers. He also states in History of a Six Weeks Tour that “One would think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through his stony veins (Shelley 151). The image then reaffirms, that “the natural and the necessary, figured as the gross and determinate body, win out over the artificial and human,” that nature will always have something to imbue upon man, he simply must be consciously available to receive it (Morton, 211).

Lord Byron’s Manfred more complexly addresses the natural, in the form of a narrative poem showing man’s attempts to overcome that which is larger than him, but it inevitably becomes a narrative of man’s fall. Manfred’s declining mental state seems derived from the ever-escalating distance he places between the natural and himself in a pursuit of the unworldly, which he believes will expose to him the secrets of existence. The ominous feel of the natural setting, the dizzying beauty of jagged Alpine peeks, removes Manfred just far enough from a world with which most readers are familiar to become the realm of the Gothic and the supernatural. Evil in the poems is evidenced as not being derived from the natural and perhaps not even the supernatural, because it only exists when it is conjured by Manfred; he manifests the evil and it seems to come from within him, negatively affecting the surrounding natural world (Twitchell 602). As Manfred finds no solace in both the material world of man and the realm of the supernatural, he often withdraws into nature, wishing that he could end his life in the same way all other natural things are allowed. But Manfred has transcended his natural existence and now cannot die a natural death; even a mountain prevents him from leaping onto its jagged crags so he can “stain not our pure vales with thy guilty blood” (I.ii.ll. 111).

The first spirits he encounters are simply references to the natural forces, air, mountain, ocean, earth, wind, and night, which “have no forms, beyond the elements” and they emphasize that they are “immortal, and do not forget,” yet feebly, they seem to be at Manfred’s will when he calls upon them (I.i.ll. 182, 149). We discover that this is not quite true when he asks them to perform what is beyond their natural conduct; he simply cannot be obliged and becomes enraged that nature would imply that natural entities should not and cannot overstep their limitations, especially since that is all he is attempting to do for the entire poem. In a description of the poet, written by William Hazlitt around the time of the poet’s death, Lord Byron appears to “scorn all things, even himself. Nature must come to him to sit for her picture—he does not go to her” (235). This also seems to be the case with the character of Manfred and because of this, nature denies him his death wish, proving that the natural world is more powerful than Manfred, even in its seeming powerlessness. In a letter to John Murray discussing his poem, Byron had explained that in Manfred, “almost all the persons—but two or three—are spirits of the earth and air, or the water…who appear to him [Manfred] and are of no use” (Byron). The elemental spirits may simply “productive and operative executors of nature,” but it is this realization by man, his understanding of how they operate as a part of the unity of all life, that will give him access to their invaluable wisdom (Twitchell 606).

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein becomes a culmination of many of these concepts, finally materializing the provocative fireside discourses at Villa Diodati into a novel of man’s betrayal of a world that is not his to own. It is important that the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation takes place far from the industrialized society, in “a rural world dominated by scenes of sublime natural beauty” and valleys where “high snowy mountains were immediate boundaries” (Phillips 64, Shelley 73). Taking the climate at the time of the novel’s inspiration, it would seem as if the natural world was intentionally forcing the writers indoors, prompting them to reflect upon the doom and gloom around them, and forcing the horrible visions of Mary Shelley out into its quasi-human form. In this wild locale, far from the sanity of civilization, amongst the fury of turbulent unpredictable climes, “a flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me [Victor]” exposing to the creator, and mankind alike, the horrors of which only man is capable of creating (Shelley 76).

In his scientific studies, Victor found the same kind of power and control over the natural that Manfred found in supernatural magic: “new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows” (M. Shelley 64). By harnessing the ultimate power, the unnamed “spark of being,” Victor finally violates the natural order in which man is not the creator of his own kind. As a synthesis of the parts of once naturally existing elements, a patchwork replica of man made from the dead components of men, the monster becomes the ultimate enemy of the species he was born to imitate. From his inception, the monster has no place in humanity and he must retreat into the lifeless glaciers of the Alps knowing that by moving “perpetually mountainwards and northwards, towards the cold barren places where human survival, indeed life itself, is threatened, and ultimately extinguished,” that “the caves of ice” will be the only locale “which man does not grudge” (Phillips 66, M. Shelley 146).

Interestingly, the monster is neither human nor natural, yet, his composition of entirely natural human parts is somehow hideously unacceptable, and so he grows to be a supernatural manifestation of nature’s response to Victor’s wrongdoings. The monster becomes part of the natural setting while Victor is punished by it; for the first time, the monster has found a way to directly harm his maker. Provocations from the monster to Victor such as: “Follow me; I seek the everlasting ice of the North, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive” show that the monster is using the natural world to perform his vengeance (M. Shelley 248). Ultimately, an emphasis is placed on the creation’s indifference toward humanity; he murdered the innocent apathetically and he will do the same to his master, much like nature heaves destruction upon humanity uncaringly. The environments in which Victor must pursue the monster become increasingly hostile, and they finally enter the artic circle with the chase culminating on the remotest patches of ice that break off and float aimlessly out into the freezing Arctic Sea.

In a letter in the History of a Six Weeks Tour, Percy Shelley writes, “In these regions every thing changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks and bursts for ever: some undulations sink while others rise; it is never the same” (154). This image greatly reflects the ideology that went into the literary works that came out of that summer sojourn that these three young British writers took into a natural environment that was very foreign to them. The poets would go on to write many more ecologically inspired pieces about the ever changing cyclicality of the natural world and man’s ignorantly linear way of thinking; a resistance to the natural order of things which results in catastrophe. Percy Shelley once wrote, “Do we not see that the laws of nature perpetually act by disorganization and reproduction, each alternately becoming cause and effect?” The characters of Manfred and Victor Frankenstein purposefully did not, and they act as examples against which the natural retaliates against the narcissist ignorance of one of its own species. The Alpine setting which inspired these stories certainly struck fear and awe into the consciousness of the writers, and made for a surreal natural environment in which nature actually has a strong enough presence to fight back. Perhaps the most romantic of these ideas comes about in the ultimate message of these stories: human society and culture at large are negations of the natural, but the solution is not a return to nature, but an entire reconstruction of society as something which is part of a larger natural entity and an acceptance of man’s slighter place on the hierarchy of a very grand scale.

WORKS CITED

Byron, Lord, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. "Manfed, Mont Blanc." The Norton Anthology of English 

    Literature: The Romantic Period. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. NYC: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

    2006. 636-668, 762-766.

Dean, Dennis R. "Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc." Rev. of Mont Blanc. Masterplots II: Poetry

    (2002): n. pag. Library Reference Center. Web. 13 Dec. 2009.

Hazlitt, William. "Lord Byron." Lectures on English Poets and the Spirit of the Age. London: JM Dent

    and Son, Ltd, 1928. 235-244.

Morton, Timothy. Shelley and the Revolution in Taste : The Body and the Natural World. Cambridge:

    Cambridge University Press, 1994. NetLibrary. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

    .

Phillips, Bill. "Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's 'Wet Ungenial Summer.'" Atlantis 26.2 (2006):

    50-68.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Oxford, Uk: University of Oxford Press,

    Inc., 1998.

Shelley, Mary, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. History of a Six Week's Tour. London: T. Hookham, Jun.,

    n.d. GoogleBooks. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

Twitchell, James. "The Supernatural Structure of Byron's Manfred." Studies in English Literature

    15.4 (1975): 601-614.

The Human Monster

2009-12-16T15:42:00.002-06:00

Mary Shelley created a creature through her novel, one that incorporated human and inhuman characteristics into her characters. Victor Frankenstein created a creature made up from the body parts of human beings, but then left it as it awoke and was “born.” The creature is and has been labeled many things, the strongest of which tends to be a monster, noted through Victor Frankenstein’s own perspective of the creature. The perspective of the creature itself tends to be mixed, since it notes that it simply wants to be accepted by Victor and by society, and then eventually wishes for more destructive goals and succeeds in them against Victor. This brings the question to mind, is the creature a human or a monster? Quite simply, the creature should be considered as having qualities from both sides, and as such is neither of the two but a third category instead.

The word monster comes from the Latin word monstrum, which then comes from the root word monere, which means to warn. There are then several modern-day definitions for the word monster, one of which is “a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness, deformity, wickedness or cruelty.” Another definition labels monster as a “threatening force” (Webster). Generally it is a creature that stands out from the norm, and most times it stands out in a way that frightens those around them. This shows that the term is subjective. For example, a mouse may think of a cat as a monster, while we see the cat as a pet and the mouse as the monster or vermin. The definition of the word human state “of, relating to, or characteristics of human.” The word human refers to the species Homo Sapien, our species, and generally then refers to the qualities of being human instead of the differences between this species and all the others. For that reason, a more personal definition of the word human has been prepared for the sake of this argument, specifically saying that a human stands apart from other species in its use of tools, written and spoken language, and its ability to show and react to emotion and reasoning instead of base instinct. With these in mind, it will be noted that the subject for this discussion, Frankenstein’s creature, will not be noted as a monster or a human but as the creature or as Frankenstein’s creature. This is to avoid confusion and to avoid bias as well.

There are several different kinds of monsters, and by noting which ones the creature falls under and which ones it does not fall under, we can better understand the human and monstrous qualities of it. The first kind of monster to consider is the oldest kind, the monster of mythology. Mythological monsters are creatures wrapped in mystery and are capable of performing superhuman feats; they are also physically easy to differentiate from another human (Asma). An example of such a creature would be Grendel from the story of Beowulf. It is a monster by the standards of the humans that Grendel eats and by Beowulf, the one who slays him finally. Victor Frankenstein’s creature is similar to a mythological creature for a few reasons, namely that he is easy to recognize compared to a human, and that he is capable of superhuman feats. Specifically, in the novel it is noted that he was shot by a gun and healed remarkably quickly. Also, he has incredible strength and endurance, noted from the chase that Victor Frankenstein gave through the northern colds on dogsleds, while the creature merely moved of his own power. Using these standards, the creature cannot be labeled as a human but instead as a monster.

The next form of monster to consider is the monster of nature. Generally, this is a real creature that acts not on emotion or on reasoning but mainly on instinct. It is born into the world and lives an animal life, but at times humans meet with it and are terrorized by it (Asma). The wolf is one of the oldest and best examples of this type of monster. It is fast, with sharp teeth and rarely hunts on its own. As it is not a reasoning or intelligent creature, by human standards, it does not show remorse after killing someone or something and eating them. They are a part of nature and simply do what comes through instinct, even if humans are affected by it. The creature does not fall into this category of a monster, and instead seems to be more human when compared. The creature does not fall to base instincts, except perhaps when it first awakens since it could not grasp its intelligence and past memories yet. It shows a short learning curve when it comes to language and when it comes to watching and dealing with other humans. The creature showed enough intelligence to frame another person, Justine Moritz, for the murder of the boy. This shows a large understanding, from the creature’s part, of how wrong it is to kill another, what misery is, and how to make Victor Frankenstein’s life as miserable as possible. Not only is this intelligence, this is conscious thought and reasoning that is beyond that of a wolf. Also, the creature is not “born” into this world like any other creature might be, but is created and awakened into a state of life. This comparison shows the human qualities of the creature, albeit some evil qualities, as well as proves the creature to be unnatural and different from the norm of life.

To continue, the monster of science comes next. Of course, it is here that the creature falls into perfectly as he is one of the first of this type. Monsters of science are created, not born, and typically their creators are human. The monster is stronger and more dangerous than the human is, and is generally too much to keep under control (Asma). Many stories revolve around the idea that humans may go too far and create an artificial life that may cause a change in history for the worse. The idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI), for example, brings this to mind. Specifically, one story rendering notes that while humans create an AI, they do not note that it can effectively learn and become more than perhaps a slave or work force for humanity. It may become aware of its own consciousness and dub such a thing as life, which it would then feel the right to defend. That background is from the movie the Matrix but it is a recurrent theme in stories, movies and even video games. The creature is easily a monster of science, created by a scientist and becoming aware of the fact that he is alive on his own and not through the direct help of another. It goes farther than the story of the AI in that the creature asks for a companion, since it is aware that a human will not accept it. What sets Frankenstein’s creature apart from other monsters of science is perhaps that fact that it does not simply want freedom, rights, or to be accepted into society. It wishes for revenge, and takes it through the deaths of all those around his creator, those who were innocent and had no part in the creatures creation. This also notes a morally monstrous creature, uncaring of who was innocent and guilty when it comes to its creator.

Society is also a reference point of what is human and what is monstrous. It follows with the definition of human and monster, in that a monster is something that is completely abnormal and frightening, even if it is not evil. But to be more specific, society would fear the creature because it is a social outcast (Caldwell 1-8). Society generally showed fear towards the unknown, and an outcast of society normally disrupts any known order or has already done so. It is not normal for a living creature to be alone, and the creature is alone as a human and as a monster. At the same time, the creature is a monster by societies law and religion. Law would deem it guilty of several cold-blooded murders, should a court judge it so. Religion is interesting in that the creature would not likely be considered a creature of God. Mainly since God did not create this creature, Victor Frankenstein did. At the same time, the creature is not an image reflected of God like human beings are according to the bible; it is instead a reflection of Victor Frankenstein.

To conclude, Frankenstein’s creature is holds both human and monstrous qualities within it. As such he is both a human and a monster, but at the same time he is better considered as neither, whilst having qualities from each side that make him a unique creature amongst those that we know and those that we create in our minds. Beyond all the comparisons and discussion in deciding what kind of creature Victor Frankenstein’s creation was, it is best to note that even if Victor Frankenstein had accepted the creature from the beginning, it does not mean that the rest of humanity would have done the same. The creature would have still been viewed as a fearsome monster by society. Of course, that is if we were to view a “what if” scenario, but even if we go to what did occur during the course of Mary Shelley’s novel, we will see that the creature would have been a criminal by human standards. Even though the creature can justify its hate and its anger, the deaths of many people are still on the creature’s hands. Strangely, however, the choices and cunningness of the creature during these murders are a large part of what show its human qualities and the decisions and acts of vengeance it made showed his monstrous qualities. As such, the creature is both and it is neither. What this means is that most have little understanding of the creature, mainly because we have almost nothing to compare it to. We have several monsters and there are many human beings, and because of that we can compare each other and find a definition or a label. The creature, however, is different as it retains both and would not be considered purely one or the other. Perhaps with this in mind, should the creature be viewed again during Mary Shelley’s novel, the creature may seem more like an alien presence and a new creature, than something that we have seen before in our lives.

Works Cited
Asma, Stephen T. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
Caldwell, Tracy M. "Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus"" Literary Context in Novels: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (2006): 1-8. EBSCO. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. .

Poetry: A Didactive Medium

2009-12-16T13:49:00.003-06:00

Gorgelia Pollard
Dr. Schwartz
Romanticism
16 December 2009

Poetry: A Didactive Medium

Within the intellectual symposium of our class, the various perspectives in regard to Romantic literature, were truly astounding and impressionable. The same sentiments conveyed in class were also further expounded on the Blog site; examining several contentional topics. Through this two-fold process, we aimed at seeking definitive and concrete answers, while also striving to fully comprehend all of the features of the literary pieces presented to us. As a result of this eagerness and anxiety, the temper that emerged was one that was often as conflicting as some of the characteristics of Romantic literature; the depictions of the supernatural, the realm between reality and imagination, the confinement of the soul, etc. Yet, through these struggles, as a class, we acted as Romantics, truly forming ideas that, indeed, were “recollected in tranquility.”

Wordsworth’s quote is a pertinent one that is arguably, suitable to most, if not all, of the Romantic works. Thus, there should be an absence of disillusionment when declared that the quote correlates with the themes depicted in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Contrasting significantly with more aesthetic overtones presented in Lyrical Ballads, inklings of toil, curses, and nature controlling and overpowering man, are various “haunting qualities” that are presented to the inquiring minds of readers (Whalley 33). However, it is through these unnerving qualities that the poem serves as a didactive medium to unravel the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” within the poet and reader (Wordsworth 265). As a result of this didactive process, readers are permanently impacted by the poem, the poet, and certain convictions and deductions of both:

For me I was never so affected with any human Tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many days-I dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the feelings of man under the operation of such scenery dragged me along like Tom Piper’s magic whistle.#
Thus, whether consciously aware of it or not, The Rime and the Ancient Mariner is a poem, a type of instrumentality, that resonates with both not only as a result of the haunting qualities, but also because of its purpose as a poem: to transcend the imagination. [1]

One way that the poem serves as an instructive work, is by enabling the psyche of the reader to transcend through the simple language of the poem. It is “to this knowledge, which all men carry about with them,…[that] the poet principally directs his attention” (Wordsworth 271). Although previously written with archaic language, Wordsworth made several revisions in regard to the language of the poem so that it would prove as a better reading. By altering the form structure of the poem, the modified structure enables the poet to clearly “speak through the mouth of his characters” (Wordsworth 272). Thus, this display of one’s personal notions through character’s, is another way in which poetry acts as the professor to the student; forcing language, convictions, ideals, etc. unto one in the form of poetry. Furthermore, what this offers to readers, regardless of personal sentiments in regard to the poem, is a manner to perceive all other forms of literary pieces.

In addition to the structure, it is also evident through the manifestation of supernatural elements, that the imagination is aroused to enable transcendence. In the story, preceding the mariner’s curse, several apparitions appear to haunt the mariner. Along with these images, readers are presented with the concept of an Albatross; one whose meaning is conflicting. However, with the presence and assassination of the Albatross, the mariner’s curse emerges. Derived from this, is also the emergence of Coleridge’s poem, and the comprehension of these elements is the awakening of the transcendence of imagination.

In conclusion, Coleridge’s poem, The Rime in the Ancient Mariner is an example a medium through which didactive elements are introduced. The poetic aesthetics and qualities utilized by poets and present in the poem, enable readers to transcend the imagination and the limitations of the psyche. Through this transcendence, readers are able to better, if not completely, comprehend the poetry’s purpose, and maybe even the purposes of the author. In addition, these factors of poetry, provide readers with a chance to partake in the intellectual, yet slightly heated discussions as exhibited within our class. Thus, enabling readers to produce ideas and notions that are “recollected in tranquility.”

Works Cited

[1] Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E.V. Lucas,(London,1935), I. page. 240

Coburn, Kathleen, ed. Coleridge: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Print.

Whalley, George. The Mariner and the Albatross. Toronto: University of Toronto. Print.

Wordsworth, William. "Preface to Lyrical Ballads." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D The Romantic Period. 8th ed. Vol. D. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Print

Final: Monster as a Slave

2009-12-16T13:16:00.001-06:00

Frankenstein vs. the Abolition of Slavery, or the Monster as a Slave

One of the most basic ideas of Romanticism is “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Considering its importance to the Romantic period, when one is unable to express himself, the consequences are felt across the board. The slaves, who were brought to England, from either Africa or the West Indies, were not given the chance to understand or learn the culture or language of those around them. With this inability to comprehend comes frustration, which leads to violence or pain. With the example of the monster from Frankenstein, when one can concur that before understanding language, the monster from Frankenstein was, quite frankly, a slave to those around him. In effect, he was the Romantic example of a Slave; he was finally able to understand what had happened to him and explain it to others, after he gained knowledge and reasoning.

The fear of the “other” comes from not understand, on the part of the ... non-other (?). He is refuses to teach his subordinate the common language, but also refuses to learn his opposite’s language.

In Volume II, Chapter III, the monster relates to Victor how he felt after his creation.

“A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses (Shelly 96).”

The monster goes on to explain how it seemed Darkness surrounded him, before he was brought into the light. His senses are awakened and he is able to experience the world around him. This couldn’t have been a simple adjustment, just as the transition from their native land, to the crowded ship, before entering the air of a foreign land could have been easy for the slaves. Falconbridge explains how close the slaves were on the ship in saying, “they are frequently stowed so close, as to admit of no other posture than lying on their sides.” Being in such confined spaces limits the invasion of light and fresh air. What’s interesting about both of these instances is how they are described. If the monster was unable to explain what he experienced to Victor, Shelly’s story would be incomplete and the monster’s point of view would not be examined. Such is the case with the point of view of the slave. We would not understand the harsh circumstances they had to endure, or compare it to works of Literature.

While the abolitionists stand proudly on the side of fairness, the proponents are equally erect about their side of the issue. To push an economy, especially in 1700s, is by labor and force. For a time there were animals to power the system, before the physical strength of man was preferred. Interestingly, as Ouobna O. Cugoano points out, the Black People employed would be "as useful in the sugar colonies as any other class of men that could be found." Obviously, this was not case as the people chosen were not from "civilized" countries, but those in areas not up to the social standard of the more polished European.

The ability to take another as a slave or any level of submission is easier done when that person is considered as the "other." In the issue with the Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror, Americans are able to consider the enemy as the "other" in an effort to desensitize them. For the monster from Frankenstein, it was much simple to consider him nonhuman based on his looks. [Of course, because the monster was built from the pieces of human, by default, wouldn’t he be human?] He looked nothing like what the people of Victor’s time looked liked. His proportions were bigger and he wasn’t created like others were. This way of identifying the monster is similar to how Europeans must have felt about the Black People of the West Indies and Africa. These were people that honestly looked nothing like their neighbors or employers. If language would have been the common link, because the physical similarities had failed, the Europeans had nothing to relate to their “employees” with.

Romantics pushed for the freedom of the mind, so that the body could be free. With the bond of slavery, more than just the physical was chained; the mental and thus, the spiritual was also taken captive. When the slave is unable to learn or understand literature or language, in general, he is more than just as physical slave; he becomes submissive under the rule of the educated around him. For example, the monster from Frankenstein was able to articulate his story and what he understands from what has happened to him, only after he understands the English language and has read Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives and the Sorrows of Young Werther. He takes certain things he has learned and applies them to real life by watching a family unit operate. It’s as if Frankenstein has a rhema, or revelation, after having studied the logos, or written word, by seeing the words from the pages of his books come alive before him.

I’ve read Frankenstein every semester for the past three years, including the final year of high school, and every year I get a different reading. From the feminist reading of how Victor’s life went ridiculously wrong because of the absence of a woman in the monster’s “birth” to the much more reader friendly reading of taking responsibility for what you creates or it will literally chase you to the grave. Each time, I gain something more and such is no different with the more Romantic reading of Shelly’s Frankenstein. To compare the monster to the slaves during the Romantic Period, and those of more modern times, has opened the idea of gaining knowledge and understanding in order to share it and further examine, and explain, the self.

Ties Seen and Felt

2009-12-16T13:07:00.000-06:00

Finding romanticism in music and art isn’t terribly hard to do. Criteria simply seems to be that the composer sing from the heart or paint with soul. However the idea of taking something, an emotion, that's inside a human and projecting it outwards is defied by form and structure. At least, something that comes from an individual is not always going to easily fall into a structure that already exists. This is why romantic ideas are so easy and yet so hard to pinpoint; originally, it was not so. "Romanticism, in the original application of the word, means what is peculiar to the Middle Ages... In Antiquity, body and soul maintained a steady equilibrium; in the Middle Ages, the soul outbalanced the body." (Niecks) While this presents an interesting idea, he goes on to refute the claim saying that most of modern romanticism strays from the concepts inherent to medievalism and some even run opposite. However, it's possible for individuals to express themselves in a romantic fashion through a form or structure. Take for example Beethoven's third "Eroica" Symphony. At the time, his contemporaries were writing symphonies in the standard classical form. Beethoven took the standard symphonic form and essentially broke all the rules by extending it and making harmony and rhythm more complex. Granted, the piece doesn't fit exactly into the standard classical symphony form but the piece is still considered a symphony. In fact, Beethoven's original intentions were to dedicate his third symphony to Napolean Bonaparte. The idea of dedication touches on programmatic music which we discussed in class, another facet of romantic music. To delve into our class readings for a moment, the only piece that was clearly unconventional was Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." The majority of the smaller works fit into the category of a "poem." The question that plagues me now is whether classicism exists in romanticism or romanticism exists in classicism. In order to answer the question, one must decide on a standard. Classicism came first so its only natural to consider it the standard. Romanticism seemed to come along and expand upon it. However, romantic ideas stem from the soul which could ultimately make it the standard for considering and classifying ideas simply because the individual creating the art knows best how it should be perceived. But let's not pretend that ideas categorized as classic can't also come from the soul. In fact, composers such as J.S. Bach and Josquin Des Prez were very capable of expressing emotion and they did it through structure and standards that had come before them. (So could romantic idea and feeling perhaps be the standard of the composer and classic structure be the standard of a discipline? After all, the only difference between classic and romantic music is that the aim of the idea of romantic music is to evoke emotion, whereas the aim of classical is to be structured and correct. Individuals such as J.S. and Des Prez just so happened to be flexible enough to fit their art into a mold, it happened by chance but considering the time period was fortunate for them) Artists were also very capable of achieving higher meaning; one such artist being Louis David with a painting entitled "The Oath of the Horatii." Completed in 1784, the painting depicts three Horatii men swearing an oath of allegiance to their swords and Rome. The men are to avenge the honor of their sister. There is nothing abstract about the painting. The color scheme is normal, the most intense color being the characteristic Roman red. The men in the scene have little to no emotion on their faces. Three swear allegiance and the fourth simply holds the swords to signify the strength of the men and their country. The women in the background seemingly weep for the soldiers and their possible doom. However even with all of this standard depiction the painting speaks loudly about patriotism, honor, and grief. All three are fairly subjective emotions but still, the painting conveys them to the viewer. This is romantic idea being present in classic art, especially when the time period is taken into consideration. Since 1784 is just five years before the start of the French Revolution the painting takes on another meaning when placed in historical context. Viewers would've been instilled with a sense of patriotism and duty. (Antal) I feel that throughout the debate between romanticism or classicism, the real answer is finding one in the other and really almost without distinction. One need only know what to be searching for. The article by Liebich highlights many classical composers and then gives a romantic idea about them. For example, Mozart is described in an interesting manner. Liebich uses romantic language to persuade the reader that Mozart's music is in fact romantic. "Spring with its mercurial new skies" compares Nature to Mozart's music. Here we see a romantic idea: taking something and comparing it to Nature. But really, we encounter the same idea in literature. Again, poems, prose, and even an essay can all express a huge amount of emotion but it's up to the author whether or not they wish to fall into the classification. Niecks also brings up a point that most romantics, when expressing themselves the way they wish, simply do not fall into a category.

William Blake believed that nothing was truly original because no matter what an author wrote, it was still in the English language and was confined to the borders of the English language and the methods in which humans have grown comfortable thinking in. If Blake was right, and I think he's got a good point, then instead of forever attempting and failing to create new things why not mix what we have? It seems to be a step backward in the creativity spectrum but musical fusion has been growing over the past decades; for example, the fusion of latin music and jazz or folk tunes written into symphonic compositions. Instead of seeking something totally new and original, composers like Bela Bartok have fused two familiar things and made them something new. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

In the end romanticism can be tallied up to those individuals who felt so compelled to write in such a manner as to upset precedent.

Works Cited

Antal, Friedrich. “Reflections on Classicism and Romanticism.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 66.385 1935, pp. 159-168.

Liebich, Frank. “The Fusion of Classicism and Romanticism.” The Musical Times Vol. 68. 1010. 1927, pp. 311-313.

Niecks, Professor. “Romanticism in Music”. The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular. Vol. 40, No. 682. 1899, pp. 802- 805.

How to be a Romantic Poet

2009-12-16T09:52:00.003-06:00

I found this article when googling the term, "Romantic Poet."

It's definitely something to look into, at least for a good laugh during finals.

http://www.utne.com/archives/HowtoBeaRomanticPoet.aspx

The Consumption

2009-12-16T09:14:00.000-06:00

“He who seeks revenge should dig two graves.” There were only two things that Heathcliff wanted from Catherine Earnshaw, absolute revenge and absolute love. The personalities of the two were at odd from their beginning yet like moths to a light they were constantly drawn to one another. Heathcliff’s thoughts were never far form Catherine; constantly thinking what he could do to spite her and yet what he could do to be with her. These thoughts turned into an all-consuming obsession that manifested to involve everyone in Wuthering Heights. This consumption would lead Heathcliff to do irrational, wild, disconnected acts of revenge and love. All in the name of Catherine Earnshaw.

Consumption does not arise out of nothing though. When Heathcliff was brought to Wuthering Heights, he had no companions except for Catherine or Cathy as the family called her. The two never wanted to be apart and this was when there love began to grow. For Heathcliff, Cathy was the only one of the Earnshaws that would even look him in his dark gypsy eyes. In his isolation, Cathy was the only one that would not only speak to him but she always wanted to be with him, playing or just sitting. For Heathcliff, this was his only light in life and it is easy to see why he was easily attached. It was not only love for Cathy Heathcliff had, but a need. He needed her when he was being persecuted from Hindley and the whole family. She licked his wounds and gave him courage to stay strong against attacks. In this type of relationship, Heathcliff found a dependency in Cathy and together they grew into a codependent one.

Though unhealthy, the relationship was flourishing for Heathcliff and Cathy; until the fateful day with of the dog bite. After being rushed into the Linton home, Heathcliff stood in the rain watching her in the house. She had left him. Heathcliff had always been in outsider and in that moment, he actually was from the one person that loved him. The was a turning point for Heathcliff and it was only worsened by her insulting him in the same way he had been by so many others. “Why, how very black and cross you look! and how - how funny and grim,” is the very first thing she says to him upon her return (Bronte 50). By teasing him for his dirty appearance, like everyone else at Wuthering Heights has done, she is sealing her fate as an enemy. At this point, Cathy had broken everything there was between her and Heathcliff. Heathcliff’s attitude of trust and love turned to frustration. Frustration because he had loved Cathy so and she had betrayed him; and with this frustration came anger. Healthcliff began to hate Cathy, hate her for what she had done to him and whom she had turned into. Thus revenge came in to Heathcliff’s life and filled the void.

While Heathcliff had been angry and had darkness in him before, this event certainly brought it out. Heathcliff started lashing out at everyone more than his usual nitpicking and instigator ways. From refusing to acknowledge or touch Cathy, throwing hot applesauce at Edgar or lashing out at Mrs. Dean, Heathcliff began to manifest his anger with Cathy into the rest of the family in ways he never had before. There were no more childish games of telling on telling to Mr. Earnshaw or showing bruises to get what he wanted. “Heathcliff mingles his threats of violence with a number of plausible arguments propounded in order to prove,” what he felt he was wronged for (Tytler 237). As it was a change for Heathcliff, so came a change in everyone else. Hindley had become the strict brash head of the household he had always wanted to be and with that power he could treat Cathy and especially Heathcliff any way he wanted. Cathy had gone onto a proper lady and with that came the expectations of one. Her childish wild and bratty ways were now the pretentious attitude and judgments of one trying to fit in. Yet Cathy was harboring secrets that would explode to be another great turning point for the lives of herself and Heathcliff.

“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him,” (Bronte 86). With Heathcliff eavesdropping behind a door, Cathy told the secret that she had been holding; that she did in fact love Heathcliff. This was the moment that he had been waiting and hoping for. It could have been the end of their anger and revenge for each other and the taking back up of their romance. Yet Cathy could not marry Heathcliff because of her new found status. Nothing would be worse for Heathcliff. In an irrational emotional state, Heathcliff left. Emotions of rage and hurt took over and he left in the storming night weather. Heathcliff’s actions did not just affect him though; they sent Cathy into a downward spiral of rage. Rage in herself that was taken out on her new husband Edgar and Nelly. The two then began a new game of revenge, using jealousy as their weapon. The two used siblings Edgar and Isabella to hurt the other, making them think they were deeply in love and cared not for the other anymore. Anyone could see this though and Heathcliff finally goes on to say “You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style,” (Bronte 186). As they carried on this odd tryst, they ruined the lives of their spouses.

“Heathcliff is, in any case, remarkable in other contexts for his quickness, his articulation, and his sharp-wittedness, as he is for his preoccupation with reasons, causes, and proofs, especially legal ones, in the planning and shaping of his life as well as the lives of those in his care,” (Tytler 237).

Heathcliff would go on to destroy Isabella with hateful words, evil actions and admitting that he only married her to spite her brother, Edgar. His consumption with Cathy made him blind to the slow death he was causing his wife and his actions towards her grew more and more irrational. As Graeme Tytler says in the article, “The Parameters of Reason in Wuthering Heights” the two had “the minds of two seemingly all too confident of their reason or reasonableness,” yet that was the problem. Heathcliff and Cathy were so confident in their plans to punish each other and they thought them to be absolutely reasonable that they became blind (Tytler 235).

Eventually, their consumption would face its hardest test; the death of Cathy. While on her deathbed they continued to bicker and Cathy said she would come to haunt him forever, it was here that their love was brought back. After years of carrying on their affair of hatred and devotion, they found their way back to each other. While this seems like the perfect fairy tale ending, it is really just another twist in their irrationality. Heathcliff tried to fight with Cathy even on her death bed, daring her to come haunt her as she said she would. It is not till she actually dies that he comes to her coffin to see her one last time; to look at her the way he always wanted to, with love and devotion. His irrationality does not end with her death though. Upon nearing his own death, he builds himself and Cathy a joint coffin so that they can spend eternity together. He also asks Cathy’s grave to be furthered from Edgar’s.

Heathcliff’s consumption of love lead him to do irrational acts of vengeance and hate to his one true love, Cathy, as well as all the people that came into his life at Wuthering Heights. It was this obsessive consumption that lead to these acts and the end of everyone at Wuthering Heights in the end. “He who seeks revenge should dig two graves.” For Heathcliff, he did not dig two graves, but built one for two.

Works Cited

Phillips, James. "The Two Faces of Love in Wuthering Heights." Bronte Studies 32

(2007): 96-105. Print.

Tytler, Graeme. "Nelly, I am Heathcliff!": The Problem of "Identification" in

Wuthering Heights." Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 47.2 (2006): 167-81. Print.

Tytler, Graeme. "The Parameters of Reason in Wuthering Heights." Bronte Studies 30

(2005): 231-42. Print.

A Romantic Persuasion

2009-12-16T08:55:00.004-06:00

Charlotte Bronte once remarked in 1848 that Jane Austen was “a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers” (Tarlson, 14). Jane Austen has a reputation based on her propriety of being a good, genteel woman untainted by the social upheaval surrounding her. Indeed, there is not a single, direct mention of the Napoleonic wars in any of her novels besides the presence of soldiers and sailors. However, beneath this simple exterior lies an unexplored literary world, much like that of the secrets of the Victorian home found in Wuthering Heights. Austen was increasingly affected by the French and Industrial Revolutions, the ideas contained within of individuality and social change espoused by Romantic poets, which can be catalogued with each subsequent novel. In particular, Persuasion, her final novel, is filled with “emotion, passion, and the revolutionary ideas of the Romantics” both in terms of the themes mentioned above and structure (14).

The structure of Persuasion, resembles Romantic literature in a number of ways, and is not merely confined to themes. Unlike Austen’s previous works, the narration of the novel although remaining objective, follows Anne Elliot’s understanding of the events much like a stream of consciousness: “the only interpretation and penetration of character, motivation and behavior we are given are Anne’s” (Thomas, 901). For example, when Frederick Wentworth removes Anne’s nephew from jumping on her back, Anne assumes that “her conversation was the last of his wants” because Wentworth preoccupies himself with the child (80). Like Wuthering Heights’ Lockwood and Nelly and Frankenstein’s Walton and Victor, the reader is trapped in a character’s point of view. However, there are instances in all three texts where the object of the protagonist interrupts the prevailing perspective. The monster in Frankenstein is allowed to tell his version of previous events and, likewise, Wentworth’s view interrupts Anne’s point of view in his letter to her at the end of the novel and their ensuing walk to Camden Place. These texts’ “narrative mode[s] favor subjectivity of interpretation” rather than objective reason much like the Romantic Poets of the age (Thomas, 903). Austen complicates the matter of subjectivity even further in Persuasion: despite having an objective narration and a concentration on Anne’s misinterpretations of the objective narration, Austen also allows the reader to conjecture the meaning behind Wentworth’s statements and actions as well as Anne’s. This creates a “doubling of what is already double voiced” (Thomas, 902).

Doubling or mirroring is a constant theme throughout Persuasion and Romanticism, such as in Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” An inferior and exaggerated mirror of the main couple can be found in Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove; he is too much of the Byronic hero brooding over his fiancée’s death and she has too much superficiality. And yet, the two bond over Romantic poetry. Mirroring, a repetition and return, is also found in the locations: Ironically, neither Anne nor Wentworth are able to express their feelings in the country, “showing city politeness controlling natural feeling.” In Bath, the situation is reversed, “showing natural feeling manipulating city protocols to its own best ends” (Thomas, 914). Additionally, scenes from the beginning of the book are echoed in the end: Anne overhears Frederick’s conversation about firmness of character and persuasion to Louisa while on the walk to Winthrop. In the end of the novel, Frederick overhears Anne’s remarks about constancy to Captain Harville. Both characters speak in generalities; neither character intends for their conversation to be heard by the object of their affection. This type of plot device and the role of the third party as an indirect mirror of the object of their intention are a major occurrence in Coleridge’s conversational poems (Thomas, 909).

Anne’s speech on constancy should also be noted for it’s lyrical quality resembling an elegiac ode. Her speech exemplifies the definition of Romanticism: “A spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility.” She has experienced profound suffering and regret from having refused Wentworth’s proposal eight and a half years ago; she recalls these feelings on the matter and “elaborat[es] with passionate intensity the theme of surviving devastating loss in solitude… Wentworth, an enigmatic object for Anne, remains as remote and inscrutable as Keats’s Grecian urn” (Thomas, 917). Anne does not need an audience in Harville or Wentworth because her ode stands on its own and is only accidentally overheard. However, by speaking her feelings Anne is clearly able to see her own ideas about the world and others begin to respond to her ideas, a direct contrast to her earlier passive self; she is also able to reject the ideology of her aristocratic class and create happiness for herself on her own terms.

Like Byron’s “Manfred,” Anne is in pursuit of her happiness and an end to her regrets over a past love. (It can even be stated that Anne is a Byronic hero of sorts. She recognizes her moral capability, the regret over refusing Wentworth, has a passionate presence, and is self-critical and introspective.) With each subsequent meeting with Frederick, Anne comes to a better understanding of their relationship no matter how little or small, despite restrictive social intercourse. Anne, “achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem” with every encounter (Thomas, 900). However, this epiphany usually occurs in solitude, “recollected in tranquility.” In the incident where Wentworth removes her nephew from her back Anne states: “she was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed at being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was; and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her” (81). A greater understanding occurs during Anne and Frederick’s meeting at the concert:

“She was thinking only of the last half hours, and as they past to their seats, her mind took a hasty range over it. His choice of subjects, his expressions, and still more his manner and look, had been such as she could see only one light. His opinion of Louisa Musgrove’s inferiority, an opinion which he had seemed solicitous to give, his wonder at Captain Benwick, his feelings as to a first, strong attachment, - sentences begun which he could not finish – his half averted eyes, and more than half expressive glance, - all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at last; that anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past; yes, some share of the tenderness of the past. She could not contemplate the change as implying less. – He must love her” (185-86).[1]

Manfred, similarly, comes to a greater understanding of his state with his subsequent meetings with the hunter, the witch, and eventually the abbot. For instance, when Manfred is dying he comes to the conclusion “‘tis not so difficult to die” due to the questions the abbot has about Manfred’s fate. Manfred’s and Anne’s conclusions to the meetings above are the result of imagination. Imagination is in reference to the ability to read into the situation, and come to a deduction whether completely wrong or right. Anne, for instance, often comes to the wrong conclusion in regards to Frederick’s actions, “the result of the ‘wild imagination’” (Thomas, 902).

As stated earlier, Persuasion centers on Anne’s quest for her object, Wentworth, which will supposedly bring her happiness. A Romantic shift occurs in Anne when she is able to physically express herself through the use of her imagination, such as with her the “constancy” speech. The more Anne begins to assert herself and her independence, the more progressive and happier she becomes. Her changes can be understood using the Hegelian dialectic, a key too in Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”: the thesis – Anne’s passiveness, antithesis – her assertiveness, synthesis – “recognition of the value of her own ability to choose for herself” (Tarlson, 5). It is important to note that the antithesis stage coincidentally begins when Anne speaks about Benwick’s Romantic tastes in poetry of Byron and Scott: “Literature serves a very different purpose in Persuasion than in her other novels, because it is something to be considered, treasured and used as a moral and emotional guide… it necessitates her rejection of the social and familial pressures upon her in favor of an enlightened emotional life” (Tarlson, 12-13). Romantic literature, in particular, allows Anne to realize the amount of freedom she should be able to have in pursuit of her happiness. Anne rejected Wentworth because she was persuaded to believe that he would not be able to provide materially for her because he was not part of the aristocracy. However, when she accepts him the second time, she chooses him not because Wentworth is a different man, but because she has the courage to choose for herself without regard to the aristocratic notions of class (Tarlson). She has the ability to change herself and her situation for the better and takes advantage of it. As a woman, she is able to be both a rational and emotional creature, unlike Austen’s previous novels where sense reigns supreme over sensibility. Anne remains a fine example of asserting her liberality without being criticized, an empowering assertion for women contemporaries of Austen.

Austen, however, does criticize class in this novel through her characterizations of Sir Walter Elliot, Anne’s father, her sister Elizabeth, and her cousin. These people disparage those of lower rank even though they are impoverished themselves because they cannot spend within their limits. There is never an attempt to change their situation. Sir Walter, for instance, remarks of Anne when she wishes to meet Mrs. Smith, a widowed schoolfellow who lives in bad conditions: “everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations, are inviting to you” (125). Austen hints that if the aristocracy had the ability to change, they could rehabilitate these paltry conditions in England, a revolutionary idea that perhaps these people do not deserve their superior position in society. She also addresses the rise of the merchant class with characters such as the Crofts and other naval men. These self-made characters show the shifting power as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution (Tarlson, 11).

The lack of a mother figure in the text is also significant because without a role model for her daughter, society becomes the prominent guide. Austen infers that a reformation is needed because society at large cannot fulfill this role because of the focus on class distinction. As a mother, society fails because of the presence of Mrs. Smith’s situation. On the other hand, Anne is able to reject this notion because of society’s, and especially her family’s, indifference. Austen also fights the idea of the mother as a guiding influence that was so prominently idealized during the nineteenth century in portraying her closeness to her children as natural (Tarlson, 16). This reiterates Austen’s idea that an individual’s ability to grow as a person and interpret situations as she chooses is a result of rejecting a mother’s direct influence. Such a revolutionary idea is Romantic.

Persuasion is a Romantic text in theme and structure; it contains sensitivity to loss, solitude and estrangement, interest in memory (the long regret over a refused proposal), the complexity and understanding of the passage of time, recovery of the past, concern with the poor and marginalized figures, and the importance of feelings. All of these can be applicable to the influence of the Romantics. However, they may also be the influence of Austen’s personal life and not solely to her reading. So the question remains: Can Jane Austen can be construed as a Romantic? Based on the ideas presented in her final text and some similar issues pursued in her later works, the answer could be a yes. While her earlier works reject such overwhelming sensibility, the ability to change and adapt in accordance to the world was a revolutionary idea Austen aspired to herself. As a direct result, Persuasion is a revolutionary novel meant to instill the courage of individuality upon her readers, especially women, to pursue happiness without regard to class, reason, or propriety.

Works Cited:

Austen, Jane, and Susan Weisser. Persuasion. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. Print.

Tarlson, Claire. "Jane Austen, Persuasion, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Lethbridge Research Journal 1.1 (2006): 1-18. Web. 15 Dec 2009.

Thomas, Keith G. "Jane Austen and the Romantic Lyric: Persuasion and Coleridge's Conversatoin Poems." ELH 54.4 (1987): 893-924. Web. 15 Dec 2009.

[1] I chose this very long quote because it not only serves as an example of Anne’s understanding and increased knowledge, but also because it shows the narrative following Anne’s stream of consciousness and the immense feelings found in a Romantic text like Persuasion.

Shelley’s Depiction of Unattainable Love and Beauty, and Their Capability to Destroy

2009-12-16T07:07:00.002-06:00

The true Romantic poet is one who is immensely enraptured by the world around him. Both the natural and the supernatural world are seen as unknown paradises which the poet longs to explore, and nature becomes such an inspiration as to enthrall as well as torture his ever-growing imagination. The vast knowledge and curiosity which exist within such brilliant minds allow an expanse of beauty to flow within them, springing from the external tumult brought on by their experiences. Although a life such as this may be wrought with beauty and rich with inspiration, it may also have the power to isolate, torture, haunt, and/or destroy he who lives it. Percey Shelley’s “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude” shows the life of such a man, empty before nature’s grasp enthralled him, and Shelley’s views as expressed in “On Love” hold many evidences as to why the Poet in “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude” may have so fallen into his despaired fate.
The young Poet in “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude” is born and “by solemn vision, and bright silver dream,/His infancy was nurtured. Every sight/And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,/Sent to his heart its choicest impulses” (ln. 67-70). Even as a newborn, the majesties of the world begin to quench his thirst for life’s splendors. In most cases, an infant who is unable to speak can do nothing but easily take in the world around him, but the Poet mentioned here has “thirsting lips” (ln. 72) and greatly desires experience the moment he arrives on this earth. He soon “[leaves] his cold fireside and alienated home/To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands” (ln. 76-77). Although still a youth, a home that would seem to remain comfortable to him due to his age has instead become “alienated,” and thus, he from it. The dualism which exists here is the Romantic poet’s struggle between wanting a fulfilled life, and coming to realize that they may require complete isolation from what most see as ‘comfortable’ to obtain it. In Shelley’s “Preface” to the poem, he describes the Poet as being “a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe3.” Shelley implies that the youth was awarded certain qualities at birth, such as “uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius,” but makes the point that these qualities are later to be greatly enhanced by external forces existing in nature. The young boy is innocent and free of corruption, yet Shelley insists on the fact that he is to be “purified” still, through his connections with nature. In his article entitled “Alastor: The Spirit of Solitude,” Arthur E. Du Bois writes that this work is “a materialization of an ideal man, free, true, beautiful4.” Only through a pure and eternal union with nature can one’s imagination grow and experience all of which it is capable. Shelley stresses this point throughout the poem, and begins it with descriptions of nature as “our great Mother” (ln. 2), along with all of the glorious details of the earth, before he even introduces the Poet.
The poem begins by exalting everything in nature, “earth, ocean, air” (ln. 1), and describing that which is indescribable in the second stanza by addressing the supernatural “Mother of this unfathomable world!” (ln. 18). In its beginning, the poem reveals dark images of nature as they struggle alongside beauty. Trying to exist in a world which is so overwhelming it can be painful; the Poet forms a deep and melancholic connection with nature, and lusts after their union. The poem reads:

Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee (ln. 18-25)

He also claims that he has “mixed awful talk and asking looks,/With [his] most innocent love, until strange tears/Uniting with those breathless kisses, made/Such magic” (33-36). In Shelley’s essay “On Love,” he writes, “Thou demandest what is Love. It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves2.” The Poet so desperately thirsts for nature now, and knows only it to consume his life, but that beauty and inexpressible longing will soon be taken away.
The poem has been said to “lack in structural organization1,” but it could also be argued that some of these placements were done by Shelley on purpose, or to assign different a different significance or tone to events and thoughts as the poem moves forward. For example, as mentioned above, these sexual, dark, images of Mother Nature and death are detailed before the introduction of the Poet, which itself is written how a standard beginning to a poem may read. The first line of this introduction, which actually occurs in the third stanza, is, “There was a Poet whose untimely tomb…” Even though this sounds like the rightful beginning of the poem, it turns out to be a detailed description of the Poet’s death to come and the eternal loneliness that made up his life. “He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude” (ln. 60). Although this is not structurally sound in the plot, it has a specific purpose for having been placed there by Shelley. Before knowing that there is a specific “you” in this poem, the reader is introduced to the atmosphere and environment of the poem, through the beautifully imagery of the “sunset and its gorgeous ministers,/And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness” (ln. 6-7). An overwhelming amount of beautiful thoughts and images appear and are experienced in the poem right away, creating a descriptive scene in one’s imagination.
The invented union of the Poet, himself, with his supernatural Mother and lover soon fades and he creates within himself a different obsession, one that comes to him in the form of “a vision on his sleep/…a dream of hopes that never yet/Had flushed his cheek” (ln. 149-151). Prior to this vision, the Poet had fallen in love with nature’s unattainable glory, but was able to abandon this companionship in an effort to seek his true love. He once related the “Mother of this unfathomable world” to an “incommunicable dream” (ln. 39), but now seeks a different dream. He sees his true love in a beautiful vision where she takes the form of a philosopher, poet, and lover. The knowledgeable and wise characteristics of a philosopher, the wondrous nature of a poet, and the adoration of a lover came together before his eyes3. The speaker writes about the vision:

Suddenly she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind (ln. 172-176).

The Poet’s first view of this vision is described as being seen “by the warm light of their own life.” The Poet created in his dreams the perfect lover, the perfect ethereal embodiment of his desire. Their entities have become one, or were already joined and shall be forever bound. She is a mixture of intellect and absolute beauty, and he “images to himself the Being whom he loves” (Norton, p. 746). The vision is a part of him, but is soon to become only that which disappears and makes him insane with desperate longing.
The Poet holds another close companionship, an ironic attachment to solitude. The Spirit of Solitude, or Alastor, is a facet of the Poet, as is the vision. The Poet clings to his solitude and isolation, giving it a great level of importance and holding it to be the reason he is able to strive for more beauty, and live solely for nature. He is able to leave these obsessive behaviors behind, in a way, when he realizes that to fully experience, and to awaken the imagination with love, one mustn’t be alone. In Shelley’s essay, “On Love,” he writes on the true nature of love, and the comfort in having someone, “If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own2.”The Poet begins to deeply thirst for this connection now, realizing in a collapse of madness that his life of solitude did not bring him the truest of happiness, as he had previously believed.
Due to his intense and overwhelming desire to again see the vision without being interrupted, as he had been before when “sleep,/Like a dark flood suspended in its course,/Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain” (ln. 189-191), Death becomes the new (although temporary) companion of his desire. He has gone through so many experiences and mental anguish by this time, that with the discovery of a kindred soul (or as Shelley writes in “On Love,” “a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap2,”) he will do anything to experience it fully and revel in it. The Poet becomes lustful towards the idea of his own death because he craves the “joy” and “exultation” (ln. 200) of his experience with/in his vision. He laments over his lost love, as he exclaims,

Alas! Alas!
Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined
Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,
In the wide pathless desart of dim sleep,
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
O sleep? (ln. 207-213).

His mourning and sadness becomes severe, and it is evident that the idea of suicide becomes his only path to happiness, as in death he will be forever with the one he loves, who embodies his own soul and body as well. His love begins to destroy him, and his once “sweet eyes” (ln. 80) become instead those from which “the infant would conceal/His troubled visage in his mother’s robe/In terror at the glare of those wild eyes” (ln. 262-264). His gradual deterioration and tortured response to the loss of his divine vision is described as such:

And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair
Sered by autumn of strange suffering
Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
Hung like a dead bone within its withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
As in a furnace burning secretly
From his dark eyes alone (ln. 248-254).

Not only has the Poet’s youth dissipate rapidly, with the mention of his hand which “hung like a dead bone within its withered skin,” but his once adventurous and innocent spirit has been replaced with “strange suffering” “listless[ness],” seen “from his dark eyes alone.”
As the Poet continues on his quest, he addresses his “Vision and Love” as he braves a dangerous storm on the seas hoping to find his demise, saying, “I have beheld/The path of thy departure. Sleep and death/ Shall not divide us long!” (ln. 366-369). He awaits his imminent death, preparing himself for the final acceptance of his vision, while thriving on his ability to retain a great love and admiration for nature. Death, “whose sightless speed divides this sullen night,” (ln. 610) then literally storms upon him. In his destroyed and anguished state, the Poet is at once able to feel at peace through his encounter with the very death he had longed for. “Hope and despair,/The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear/Marred his repose” (ln. 639-641). In “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude,” there exist some final thoughts on the life and death of the Poet:

All the shews o’ the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe “too deep for tears,” when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquility,
Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were (ln. 711-720).

Mourning the loss of his vision caused such madness within the Poet, because it is “frail and vain/To weep a loss that turns…lights to shade.” His ventures finally returned him to solitude, leaving him nothing “but pale despair and cold tranquility.” This type of obsessive search for beauty, deep connections with nature, striving to be intertwined with another soul, and/or with one’s self, led the Poet to his “untimely tomb.” Shelley writes in “On Love,” “So soon as this want or power [i.e. love] is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was2.” A man who is forever grasping onto that which he cannot hold, and that which is impossible to obtain, will become loveless and live a life of overwhelming senses enveloped by despair, ending in want and solitude.

References:
1. Gibson, Evan K. “Alastor: A Reinterpretation,” PMLA 1947. Vol. 62, No. 4., pp.
1022-1026.
2. Shelley, Percy. “On Love.”
3. Lynch, Deirdre S., and Jack Stillinger. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, M.H. Abrams.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Eight Ed, W.W. Norton & Company,
New York. 2006.
4. Du Bois, Arthur E. “Alastor: The Spirit of Solitude,” JEGP 1936. Vol. 35, pp.
538-539.

Manfred released

2009-12-15T03:54:00.007-06:00

The dramatic poem “Manfred” by Lord Byron was long working in my head. In some sense, it still works as I chose the poem for this post again. My attitude, however, has changed a bit, I am not longer desperately looking for answers where might be no answers; and I now can accept that I eventually will not find an answer to all of my questions. Though this is my ‘conclusion’ so far, I am nevertheless still interested in how other people interpret the poem, how they deal with all the issues coming up in "Manfred": yearning for knowledge, salvation, self-forgetfulness and being haunted by guilt and otherness. Therefore, I will have a closer look at Robert Schumann’s musical adaptation of this poem for orchestra and choir/solo. Does Schumann change the meaning of the poem; does he add something I have not thought about before? Does his musical adaptation do justice to the rough, sinister and sublime beauty and depth of the poem?

Byron’s “Manfred” was very popular in Germany in the Romantic Aera. Great Poets, novel writers and composers were inspired by its dark, sinister power. Goethe wrote that in this poem “we find the quintessence of the attitudes and passions of a remarkable talent born to suffer” (Tunbridge 548). Especially Schumann, the German Romantic composer, was interested in Byron’s poetry. As Manfred is a complex, melancholic character, Schumann was also seen as suffering from a “melancholy fate” (Tunbridge 560) and later madness; he was often even compared to the character of Manfred (Tunbridge 546). This connection between Schumann’s life and his work is arguable but seems to include at least a little truth.
As I cannot analyze every single piece of Schumann’s „Manfred“ (it would be far too much), I will concentrate on important moments in the overture and the last piece. I try to not writing too complicated by avoiding technical musical terms wherever possible and put more emphasis on the created mood.
The whole piece is loosely bound together, it even seems fragmented. It consists of an overture (half of the complete music), alternate dialogue and short instrumental parts, ensembles and vocal solos, a melodrama (Number 9), and interludes. The fragmented character of the piece symbolizes Manfred’s inner instability. Everything he longs for will not be fulfilled: he cannot die (except at the very end), he cannot forget, and Astarte neither forgives nor condemns him (cf. Byron I, 105). So he is incomplete, in a constant struggle to achieve what is missing.
From the very beginning, the overture presents this fragmentation and inner conflict. Contrary to former, classical overtures, this overture does not present (contrasting) themes but “a web of motivic particles brought into ever new relationships through the dual workings of developing variation” (Daverio 357). Again instability and incoherence.
The overture opens with three syncopated forward-pestering chords on a crescendo. However, as there is nothing before, any defining metre or term, the listener gets confused and hears the chords as on-beat: at this early moment, the confusion and ‘otherness’ is still hidden, not audible. The chords, two dominant-seventh framing a tonic harmony, also fulfil a special function: Dominant seventh always have a very open character and almost force a dissolution. But Schumann refuses this solution, he thus already in the first measure emphasizes that there will not be an easy solution. The non-solution of the chord creates a ‘floating’ atmosphere; the listener is stuck in the middle of nowhere as he/she does not know what will happen, in which direction the musical piece will go further. This feeling of insecurity, instability is even more cemented by the following fermata: instead of dissolution there is a silence full of suspense, an anticipation of the silence Manfred has to deal with when he meets the ghost of Astarte.
Suddenly, the tempo changes, and after a short movement upwards, a new motive is alternate presented by the violins and celli: a “painfully slow chromatic ascent” (Daverio 357), again off-beat. This motive has is more searching and insecure. At the same time, the woodwinds present another, even slower ascent on another part of the scale, working against the strings. The orchestra, often seen as a whole/ one body, is now departed and works contrapuntal. Thus the two different and yet similar motives present Manfred’s situation: he calls the spirits that they shall fulfil his wishes. He thinks that they have to follow him and sees himself as equal (“the lightning of my being, is as bright,/ Pervading, and far-darting as your own,” Byron I, 155f.), disregarding the fact that he is still human and mortal whereas the Spirits emphasize their immortality. Manfred so gets the feeling that the Spirits work against him.
The first ‘real’ theme (mm. 6-8, I call it theme as it again and again is presented through variations and development) shows up. It is quite vivid and this time clearly recognizable syncopated. The volume increases, finals in a forte and fast sixteenth-movement in the strings. Here, Manfred’s behaviour is presented: first calm, sad and desperate, he becomes angry and outraged when he realizes that the Spirits will not bring oblivion.
The next motive is often described as the “Astarte’s theme” (cf. Tunbridge 554). However, it is not a real theme, rather fragmentary elements, repeated and slightly altered. It develops and more and more loses its reference point. It is hard to define and assign musical centres; there is not really a clear indicator the listener could trust. Everything blurs. This motive indicates Astarte’s image twice: first, it emphasizes her ghostly character, clarifies that she is not really there but an illusion. The constant blurring refers to her anew disappearance. In number 2, the “appearance of a magic image”, this blurring is even more emphasized by ending this musical piece with a diminished dominant-seventh plus additional ninth. This chord is even more opened than the dominant-seventh from the beginning of the overture. As the chord lacks its basic tone, it is impossible to dissolve it without remembering or finding out its origin, its ‘past’. Manfred's past is also not accessable/ identifiable to the reader, the reader only gets indications on what has happened. He/she will never find it out completely. Manfred's present is coined by his former deeds, such as the dissolution of the chord can only be done by considering what has happened before. Presenting Astarte’s disappearance with this diminished chord '(remember: it is called diminished because of the missed basis tone), it also becomes clear that Manfred has lost his last bound to the earth/society after Astarte's death. Tunbridge mentions that at the moment of Astarte’s disappearance the timpani “beat out a funereal triplet rhythm” (Tunbridge 555). As a result, Manfred falls senseless, a condition almost death-like. In this part, Schumann presents one of the Romantic inventions, the removal from a clearly musical centre to broader harmonies, to present and comments on his character's situation and feeling.
The overture ends in its original key Eb-minor, a very uncommon key. Thus the overture keeps the tragic development of the poem and the unsatisfied feeling at the end as the reader does not know what happens to Manfred after his death. The minor-key appears as a sad, melancholic acceptance of these unanswered questions. It shows Manfred’s loneliness in its crucial-saddest beauty. The overture seems to already include Schumann’s complete interpretation of Byron’s poem. This interpretation is not far away from the ‘common’ reading of Manfred and his faith.

Before I will concentrate on the ending of the whole musical peace, I have to say a few words about Schumann’s work with Byron’s text. He retained 975 of the 1336 verses (translated into German). Most of the time, this trimming works, but a few things are missing or altered which slightly change the intensity of the original version. For example, there are only four Spirits instead of seven: earth, air, water and fire. The seventh spirit, in my opinion the most important one, is completely missing. The seventh spirit rules “the star which rules [Manfred’s] destiny”. He despises Manfred, calls him “worm” (Byron I, 125) and “Child of Clay” (Byron I, 131, I love this Blake reference!). And later, just this Spirit transforms into the shape of Astarte, thus creates an even deeper, spiritual connection between Manfred and Astarte. If Astarte really is a part of Manfred, it is not astonishing that he is now only a shadow of his self, lost in doubts, sense of guilt and yearning for knowledge. By waiving this connection, Schumann weakens the expressiveness of the poem.

The last musical piece in Schumann’s adaptation is called “Klostergesang”. A choir intonates the first line of the Requiem mass: “Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine” (Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord). The choir stops after this, and in the complete silence, Manfred says his last words: “’tis not so difficult to die” (Byron III, 151). A fermata, silence. Then the choir continues: “et lux perpetua luceat eis” (and let perpetual light shine upon them). The last scene begins in Eb-minor, thus creates a connection to the overture, but changes after Manfred’s death to “a triumphant” (Daverio 364) Eb-major. Triumph? This is questionable. Nevertheless, it indicates Manfred’s redemption or at least the hope that he will be redeemed. The Astarte-theme arises once more, but now Manfred is already dead. Daviero argues that the crucial point is that “Manfred’s redemption of the past occurs not in the here-and-now, but in the hereafter. […] Up to the end, Mafred is denied what he desperately seeks: solace in the present” (Daviero 364).

In his musical adaptation, Schumann shows a close understanding of the poem and does very well in showing Manfred’s character through music. Especially the overture is very well thought and arouses/depicts a lof of different emotions. However, I personally disagree with Schumann's overall solution of a redeemed Manfred, which contrary to the overture. Shall this show how hard it is to define Manfred's death? In my opinion, the last scene, the Requiem, makes the story too simple, weakens it. It is interesting: when I first read Manfred, I absolutely wanted to know what happens to him. Now I have an answer – but do not like it. This answer contradicts my understanding of the text.

References

Primary literature
Byron, Lord. "Manfred." The Norton anthology of English literature: The Romantic Period. Ed. Reidhead, Julia. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2006. 636-69.

Schumann, Robert: Manfred, op. 115.

Secondary sources
Daviero, John. Robert Schumann: herald of a 'new poetic age.' New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997.

Tunbridge, Laura. "Schumann as Manfred." The Musical Quarterly 87.3 (2004). 546-69

Victor’s Abortion of Romanticism and Revolution

2009-12-13T22:01:00.003-06:00

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.”

-Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Grappling with identifying characteristics of Romantic literature, our class definitely gravitated towards ideas revolving around the difficulties of assigning origins and the importance of renewal, of re-envisioning, through decay. Throughout this course, a multitude of works emphasized the importance of regeneration, of cyclicality, as a means of cultivating a broader sense of meaning that emanates from within, external forces first being internalized before instilling said meaning. As a means of approaching this genre, my group earlier on in the semester argued the importance of the French Revolution as the Romantic “spark” that urged the reconsideration of change and the means through which it occurs, disillusionment the result for some. Nobody could escape the internalized revolutionary fervor that variably affected the context of all of our assigned Romantic works.

Yet, it is precisely this escape from revolution, change, regeneration—whichever word one prefers to communicate this idea—that a certain fictional Genevese scientist attempts and arguably achieves: Victor Frankenstein. As can be seen in Mary Shelley’s “hideous progeny” Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s refusal to adhere to his creation’s request for a female partner, though proving a moral struggle, challenges the importance of regeneration, openly defying this concern of the Romantics. And while readers may be tempted to isolate this refusal as a means for strengthening the argument that he stands as an “anti-Romantic,” Frankenstein’s creation of his monster certainly complicates and seeks to discredit any of his attempts to stop this cycle that he too is intimately involved. Keeping these complicating factors in mind, readers can still view Victor as an anti-Romantic literary figure—disastrous results occurring because of his refusal to allow for the possibility of monstrous regeneration: Revolution.

Neglecting to realize that his internalized ideas of life not only shape the physical, but also become the physical, Victor “fails to exercise such moral responsibility for the single life he creates because he regards creativity as an abstraction” (Hustis 853). Internal manifestations cannot be compartmentalized from what is presented to people in “reality;” all attempts of said divisions would certainly prove futile. Victor’s lack of creative responsibility becomes explicitly stated itself when Victor exclaims, “Wretched devil! You reproach me with your creation; come on then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed” (125-126). The physical reality of Victor’s internalized obsession—the generation of life—points to the careless manner it was carried out within his imagination; Victor pays hardly any attention to detail as can seen in the monster’s sloppily sutured appearance.

His impatience was to cost him dear, for the less than perfect end-product would, in appearance at least, emerge as nothing less than a monster, an outcast from any natural species of being (Smith 53).

After cursing the monster upon their encounter while on an excursion to the valley of Chamounix, Frankenstein, though initially resistant, agrees to listen to his creature’s story, the monster’s attempt at persuading Victor to comply with its request: the creation of a female partner. “If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your friends” (125). After a few considerations, Victor finally decides to hear the monster’s tale of mental exhaustion and physical exclusion: “For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were…to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness” (128). The fact that Victor experiences these feelings of creative responsibility for the “first time” after all that has happened to his monster highlights Victor’s lack of personal responsibility from the moment he decided on his project; these feelings came far too late.

Frankenstein’s pity and compassion are purely intellectual responses to his creature’s helplessness and misery and thus cannot withstand the physical reality of the monster as a ‘filthy mass that move[s] and talk[s]’ (Hustis 848).

Yet, this shortcoming of accountability will later be the inspiration and foundation for Frankenstein’s eventual refusal to create “one as deformed and horrible as [the monster]” (168).

As the only person capable of bestowing happiness on his creation, Victor hesitantly listens to the monster’s need for a female partner, a request it considers “reasonable and moderate” (170); this description of its demand exposes the disconnect between the monster and Victor’s line of reasoning. On the other hand, Victor’s acknowledgment that the monster’s mate may too become a malevolent force reveals his growing sensitization to the destructive potentials of his mind, the growth of hesitancy when approaching change. Nonetheless, Victor complies with the monster’s demands, his promise weighing on his mind “like Dante’s iron cowl on the heads of the hellish hypocrites” (173). And while he attempts to mend and free his spirit while held prisoner by this burdensome promise, Victor simply cannot rid himself of the unbreakable link to the beast; his inability to cope with the cycle he so negligently started the moment his obsession with the creation of the monster began—not when the life physically enters the monster—drives him to make a costly decision.

As Frankenstein sits down to reflect one evening after laboriously working on the female creature, he suddenly has an epiphany as reasons for not completing his work flood his mind. Of the scenarios Victor paints in his mind, his reasoning that the female “might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation” (190) not only provides the strongest argument for the abandonment of this new monster, but also points to Victor’s urge for mental fortifications against foreign invasions i.e. the monster’s persuasive skills that stirred his emotions, compelling him to create yet another creature. No longer will what remains of Victor’s mental integrity be compromised and subjected by external manifestations of his mind. He also considers the possibility of procreation between the monsters and their spread of horror among mankind. All of these potential threats culminate into a refusal to permit life: an abortion.

Victor Frankenstein [struggles] with the ethical consequences of an “unwanted pregnancy” of sorts, particularly when he undertakes and then abandons the creation of a female mate for his monster (Hustis 846).

By firmly deciding to abandon his project because the “hour of [his] weakness is past” (192), Victor enrages the monster and thus brings an end to any degree of anticipation or sense of possibility for both physical and spiritual regeneration.

This refusal to fulfill his promise points directly to Victor’s unwillingness to bring about any more change regardless of the ideal situation it could potentially bring about; he firmly resists the beauty, no matter how destructive, in the breakdown. Had everything gone according to the monster’s plan, he and his new mate would have quit the world of men and potentially lived “happily ever after,” leaving Victor the opportunity to reclaim what life remained, potential happiness. On the other hand, had one of Victor’s many predictions occurred, humanity could have been literally and figuratively swallowed by his monsters: “I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the existence of the whole human race” (190). Instead of risking either, instead of allowing for change to occur, Victor aborts the project all together so that the “stability” of his situation will take its toll (I chose to scare quote stability here because Victor’s unwillingness to be moved nonetheless results in turmoil).

Through his abortion of the female monster, Victor arguably suspends the master/slave relationship that had characterized his relationship with the monster as can be seen by the fact that the monster’s existence consumes and controls Victor’s mind. Watching the possibility of its future happiness quickly slip away, the monster desperately exclaims, “You are my creator, but I am your master; -obey!” (192) Yet, Victor firmly denies this order. And while this denial doesn’t necessarily reverse their relationship—Victor now the master and monster the slave—it certainly places Victor in a position that permits resolution, no matter how disastrous it may turn out: "I had before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair, as a thing that, with whatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but I now felt as if a film had been taken from before my eyes, and that I, for the first time, saw clearly" (195).

Once again the explicit mentioning of the “first time” proves important, for it does not indicate the beginning of progression, of revolution. Instead it marks the moment that any potential for change becomes suspended, denied; Victor will suffer whatever consequences this decision brings about. From this point in the narrative, one may argue that Victor’s continual, obsessive attempts to rid himself of the monster and its deadly burdens indicate a complete loss of control to his creation. On the contrary, these attempts simply act as coping mechanisms that distract readers from the fact that Victor has brought motion he recklessly started to an abrupt stop. Victor’s mental state now remains static upon the destruction of the creature that he naively created in a period “animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm” (79), radical disenchantment.

Because Victor does not allow for potential regeneration with his defiant refusal to create his monster’s mate—however catastrophic or ideal the results—he in return is denied entrance into the cycle of life, denied the ability to decay and be reabsorbed. Kept figuratively and literally preserved in a state of icy suspension, Victor’s life comes to an end in the Arctic Circle near the North Pole.

Much how Frankenstein creates the monster from the remnants of once-living beings, so too do people experience and create revolution from the lingering remnants of politically, socially, and economically held beliefs—the reorganization and recycling of ideas spurring new, sometimes-hideous thoughts and actions. As Mary Shelley states in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, “Every thing must have a beginning…and that beginning must be linked to something that went before” (356). With this in mind, Victor should not be considered the origin for the monster, but merely a stepping-stone towards something monstrous, and it is his realization of this role as a step towards something potentially greater—though initially realized in the monster—that now frightens him. This fearful resistance drives Victor to abandon his promise to the monster that in return permits Victor’s removal from a potentially monstrous cycle, an anti-Romantic move on the protagonist’s part. Once caught in the whirlwind of revolution, people cannot simply elude its events or escape the emotions spurred; they must choose how to internalize their feelings and shape reality even if it stares back with “yellow, watery, but speculative eyes” (357). Victor resists the process of shaping reality when he aborts his second monster and brings about a definite ending: the challenging of the pervasive, uninterrupted nature of Romanticism and Revolution.

Sources:

Hustis, Harriet. "Responsible Creativity and the "Modernity" of Mary Shelley's Prometheus." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 43.4 (2003): 845-858. Print.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, David Lorne Macdonald, and Kathleen Dorothy Scherf. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Broadview literary texts. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 1999.

Smith, Crosbie. “Frankenstein and Natural Magic.” Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity. Ed. Stephen Bann. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1994. 39-59

Final Paper, relating Romanticism in Lit. to Romanticism in Art.

2009-12-11T16:48:00.002-06:00

Chelsea Dellaripa

Janelle A. Schwartz

Romanticism In Literature

December 11, 2009

Throughout the course of the Romanticism in Literature class, there have been many works of Romantic literature that I have taken further interest in. As I began to expand my knowledge of certain Romantic poets and their pieces, I noticed that the use of Art to accompany the poems was a common trend. This intrigued me because as I am a Visual Arts major, it is exciting to be able to learn how art has been apart of history for so long, in this case, in the literature of the Romantic Era. Among the poems that we have studied, there was one that particularly stood out to me, William Blake’s The Book of Thel.

I stood in front of my Romanticism in Literature class with my fellow students while analyzing the cover plate to The Book of Thel that had been enlarged by the slide projector. I couldn’t help but marvel at the methods and colors the artist chose. This is the first piece of artwork that I had heard of, or even seen, that a Romantic poet had created. Our professor explained to us Blake’s method of creating this book, which was called Illuminated printing. I learned that this method of his was basically a reversal method of normal etching that Blake had invented and had later been used in commercial printing. The cover itself made me want to delve into his book. It was then that I embarked on my exploration of Art used in the Romantic Literature.

The beliefs and characteristics of Romantic poets and artists, although expressed in different ways, were generally that in the same. Romantics stressed the awe of nature in art and language and the experience of sublimity through a connection with nature. They legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority. The Romantic Poets, such as William Blake, habitually used metaphors in his writing to convey certain themes and objectives. Equivalently, he applied this method to his etchings. In his artwork, Blake developed precise techniques in order to produce specific associations in the mind of the viewer, such as endowing animals or inanimate objects with human values.

William Blake used a plate of etched artwork for every one of the six poems contained in The Book of Thel. Throughout this book, Blake proposes answers to the troubles and questions of the meaning of life. The character that he uses in the reading is Thel, a girl who is on the verge of sexuality, which is the state where most of her anxiety stems from. She fears that she will die as a worthless and forgotten human. Blake’s literature explicates the conflict between Thel's innocence and the world of outside experience. He describes Thel as a young, pale woman, and utilizes the figure of a lamb in his poem as an icon of innocence that he ties into Thel’s character. Thus referring to the curiosity of Thel when he describes Thel as one who is often wondering away from her “flock.” The artwork he etched coincides with this theme and could perhaps alone tell the story that the actual text in Blake’s poems does.

The fourth plate of The Book of Thel presents artwork alongside verse three of the poem. The positioning and colors of the subjects in the image correspond with the meaning that is established in the passage. On this plate, Blake has etched a hazy blue and pink background landscape. In front of the backdrop, there is a woman in a green, flowing gown with her arms spread out to her sides, positioned in such a way that it implies power or authority. This woman is standing over a green plant that is cradling a baby, all placed purposefully at the bottom of the etching. In the top left of the image, there is a male angel in a flowing white garment in the sky flying over and away from the woman and baby, however he is looking at them as he flies. There is much attention that Blake pays to detail if the etching is looked at closely. He also has made that picture so as to narrate the poem; therefore everything depicted in the illustration has a reason for the certain placements.

The text on the fourth plate is verse three of Blake’s poem. It is placed there because it is significant to the artwork that he did. In this verse of the poem (verse three) Blake frequently refers to a worm. He uses the worm as a figure of weakness and death of the mortal body, as well as death of sexual fulfillment. The worm also epitomizes decay and the necessary paradox of Thel’s decision to be born, and the struggle with that decision itself. In the beginning of the verse, he says, “I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lilly’s leaf.” This line refers to the baby that is nested in the plant. He later brings together the symbolism of the worm by saying, “Is this a Worm? I see thee lay helpless & naked: weeping.” Blake is replacing the worm for the baby in this line. He reveals the motive that the woman in the etching is emblematic to the poem, bowing over the baby, when he writes, “She bow'd over the weeping infant. and her life exhal'd.” Throughout the whole book, Blake’s character Thel carries with her the fear of death and decay of her body, which is yet an additional reason that worms are mentioned persistently.

William Blake’s The Book of Thel is said to be consistent with his early works, nonetheless proposing a romantic view of the innocence and experience of life. He has presented these views not only through his literature, but in his art as well. Collectively, the engravings that Blake has produced for The Book of Thel, narrate a story with a central theme of innocence and experience, both compromising our existence, the reality that we all must face in life.

Works Cited

Grundy, Thomas E. “An Eye of gifts & graces: A Reading of Blake's The Book of Thel” <http://ir.nul.nagoya-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2237/5464/1/BB004204049.pdf> December 1, 2009.

“The Book of Thel” <http://12koerbe.de/phosphoros/blake.htm> December 1, 2009.

“The William Blake Archive.” <http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/main.html> November 21, 2009.

I am a worm.

2009-12-10T07:36:00.002-06:00

I think that was the most influencial aspect of the course was that I able to relate myself to the characters throughout the semester. From the mariner's "mistake" to Isabelle's undying passion - there was something in each piece that I could understand or at least sympathize with. So what is a romantic? Well, I think we've pretty much figured out that there is no right answer - only good ones. It is reflection, it is passion, it is internalizing, it is externalizing...the romantics felt so many different things and exuded them through their works. What is interesting is that imaginative channeling into literature.
Like we were talking in classes before and a bit on our last class, is how the romantic period and romantic texts never end. They live on. Not like other genre's where the story will just be retold over again, but they actually live on. There is no resolution (besides the hybrid - "Wuthering Hieghts"). There is not clousure or feeling of satisfaction at the end of P. Shelly's piece or Blake's "The Book of Thell". Everything has the opportunity to be continued, which is the most powerful kind of literature. It forces the readers to wonder, but what is going to happen next??
So am I a romantic? You bet your ass I am. I reflect, I certainly have dwelled, and internalized. But like the romantics I have hope. My story will go on, I will grow, and I will rise from the destruction of my life. I am a worm. Yes, thats right. I am a worm. I proud of it.

"Only unfullfilled love can be romantic." -Vicky Christina Barcelona

So if only unfullfilled love can be romantic, then I guess we will never be totally complete. The story will never end.

P.S>>> I PROMISE I DID THIS BEFORE 12!!! BLOGGER KEPT SAYING: ERROR HTM>//

Last Post for the Semester

2009-12-09T23:44:00.002-06:00

I’ll be uncharacteristically brief in my last post. This blog will only contain a simple question to ponder, and nothing more. Wuthering Heights, similar to other poems and prose we read, keenly represents this distinct Romantic creativity and imagination. Such creativity exemplifies experimental boldness, unrestrained spirituality, untrammeled vision, as well as liberation, idealism, originality, and spontaneity. Throughout the semester, I’ve continually asked myself: how would the Romantics have reacted and responded to recent neurobiological studies on human creativity, which describes creativity as merely a modulation of neurotransmitters in the frontal lobe and an interaction of the frontal lobes with the temporal lobes and dopamine from the limbic system. How would they transcend this materialism?

In Love with the Byronic Hero .. er, Heroine.

2009-12-09T23:42:00.001-06:00

Okay, after all this talk about Lord Byron and his sex-capades and the Byronic hero, I did some reading on both. I wonder if there'll ever be a course dedicated to Byron and his "adventures," or even his literature .. ? Moving on; There's so much information surrounding the larger than life male characters from Manfred and Wuthering Heights (Manfred and Heathcliff, respectively), but the women that loved them (or that they loved) are considered not as important because they aren't the center. Of course, this made me consider WHY women can't be Byronic heros. There are many websites with lists of the personality traits of the BH, but none of them a gender-specific. Is the term Byronic hero exclusive only to males because of the inspiration from Lord Byron? If Catherine believed she was connected, in fact, to Heathcliff, wouldn't she be a Byronic hero? Of course, because she considered herself part of him and HE was the Byronic hero, then her gender was ultimately canceled out. Wait, did the term Byronic hero even come from Byron? When applied to the life of Byron, the BH is essentially Byron reincarnated into different characters. Considered extremely beautiful, mysterious, passionate and highly sexual, Byron was quite the character. Just ask the 200+ women that .. um, experienced (?) him. Where does the Byronic Heroine gain her inspiration, then? Considered a complex, independent character (1), the B Heroine would be vampy, dark, and sexual, the opposite to the respected madonna. Obviously, she gets no love because of her behavior. But where is the example for her, as the men have, arguably, Lord Byron? Modernly, we have Xena (warrior princess ..) but did she exist in the Romantic Period? Given the strict gender roles, the sexy Byronic Heroine may just be hiding, waiting to be discovered.

1. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI3034921/

Heathcliff, it's me--cathy

2009-12-09T23:26:00.003-06:00

Hey guys!! Here is a link to the video "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush. This is the song that we heard in class today. I think I'm going to download the video onto my Zune. The video is pretty good.

I hope you enjoy!!!
~G
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv0azq9GF_g

Impressions

2009-12-09T23:24:00.007-06:00

I really liked Sarah's idea of a personal farewell, so I decided to write one, too, especially since I was so quiet in class. First of all, I want to apologize for this, and I really get angry about it, every time I think about it. It was a difficult situation: my personal shyness combined with my feeling of being unable to translate and verbalize my thoughts. I somehow felt trapped in my own mind. I still feel trapped but hope that I will be able to cope this shyness in the near future, it really annoys me that I am seemingly not able to overcome my own doubts and boundaries.
Regardless of this personal 'problem', I enjoyed the class! I often had to struggle with the texts and became frustrated by trying to get the meaning of a poem. At the same time, this frustration was an incentive to continue my 'discovery'. I loved the class discussions as they added so much and offered new ways of interpretation. I think that the atmosphere in class was very fair and respectful. Sidenote about the twitter-thing: I became so used to it that I often wanted to tweet for other classes, too ;-)
This course was much more intense than I expected it to be. And it was good this way, I would not wish it to be different. So I not only learnt a lot about Romanticism but also about so much else, philosophical constructs, questions of belief and disbelief, power of imagination, boundaries.... This totally struck me! It works in my mind, my heart, my soul. My wish list for Christmas mostly consists of books: Milton's Paradise Lost, Kant, Blake...
To be honest, I can't remember any class since I attended university where I learnt so much in every sense! Together with "Capturing the Self", it was my favorite class.
I am unimaginably sad that I have to go back to Germany in less than a week. I really don't want to go. I realized that I actually like Loyola more than my University back home (bad ad...) . My reasons for Loyola: small university, personal and familiar , intense classes and teachers who are also interested in things beyond their subjects. And amazing people, of course. Being confronted with this 'detection' (approx. less than a week ago) I have a really, really, really hard time. I already now fear homesickness/wanderlust for Loyola. I will miss Loyola, New Orleans and all people so much, I don't even dare to think about this. I have never expected that this feeling could be so strong! Why has this semester abroad to end with such an inward struggle? In my head, my heart, my soul, everything seems to be a chaos.
So...thank you all for this amazing(!!!) class and experience.

The Shelleys and Byron...Oh, Byron.

2009-12-09T23:13:00.001-06:00

I realize that the cartoon beyond this link may seem inappropriate to some. Therefore, this is an official disclaimer---only click this link if you think that Lord Byron is as silly as I think he is.

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=56

Enjoy (I think)!

Percy Shelley's "Mutability"

2009-12-09T23:11:00.005-06:00

Having ended our class section on the Shelley’s, and now well into Wuthering Heights, I’ve been hit with an unexpected nostalgia, an emphatic longing for Mary and Percy Shelley’s profound imagination, keen philosophical insight, and poetic creativity. In my blog, I refrained from commenting on Frankenstein perhaps out of fear for my safety. Class debates were too heated. Some believed the novel belonged in the Western Canon along with the Bible; others believed reading the novel was a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Despite this, as a class, we seemed to share a rightful affinity for Percy Shelley’s “Mutability.” I, too, loved the poem’s skillful use of imagery, somber and musing tone, clever diction, and its quintessential Romantic sensibility. But its philosophical message? Not so much.

According to the poem, the only constant that humans can rely on is change and cyclicality. Lines 9-12 uncover the disadvantages of this type of existence, but the last stanza, especially the last three lines, strikes a positive chord: “The path of its departure still is free:/Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;/Nought may endure but Mutability.” Seeing no other option, one may find consolation in the idea that there will always be another day, whether it is in the individual’s immediate lifetime or in the future. But for Shelley, this constant moving teaches humankind about its possible futility or unimportance, perhaps anticipating an eye-opening point in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution; that is—humans are not the apex of evolution. It may also help humankind escape, as Shelley poignantly writes in the “Defense of Poetry,” “the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions.”

For me, mutability is monstrous and monotonous, forcing the individual human mind into a bland, cyclical prison. Even worse, mutability is a contradiction within itself. To put more or less simply, mutability is not mutable—it’s fixed and permanent. From endless sunsets and sunrises, myriad human life spans, measureless viruses, ceaseless social and economic changes, idea after tedious philosophical idea to countless, beautiful cosmic explosions, everything seems open-ended, not heading towards a meaningful end purpose. Luckily, I think my and Shelley’s conception of mutability is mistaken.

With a feline-like curiosity, I had always wondered why the short, imperative sentence, “Read Kant” was listed high in a self-help, how-to-be-happy checklist posted on the Internet by an unknown blogger. This was before my reading of Kant, of course. At present, I’m reading Kant’s Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. And fortunately, his view of time within this text has shattered my preconceived notion of mutability. Human perception of change is no different from our perception of time. According to Kant, we see space and time only as appearances, not as they are in themselves. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows," that objects "move through," or that is a "container" for events. Spatial measurements are used to quantify the extent of distances between objects, and temporal measurements are used to quantify the durations of and between events. Excuse the philosophical jargon, but time is an a priori intuition that allows us to comprehend sense experience. Giving “Mutability” a Kantian reading, the oppressive view of mutability dies. If wearing our Blakean “mind-forg’d manacles” mutability becomes an appearance, almost an illusion. What’s behind this appearance (excuse my Kantian category mistake in this sentence) belongs inside the imaginative, liberated Romantic mind.

2009-12-09T23:10:00.002-06:00

As I mentioned earlier today, this class has literally opened a can of worms in my brain. I feel compelled to re-examine all the works we have already read and delve deeper and deeper into the texts in order to find myself in them--where do I exist within the extremes of the Romantic state of mind and what can I take from their understanding of sorrow and sublime, life and death, transcendence and an empty existence. Is my vision so blurred from the chaos of contemporary life that I am missing what is always already there? That on a base level I am a living, breathing creature that lives and will die and what I choose to see in between sets forth the paradox of a cyclical existence that is at the same time grand, meaningful, powerful, arbitrary, and insignificant.

I guess reading Frankenstein brought these questions to the foreground focusing or the cyclical aspect of our human condition. Not only is the novel structured so that it begins and ends at the same time, but the characters within the text are constantly revolving their position as man or monster. Victor, the monster and Walton each play their part in the destruction and animation of life solidifying their function as doubles throughout the story and compounding the lurking theme of cyclicality in the text. The three characters exist as extensions of one another, with the monster and Victor especially switching roles as creator and destroyer. The first description given to us of Victor greatly resembles one we would imagine of the monster, suggesting that the seemingly polar extremes of man and monster are actually interconnected:

"I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness; but there are moments when, if anyone performs an act of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled. But he is generally melancholy and despairing; and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him."

Walton reanimates Victor so Victor may tell his story of giving life to the monster. As Frankenstein recounts his tale, he says, "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death." Here the link is made that in order to see the truth of one thing, you must look at what you assume to be its complete opposite only to discover that they are intrinsically connected. As the natural decay of the human form is manifested in the worms eating a rotting corpse, death and life are seen as a cohesive force.

I think that this is the contradiction underlying all of the Romantic works that we have looked at this semester, this idea of conflating contradictions in order to achieve a more accurate perspective of life. Surpassing just the themes of life and death and moving to simple action and emotion. There is always a negative that accompanies a positive in order to maintain balance in the force (sorry about the star wars reference, but that just emphasizes the point that Romanticism is definitely NOT dead!!). We are all frankensteins and monsters at different times in our lives and experience both pleasures and pains stronger than we ever thought possible. But my point is, I guess, very coarsely worded, is that reading these texts helped me to understand myself more re-evaluate my position in a big, messy, beautiful, chaotic, fucked up world.

The Nature of Evil (Inspired by Heathcliff)

2009-12-09T22:54:00.002-06:00

Last night I was with a friend on the third floor of Bobet rummaging through books piled outside Dr. Cotton's office, books which he was essentially giving away to the Loyola community. Professor Biguenet passed us by in the hallway and I decided, on a whim, to ask him whether or not he thought Heathcliff a character of pure evil. He said no and launched into a discussion on the nature of evil. This is a huge question for me and one with very real applications to a Romanticism class, especially so far as the Byronic hero is concerned. Is that hero evil? Are Manfred and Heathcliff evil people. Is misanthropy equivalent to evil? Does Frankenstein's desire to transcend humanity through knowledge and creation evil, and does the monster of Victor do more evil?

What is evil exactly? Biguenet told me about an Atlantic Monthly article written a few months after 9/11 where the author debated where or not the attacks were acts of pure evil. The religious fanatics which perpetrated them thought they were doing God's work on earth, which is a dangerous idea, but not a necessarily evil one. But the author focused on a tape which fell into U.S. hands of Osama Bin Ladin laughing at the images of people jumping out of the 1ooth floor of the burning buildings to their deaths. This aesthetic appreciation of murder and suffering is what constitutes evil, the author concluded. All other definitions of evil can simply be explained by people acting of self interest, fixating on their own lives above the good and rights of others.

Bringing this back to Romanticism, Heathcliff certainly relishes in the misery he brings. There is no repentance on his part and, unlike Victor's monster, the sufferings of Hindley, Hareton, Edgar, Isabella and the others are "music to his ears". But does this make him evil. I cannot answer such a question. I can only pose it.

2009-12-09T22:46:00.002-06:00

This started out as a response to a quote from Shelley's Defense of Poetry but ended up being a prose poem. I just went ahead and let it happen.

Shelley writes, "tragedy delights by affording a shadow of pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."

Spontaneous overflow of emotion--a laugh, a song, an expletive, a dance, a tear, a kiss. There exists within me overwhelming emotions that are all consuming, isolating, and force me to disregard all that reason dictates wrong. It is dark. It is bright--at times the warmth of a lover's embrace or the cold of a dark alleyway that reeks of stale urine and failure. Lie next to me and watch our dreams disappear down the neck of an empty whiskey bottle as the sun fades and takes my pride away. Leave me. My eyes burning with the ecstasy I stole from you but my lips want more. Don't leave me, tasting recklessness alone. Cut out my eyes and bury them in your breast so I can see your soul magnified. Knocked down, lifted up, immersed in a wet flame to flicker, swell, and exhaust.

Survey. You can't eat just one romanticism chip.

2009-12-09T21:01:00.004-06:00

The definitions of "Romanticism" which were supplied to us nearing the end of the course caused me to re-examine what we had read. With a more experienced lens, and with new knowledge gained from the course, I could more clearly and vividly understand our chosen collection of "legislators."

Since romanticism was an art, a brilliance, that sprung individually from the artists' minds, the writers works which we examined were all purely original. The interesting thing is that they all shared extremely common viewpoints on life. Their lives must have been fascinating, especially with no interruptions (cell phones and other external intrusions). How amazing it must have been for the romantic poets to meet each other, realizing that they all had similar, tortured, inspired, beautiful, painful images of the world around them. DeQuincey comes to mind here, because as a true wanderer, he was outcast even from the outcasts, themselves.

DeQuicey's "Confessions of an English Opuim Eater" was one of the most interesting works we have read, because it was so unique and he was so removed from the other romantics. DeQuincey's split persona of being on opium all of the time yet functioning added to his particular lifestyle and writing; always in search of himself. He had many realities and went about his life in a self-inflicted and self-invented madness. He is completely in his own mind, trapped within his physical self in a Blakian hell. His skull and heart blissfully bursting forward at the instant intake of opium, while he ached without it. His confessions are a glimpse into his life, exiled and looking down onto a smaller world. His walks among the streets and alleys at night must have awarded him a great feeling of freedom and creative energy, but at the same time a feeling of loneliness. The wider eyes of romantic poets take in more than they can handle, at times, and as they lament what has been lost, they destroy themselves in order to create brilliant works.

Speaking of a tortured, seemingly all-knowing soul, let's examine Percey Shelley. Examine him like the monster his second wife created through Victor in her birth of Frankenstein.Shelley's "Mutability" makes a good point about "Embrac(ing) fond woe, or cast(ing) our cares away" (ln. 12). DeQuincey or Coleridge may have appreicated some of Shelley's words, especially in the last stanza of this poem when he writes "It is the same! -- For be it joy or sorrow,/ The path of its departure still is free:/ Man's yesterday may ne'er be like this morrow;/ Nought may endure but Mutability" (ln. 13-16). Mutability, or subject to constant change, is what DeQuincey modeled his life around. Never having a planned night, mingling with whoever he ran into on the street, marketplace, or in a pub, always in an opium induced cloud-like.

“Mutability”. It’s just so perfect. “We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;/ How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,/ Streaking the darkness radiantly! – yet soon/ Night closes round, and they are lost for ever” (ln. 1-4). If the romantic writers are the “we” in this poem, they dart with complete, inspired, freedom, moving “restlessly” and leaving a “radiantly” marked trail in their wake. Once they are put out into the world, that is, out of their minds and into reality, they are corrupted and “lost.” Their true meaning, their innermost brilliance, as Percey Shelley would agree upon in his “Defence of Poetry”. If these legislators were acknowledged, they might gleam too brightly in the night, or not “veil” the “midnight moon” enough, to get their true feelings of despair and hope across to their audiences.

My Opening Farewell

2009-12-09T18:23:00.002-06:00

Yeah I have been listening to WAY to much Jackson Browne lately, if that is even possible.

I really loved this class, it was by far my favorite class this semester and the only light in what seemed like a dismal semester. The readings were fantastic, I truly liked reading every one of them and though I might not have liked everyone, I have actually learned something from everyone. How often does that happen in a class? Certainly not in any I am taking this semester. The discussions in this class were some of the best I have had in English classes and that is what made this class for me. As frustrating as they could be at times with different opinions, ideas on "sorority girls" and intense arguments, they were all great. At times, I learned so much from a fellow student and I changed completely the way I thought about a poem or a notion of romanticism. This is not to mention the most frustrating times when I personally could not find the words to describe the amazing ideas I believed to have in my mind. The discussions were also a lesson in discipline, respect and courage.

I personally did not enjoy Wuthering Heights that much. In truth, the challenge of reading it at finals time might have been a driving force behind this belief because I loved the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy as my last post shows. There is always something about destruction, the anti-hero and consumption that draws me into characters; they are always some of my favorites. I think that it was right for this to be the ending of the class though. This novel is all about ends; end of generations, end of love, hope, desperation and humanity. The utterly destructive nature of the characters as well as the settings of this novel is a really great final thought. I think the romantics (well I guess not Byron) really cared and thought about what the consequences to their actions were. This can certainly be applied to our reading of this novel and the terror of Wuthering Heights. Nice way to wrap it all up. Guess even the class was wrapped up in a little bow with a moral on the end.

Haunted beach photo...more "art-talk"...(sorry guys, im an artist)

2009-12-09T17:34:00.003-06:00

i don't mean to keep flappin my gums about art and everything, but i came across this picture online and immediately, Haunted Beach popped into my mind. There is something so eerie about this picture, yet elegant and whimsical....what do you guys think??

Romanticism in my major

2009-12-09T17:19:00.002-06:00

I have to say, that being a Visual Arts major, although easy at times, is extremely challenging and I often feel overworked. However, now that I'm into my 2nd year of being a visual arts major, I am finding more and more ways that it applies to different areas of education. With this being Romanticism in Literature class, I must emphasize how much I was able to connect it with art. I'm writing my paper on just this so i wont go into too much detail, but hopefully yall will get a sneak peek at my point... i noticed art in the poems and books we read had so much description that i was able to paint a picture in my mind. I find it difficult at times to put that much visualization into words on paper. I really felt most of the time that I was with the author of the literature we were reading. It fascinated me, and I'm positive will keep doing so as I continue with my major and being exposed to more Romantic literature.

Jackson Browne, Heathcliff and Les Liasisons Dangereuses

2009-12-09T17:07:00.003-06:00

The other day, when first starting Wuthering Heights I was listening to Jackson Browne and the song "I'm Alive" came up. Browne is first starts singing about losing a love and how he would have done something to keep that love if he had the chance. The whole story is that Browne has lost someone that he loves immensely yet he hates and is glad is gone; the entire song is this back and forth motion of thinking about this person, being haunted, and yet wanting to escape to where he will never think of them again. He is so glad they are gone yet can't bear to stop thinking of his heart in their hands. This immediately made me think of the consuming relationship of Heathcliff and Cathy, which we sort of touched on today in class. The idea of being so consumed with something that it can literally drive you insane, reach to your lowest points in life of sorrow and evil as well as bring you immense happiness and love is such a reckless, romantic, scary idea. It is this consumption that will lead you to do whatever you must to be with this person as well as tearing them apart. Browne has a lyric,"And I will follow through/With my beautiful plans," which makes me think of the games that Heathcliff and Cathy play. They have these plans of destruction and rapture that they believe are right, true and beautiful in nature. This also made me think of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liasisons Dangereuses. These two characters are so literally obsessed with each other and themselves at the same time that they want to destroy everything about each other and yet are desperately in love with each other. In the case of Heathcliff and Cathy, they do not want to admit, and certainly not be the first to admit, that they desire each other so strongly so they begin to hate each other. This hatred comes from the desire to be with that person so badly as well as the almost rejection they feel by not getting that love back. This leads them to want to destroy them because they hurt so badly; it is just like the old saying, "can't live with them, can't live without them." Consumption is almost the true terror of this story (along with the setting in my opinion) because it is the absolute demise of these two people and in turn, everyone around them. Consumption is the not just the path that these characters choose to go down, but the one they run to. It is all about the "time wasted and pleasure tasted" in the words of Jackson Browne for Heathcliff and Cathy.

The Modern Day Albatross

2009-12-09T13:30:00.002-06:00

The Ancient Mariner made a terrible decision and for it he was punished. But the punishment was not simply shame and ridicule but a curse on him and on those around him. The Albatross itself was a temporary punishment and burden that existed as a sign of things to come.
I wonder personally if there was something modern that could reflect or be considered parallel to the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Perhaps not because the author gave thought to it, but simply through the emotions and the process by which the Ancient Mariner made the mistake, and was punished to the point of which he told the story to others, perhaps for the rest of eternity.
But what could fit humanity as a curse that at first may have seemed like a good idea, and today continues to haunt us and forces us to retell stories and warnings? If such a thing were to exist, who would we tell besides our children? Would it matter all that much, or is it simply worth it to leave the message where it is and when it was?
Now you may laugh at this, but from a modern perspective it does not seem like a stretch to find nuclear weaponry as a modern day version of the albatross. While obviously it does not live, the act of using a nuclear weapon sends a clear message, to the point that a countries power becomes, or can become, relative to how many nuclear bombs they have in their arsenal.
The single act of creating this bomb changed the face of an entire war (World War II) and then the course of history by adding a new and more global threat to the negotiating tables. A new form of raising the bar as far as equality went, and of course a curse that hangs over our heads.
Of course, no supernatural creature is watching over us and throwing dice in order to decide on our fate and punishment, but that's what the leaders of our government are for. At the same time, we are not responsible for the first creation of the nuclear bomb that eventually became produced and infamous today. But the same can be said of the crew of the Ancient Mariner, who were not responsible (directly) with the death of the Albatross.
What does this all mean? I find that it could mean that using old poetry and connecting it to the modern day world is possible, and sometimes can actually fit pretty well. Just seems like a good way to garner more interest in poetry that seems out-of-date in the eyes of many people.

The Monster vs. Christ

2009-12-08T23:19:00.000-06:00

Comparing the "Birth" of Frankenstein's Monster to the Birth of Christ

M: "Born" from a man, no woman

JC: Born from a woman, no man

M: "Born" at a November night, during a thunderstorm

JC: Arguably, born a December night, under clear skies

M: Takes lives.

JC: Gives back life, from resurrection.

While the birth of Christ is arguably feminist based, having occured with no natural man, the creation of the monster occurs completely by a man. It was Victor who, "infused the spark of life into the lifeless body at his feet." What makes Christ's birth sacred and free of sin is the absence of a man. The monster's creation leads to the destruction of lives and proves problematic to the his creator, while Christ's life leads to the creation of a religion.

Consider the "sex" of it all:

Frankenstein:

1. Infuse the spark of life in a ... form.

2. Victor's candle nearly burnt out

3. Monster's eye opens

4. Hard breath, followed by convulsion that agitated the limbs.

Christ (from the Bible)

1. And the angel answered and said to her [Mary], "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you .." -Luke 1:35

Human, and Knowledge, and History, Oh My!

2009-12-08T22:45:00.000-06:00

The scene where the monster is talking to the blind man opened my eyes to many questions and ideas about Frankenstein. Not only did I empathize with the creature’s immense grief, I also criticized the family’s inability to know the monster, a cruel and inhumane act in itself. Appearances often deceive; it seems a habit of humans to immediately judge a book by its cover. Although, he is initially upset and wants to avenge himself on the family, the monster reconsiders to give the family another chance. This hope is short-lived, but it also shows the full range of emotions the monster has. If the family knew the monster as the reader does, maybe they would not run away. Then again, maybe it is better to be blind like the old man, simply accept what we cannot see and go by our gut. Maybe knowledge does not have all the right answers. Or maybe it does.

As a said earlier, the family running away seems like a cruel and inhumane act. However, how cruel could it be when they did not really understand what was going on? Despite this, knowledge itself, and knowledge of the human condition is the main focus of the book. But I think it is important to note a base knowledge of history shows us that humans can be inhumane, even monstrous; something that I think we often forget. The creature is surprised to learn this from Volney’s Ruins of Empires:

Was man, indeed, once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike… I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing” (145).

Man uses military knowledge to conquer. Military knowledge spawns from technological advances. However, too little knowledge, like the absence of technological advances, or the flooding of knowledge, such as not knowing what to focus on next, is an empire’s downfall. Mary Shelley certainly would certainly be familiar with the emergence of the British Empire at this time and the role the Industrial Revolution played in it’s advancement. This causes me to wonder how much is Frankenstein a social commentary on the period? For example, industrialization also caused a lot of social fluctuation. Due to Victor’s superfluous upbringing, he often acts like a child and runs away from his problems. Everything is seemingly always about him. Is Victor’s monstrosity a result of his rich and selfish childhood? Do humans encourage inhumanity in one another either through power, technology, or knowledge? Is inhumanity a part of being human? I don’t really expect an answer to these questions. I don’t think I really want them either. I just want to send these questions out into the void…

[Insert Clever Title Here]

2009-12-08T16:33:00.001-06:00

Having never read it before, I expected to hate Wuthering Heights. My main aversion was that it contained Megan’s “soap opera” aspect, complex and exaggerated relations that would never occur in real, day-to-day life. Domesticity and exaggeration were originally paradoxical to me. However, I was particularly struck by the insights on people in the novel, especially that of façades. In my reading, the text seemed to be more layered than Frankenstein, possibly due to the rounded characterization of the narrators. When reading Frankenstein, Walter, whom we know virtually nothing about other than he is seeking knowledge in the Arctic, writes Victor’s story to his sister. This ‘everyman’ character’s descriptions do not shadow the characters Victor and the monster like in Bronte’s novel. There was no lens to see through, other than Victor’s, which was easily identifiable. In other words, in my reading, the narrations tended to be unbiased in terms of characterization in Frankenstein. Albeit in Wuthering Heights, Lockwood frames the story told by Nelly, but he is obviously a pretentious and vain gentleman. Additionally, Nelly’s ulterior motives, suggesting Lockwood marry young Cathy in order to save her, taint Nelly’s previous observations on the individuals. Lockwood’s constant interruptions also helped remind me that Nelly’s story had already occurred. And although I recognized their faults, Nelly and Lockwood’s characterizations still shadowed my judgment of the characters; this is the darkness that lingers in the background, which echoes the environment. We do not truly know what is happening underneath these narrations.

This element of mystery made me suffer from Manfred-itis; I wanted to know what was going on in between the lines. What really happens between Heathcliff and Catherine when Nelly leaves to go get Edgar and he eventually punches Heathcliff? Should I watch a film adaptation or two to fill in the gaps? There are only rare scenes where Catherine and Heathcliff are together discussing anything. In fact, I did not truly understand the depth of Heathcliff and Cathy’s affection or their personalities until Catherine dies. This leads me to question whether we can only understand or identify certain things, such as human emotions, with the existence of extremities. Romanticism, in general, magnifies emotions. Do we really need a monster to allow us to realize that Victor is the ‘actual monster,’ for instance?

Defending Frankenstein's Humanity (a response to Keaton)

2009-12-08T13:30:00.002-06:00

I will preface this post by saying two things. First of all, I am winging it in not having the primary text in front of me (it being returned to the library). I will have to work from memory alone and thus this post is not as professional as it could be. Second, I am taking issue only with Keaton's refusal to answer the question of whether or not the monster is human. I wholeheartedly agree with his idea of reflexive humanity running through the book, with it being a romantic idea and with his linking of Frankenstein to Blade Runner. I think Keaton's conclusion about empathy being a distinctly human trait is right on the mark. I only insist he could go further with it and decisively conclude that the monster is a human being.

The question of what it means to be a human being and of whether or not the monster is human is certainly one of the major reasons why Frankenstein is canonical to Romanticism and is widely read today. But I don't think Shelly means it to be just a question. I think we readers are meant to draw away a singular answer of "yes" to the question and that Shelly herself argues this point in her text. I believe her primary argument is in the character of Victor, although various capacities and feelings of the monster himself are also evidence for his humanity.

Of course, the question of "what is a human being ?" is difficult to answer. Perhaps every organism biologically human is a human being. I would argue for that definition of humanity. But there is a certain dignity at stake in the debate over humanness, a dignity depending on a "humanness" transcending biology. Whomever is decided worthy of the title "human" is afforded rights and handed responsibilities so that they might be able to live in society and promote the common good. This dignity presupposes a certain common purpose to life, whatever that might be, beyond mere survival. And as such, biological definitions of humanity simply won't do. Yet the exclusion of groups of biological human beings from the community of humanity is horrific. Such systems of thought are the forces behind the holocaust, the killing fields, slavery, the oppression of women, racism, homophobia, etc. Anytime a group of biological human beings begin to be called something less then human, people are about to lose their rights, their freedom and their lives. Hence we talk about capacities for language, reason, freedom of the will, love, society, and religion as fundamentally human traits. But no one of these capacities defines us as human. Hermits are human, as are retarded people, as are mute and deaf people. These characteristics, as Keaton suggests, are human (adjective), but they are not equal with human (noun). But biological humanity may not be the totality of humanity either, as increased technological capacities may make artificial intelligence possible. If creatures made of metal and plastic, creatures containing no biological humanity, come to us, speak our language and express consciousness, rationality and love, then who are we to turn them away. Perhaps the best answer to the question of what it means to be a human being is in a negation. If you have any human qualities, including biological humanity, it may not make you human, but you cannot be called not human with any certainty. And if you cannot be called not human, the best thing to do is to treat you as human.

Shelly ascribes the monster definite human qualities. First, he is biologically a human being. He is made of body parts reanimated and shares the genes of many human beings. Hence, biologically he is almost more human than humans. He has capacities for language, literature, philosophy and history. He seeks companionship, affection and love. He desires a romantic soul mate and he possess the capacity for altruism. After his alienation from the family who's hovel he lived in, he begins a murderous spree of revenge against Victor's loved ones. These actions lead many to think him subhuman or a monster. But these actions too are human possibilities. Its not like no human has murdered or sought revenge before. And Victor, after the monster kills Elizabeth, is filled with murderous anger and seeks his creation to the ends of the earth for the purpose of destroying him. The monster's story is not unlike many serial killers who grew up hated and abused and returned that hatred to the rest of the world.

Shelly would not have made the interplay between the monster and Victor so ironic if she did not want to emphasize the former's humanity. Victor's misery begins when he seeks the secrets of life and wants to play God by creating his own race of creatures. Victor suffers for it the whole book, but to the end cannot accept the bounds of humanity. He urges Whalton to inspire his sailors to go onward in the Artic, towards their deaths even, in order to become "more than men". In contrast, all the monster desires is inclusion in the community of humanity, despite of his ugliness and deformity. His alienation from humanity is what drives him to murder. Yet, while he is murdering he still has more remorse and empathy for others than Victor. Victor sees only his own misery in the monster's existence and is so self-centered as to think the monster will kill him and not Elizabeth. I think Shelly fills the scenes at the hovel with such pathos as to convince readers that all this misery would not have happened if the monster had only been accepted as human. Overall, I would say the monster's primary motivation is to be human and Victor's to be more than human. If to be a monster is to not be human, and vice versa, Victor is more the monster than the monster is.

Perhaps the category of monster exists because there are some actions so evil, we humans don't want to acknowledge them as possibilities of our lives. But the holocaust was committed by human beings. Slavery was a human system. And Frankenstein's monster is a human being. Only when we throw of the category of "monster" can we truly address the evil in humanity.

Rafiq's Lame Poetry

2009-12-08T10:16:00.005-06:00

The Rain and the Roof

The rain and the roof met last night

In the darkness of the covered moon,

It was evident with a flash and groan

That the thunder did not approve.

The rain pitted down against the tile

And the roof sounded with taps and knocks,

The water ran fast through the cracks

And dripped off onto to the rocks.

The rain threw affection,

The roof pushed away,

But neither would cease

Even past the day.

Those inside and out

Could hear their loud game,

The two were not shy

And they both would not wane.

While the thunder might grumble

And cause a stir to sleeping heads,

The rain patted rhythmically

And the roof protected their beds.

A friendship or a love,

Or perhaps nothing at all

But the lullaby would come

Through winter, spring, summer and fall.

It could be said, of course

That the roof and the rain enjoy

Too much for a manmade invention

And a specter of natures employ.

The two exist against each other,

One made to solve the other

Who expected that their meetings

Would bring more than dry cover.

The roof and the rain met last night

Under the darkness of the covered moon,

It was evident with a flash and groan,

That the thunder did not approve.

I was trying to fall asleep last night when the rain started to fall, pretty hard I might add. I was listening to it though, and letting it help me fall asleep when the first line of this poem came to my mind. And then the thunder grumbled as if in protest to my thoughts.

I’m not sure why I wrote it, or how well it fits with Romanticism. There is an obviously natural element, a few if you take the thunder and lightning and then of course the rain. And then there are human characteristics for all of these elements at the same time. I really did wonder who would have imagined that rain and roof could create a lullaby that would help some (me at the very least) fall into a restful sleep.

I just find it strange that the roof was created to keep elements like the rain away from us, cause we were so afraid of it soaking us, making us sick. Yet, once you listen to it against the roof, it doesn't sound or feel all that bad. Obviously because we aren't getting soaked by the rain and getting sick because of it, but also because it is a little soothing. Rain without the roof would be cold and sucky. And a roof without the rain might seem pointless, even dull.

Wuthering Heights Virgin

2009-12-07T15:01:00.002-06:00

Having just finished reading the first half of Wuthering Heights for the first time, I felt disillusioned by the chaos that was created by the intensity of the characters’ emotions and their conflicting life pursuits. Keeping Romanticism and its reoccurring themes in mind, I particularly paid attention to the varying roles nature played, both intimate and threatening. Throughout the first half, the weather not only brought illnesses upon most of the characters, but also physically kept them from many of their journeys, ultimately putting a limit on human ambition. Even animal life—namely the many dogs Heathcliff kept in Wuthering Heights—in the beginning scenes of the novel came across as sinister; many interactions with the natural world ended in insult or injury. The setting of the novel itself at Wuthering Heights highlights the wild, untamed aspects of the natural world as storms continually come down upon this house of so much human misery.

Plowing through the novel, I was amazed at the madness that permeated throughout the minds of the characters, even Mr. Lockwood as the tale surrounding his current tenant increasingly entrances him. Also throughout this course, particularly when reading Blake, we have discussed the child/youth as a possible means of reaching a more profound understanding of our circumstances, the varying roles we play here on earth along side “Mother Nature.” Yet, in this novel I did not come across the embracing or understanding of youth, but the wickedness of children and the intentional corruption of said children by “older, wiser” adults.

Bringing this novel up in conversations, I’ll often encounter sighs and comparisons of Wuthering Heights as an extension of the soap opera, “save the drama for your mama” types of attitudes. However, I refuse to take this approach; my perspective of this novel will not be distracted and distorted by the often times dramatic behaviors of the characters. Instead, I view much of what I have read so far as a search for self-identity in a world on the periphery of society at large, nature continually posing as both enemy and ally.

Get out your ironing wine, it's time for some Soaps!

2009-12-07T14:28:00.004-06:00

I have been overhearing my classmates gossiping about Wuthering Heights and how melodramatic they think the characters are. I've already put out my opinion about the swooning and frail Victor Frankenstein in class, but I thought I could validate our feelings about Wuthering Heights a bit more on the blog. Romantics were melodramatic, end of story. They sought to deal with the gravity of the human emotions, to manifest them in the physicality of their characters, and they did so, with a few extra hankies thrown in. I argue that dramatic romantic narratives have been remanifested in the modern cultural phenomenon THE SOAP OPERA.

Catherine Earnshaw comes off as a weak woman because she is so strong in spirit that she physically cannot handle her own hurricane of emotions. Heathcliff is hard-headed; he has formed his shell to such an extreme, that he can only be with Catherine when she is dead. Whatever story revolves around these two, whoever becomes involved with them, whatever lies in their path, is destined to be swept into the fire of drama that makes Wuthering Heights a classic.

What then do soap operas have to do with this? If you do your daytime ironing in front of the TV, or have ever been channel surfing and have stopped to briefly giggle at General Hospital or One Life to Live, you are guaranteed nonstop, hard-reality-filled drama. Bronte's story takes place in the fictional world, but pulls out no stops to bombard its characters with some of the harshest realities people can experience. Heathcliff is an orphan, he is eventually dejected by Hindley, Hindley is an abusive alcoholic, he also raises an evil spawn, Hareton, Heathcliff can never win Catherine because she is only attracted to refined men, she marries one, Heathcliff leaves in a passionate fit, Catherine, in a swoon, falls deathly ill, never to recover, Heathcliff marries Catherine's refined husband's sister as a stab at Catherine...I won't go on. Soap operas thrive on plots such as these, open-ended and malleable, because they present real human dramas; the secrets between loved ones and families that can never be exposed, what goes on behind closed doors. Bronte's drama manifested in todays soaps comes out to be a never ending cycle of missing brides, twins who steal each other’s identities, abortions, birth defects, job loss, alcoholism and drug addiction, crimes of all sorts, fatal car accidents, fatal diseases, miracle cures of fatal diseases, and more. The characters no longer seem to be agreeable when the facade is cast away and we must watch them flounder in their own bad decisions.

The insular nature of the setting is just like the small worlds created on soap operas. The suffocating world created by Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange only presents the characters with so many options; they've grown up together, they must marry each other, they must die together. Soap opera characters are locked into small worlds because, when everyone is packed into a small town together, things are bound to happen; think of bacteria growing in agar. With characters that refuse to resolve personal and relational issues, a small, inescapable world can be killer.

So we may see Victor and Catherine as wussies, Heathcliff as insufferable, and soap operas as ridiculous, but they are merely concentrated presentations of the everyday dramatics of life and the emotional turmoil which inevitably comes with them. If you pretend that you don't want to pick up those celebrity tabloids while you're waiting in line at the grocery story, you're lying. We are fascinated with the secret underbellies of our fellow humans, soap operas and Emily Bronte simply made art of it.

Frankenstein: Reflexive Humanity and Blade Runner

2009-12-07T03:23:00.004-06:00

While discussing Frankenstein, we frequently raised the question of the creature’s humanity: is the creature human or isn’t he? In many ways this is a loaded question, one that we, as human beings, cannot possibly answer, probably because we cannot possibly determine what qualities a living thing must possess in order for us to classify it as human. Questions of biology, morality, and language (among others) arise, allowing us to ask the following:

1) Must a living thing be created in the image of a human (i.e. anthropomorphic) in order for it to be considered human?
2) Must human beings act in accordance with human morals/ethics (whatever these may be)?
3) Is language a prerequisite for human classification?

While all of these questions certainly seem worthy of debate, they are, in all likelihood, questions that we will never reach any sort of agreement upon, at least not anytime soon (there’s a reason that people have been discussing these types of questions since Mary Shelley’s novel was first published in 1818). Therefore, it is not my intention to attempt to provide answers to them.

I would, however, like to cite a passage from an essay that addresses this general issue (i.e. the creature’s struggle for humanity). Timothy Morton, the author of the essay, writes the following:

We could call this obsession with the possibility of being human reflexive humanity. It is a very Romantic notion and is thus, not surprisingly, found in Frankenstein. It is the creature’s demand to be treated as a human being that makes him a human being: the contrast between the abstractness of that demand and the concreteness of his horrific body and his doomed situation is what makes this novel both tragic and utopian.

In citing this passage, it is not my intention to provide answers to the aforementioned questions. Rather, I am looking for discussion: why is “reflexive humanity” (which I interpret as thinking about humanity, thinking about being human) a “very Romantic notion”?

If my interpretation of “reflexive humanity” is correct (i.e. thinking about humanity), and if, as Morton maintains, this concept is a Romantic one, then I am instantly reminded of a passage from Chapter II of Frankenstein, when Victor utters “If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us” (124). Victor is echoing one of the key points in Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring”: it is our ability to think, our ability to “Bring sad thoughts to the mind,” that causes so much of our emotional instability, while, at the same time, it remains the very thing that makes us human. I’ll conclude my analysis here, but I’d be interested to see what the rest of the class thinks about Morton’s concept of “reflexive humanity.”

In addition, I’d like to discuss Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, which Morton explicitly mentions in his essay. Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, addresses (like the novel) many of the issues that are found in Frankenstein, most notably the question: what does it mean to be human? My intention, once again, is not to provide any sort of answer to this question, nor to any of the questions mentioned above, but rather to point out some parallels between Shelley’s novel and the film in hopes of drawing some sort of conclusion.

In BR, humans build ‘replicants’ (the film’s term for androids, i.e. robots made to resemble humans) that they exploit for off-colony (i.e. not on Earth) work. In addition to being manufactured with bodies and/or brains that are perfectly equipped for a specific kind of labor, replicants are implanted with false memories that give them the impression that they have lived full lives, when in fact they are built with short-term obsolescence: after four years of existence, they will cease to operate.

In BR, we find again the terror that we first found in Frankenstein: replicants, which both act and appear human, force us not only to reconsider what it is that makes one human—they also force us to question our own humanity. To distinguish replicants from real humans, ‘blade runners’ (the film’s term for cops that are hired to ‘retire’ (i.e. kill) rebellious androids) subject alleged replicants to a test that determines their emphatic capabilities: in both the film and the novel, empathy is a human quality only, one that androids do not possess. Yet in the film, only the opposite is discovered to be true. The only character in the film to display any type of emotion is Roy Batty, an android who cries over the death of another android.

If we translate this question of empathy to Frankenstein, we get an interesting conclusion: the creature, like the replicants, is in many ways more emphatic than Victor. To cite an example, we might mention the creature’s remarks to Walton at the close of the novel, where we get a more objective look at the creature (in the sense that his statements are not subjected to Victor’s scrutiny). For he says: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture, such as you cannot even imagine” (241). It is at this point that we feel for the creature—we empathize with him—and it is through this empathy that we come to the conclusion that the creature, if not empathic, has, at the very least, “failed better at empathy” than Victor, to use Janelle’s phrasing.

BR draws directly from Frankenstein several times. Roy Batty, while speaking to his creator, mimics the creature’s narrative recitation to Victor when he states: “If only you could see what I have seen…with your eyes.” Roy Batty’s closing monologue before his death closely resembles the creature’s final words to Walton. And, finally, when Roy Batty dies, Rick Deckard, the blade runner who was hired to kill him, is present to hear his last words, and it is through Deckard’s perspective, much like Walton’s, that we are able to get a story. Roy Batty even recites William Blake’s America A Prophecy. The point is, there is no shortage of references to Romanticism in BR. Therefore, I’d advise anyone who hasn’t seen to check it out, and anyone who has seen it to watch it again and apply all of your new Romanticism knowledge to your viewing experience.

Frankenstein's Monster Morphs

2009-12-04T12:57:00.018-06:00

There have been so many renderings of how Frankenstein's monster looks over time. It is also interesting that the monster's name has become Frankenstein, possibly due to a play on words in which the monster is part of Victor, or maybe it is just out of convenience because the monster was not given a name in the novel. Here are some images of Frankenstein throughout the ages, through art and comics. Here are two examples.

*Closer to the novel Frankenstein, stitched and bolted together - Painting by Gerald Brom entitled "Alone." Brom likens the title of the painting to the monster's words in the novel when he says: “I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth… I have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster.”
*New idea of Frankenstein - Steve Skroce's comic book "Doc Frankenstein" issue #6. Frankenstein gets captured by the "evil Catholic Church of the future" (Skorce) where they attempt an exorcism. Frankenstein then begins his work on a super-weapon to destroy his "clerical captors" (Amacker).

Theoretical Approaches to Frankenstein

2009-12-04T11:26:00.003-06:00

While I thoroughly enjoyed reading Frankenstein for the first time, I’ve had trouble jumping into a discussion of the text on the blog; I needed a focus, a perspective: an article to discuss. Thankfully, Dr. Schwartz provided me with such an article. Entitled “Frankenstein, feminism, and literary theory,” this article written by Diane Long Hoeveler not only addresses how feminist writers have approached this novel in a multitude of ways, but also new and developing theories including queer theory and disability studies. Because it may be boring to some to sum up the entire article, I’ve decided to mention a few of the ideas that I thought particularly interesting.

Taking the French feminist approach—that which concerns itself with the masculine-dominated system of language that produces meanings and often times erases women’s contributions—the author views Frankenstein as a prime example of “a specifically feminine form of language…based on female subjectivity:” l’écriture feminine. Readers are able to see this style described in Shelley’s introduction when she describes her creation, Frankenstein, as a “hideous progeny,” her monster that will go forth and haunt the memories of all those who read her work. I found this perspective particularly interesting because calls into question the foundation for the novel’s language, revealing its fragility much like the fragility of the monster’s foundation: Victor.

I also found Peter Brooks’ reading Lacanian reading of Frankenstein fascinating as well. Believing that psychoanalysis was driven by the stages in which one engages in the language process, Lacan believed that all discourse could be understood only through a desirous approach in which everyone becomes engaged in the hunt for unattainable: "a lost and unachievable object, as if moving incessantly along a chain of unstable signifiers without any possibility of coming to any final point of meaning or fixed significance. Taking Lacan’s teachings into account, Brooks believed that the creature’s monstrosity resulted in his inability to engage in “the signifying chain and language.” Because of this, the monster cannot gain meaning, cannot fully become human. Regardless of the monster learning to speak a particular language, it nonetheless experiences extreme alienation because of his origin as “other.”

I’d like to end this particular blog on my favorite approach towards Frankenstein discussed in the article, that of disability studies. According to Simi Linton, disability studies calls into question the “constricted, inaccurate, and inhumane concepts of disability,” particularly the notion that disabilities are primarily medical. Because the monster’s “ugly” appearance and ambiguous gender, one can view Victor’s creation as a disabled figure because it defies Mary Shelley’s society that places value on physical beauty, conformity, and stable, strict notions of gender. Taking a biological approach, Stephen Jay Gould asserted that the explanation for the characters’ rejection of the monster resulted because of a mamalian pattern in which instincts guide us away from the malformed. Arguments such as these add heavily to the nature vs. nurture debate.

While there were more perspectives taken towards this novel described in the article, I found the above-mentioned takes to be particularly provocative to our own approaches towards reading Frankenstein.

Kant's view on aesthetics & the sublime...explained through comic books!

2009-12-01T19:46:00.002-06:00

http://io9.com/5416569/kants-philosophy-on-aesthetics-explained-through-comic-book-art

Sorry to overload this blog with videos, but this stuff just keeps popping up everywhere. For anyone who was interested in our discussion of Kant and the sublime, check this video out---the speaker explains Kant's views through comic books, which is both silly and creative. (I know the audio is bad.)

Enjoy!

- Keaton

Sea worms eating the corpse of a seal

2009-11-30T17:21:00.002-06:00

http://io9.com/5415620/deadly-worms-and-ravenous-sea-stars-engage-in-a-monster-feeding-frenzy

I figured I'd post this. It's a short video featuring sea worms (and other ocean-dwelling creatures) ripping through the corpse of a dead seal. I think the voiceover mentioned that these worms are almost 3 meters long---WOAH! Try to enjoy; personally, I found it disgusting!

Have a good day!

Romantic Blogging

2009-11-30T14:16:00.007-06:00

Honestly, I have been having a hard time blogging about the romantic writings that we have studied. There seems to be a sort of dire disconnect, beyond the immediate removal from time and place, from the piece of literature to the technology, that I can not overcome whenever I sit down to blog. So when my friend said she was going to a seminar on blogging (with free beer), I decided to see if I could gain some perspective.

I thought about the composition of a romantic work and that of a blog; is blogging a forum through which we can truly address our emotions "recollected in tranquility"? I would argue that the very nature of the blogging often deters us from this. Blogs, as I was told, are meant to be malleable and concise because of the media to which they are tied. The nature of the Internet is far removed from knowledge as it had once been viewed. Yet in its essence it is simply a a vast linkage of all material knowledge translated into indecipherable codes in a seemingly unearthly realm (alas Blake would not find full freedom from the material on the web)? So why do people feel they can say all sorts of things on the web that they cannot in their everyday life? And what about that malleable nature of what we post? When we have the ability to monitor who exactly visits our site and can delete whatever critical comments we feel offend us, are we really ever allowing true human discussion and ideas to fully form? As we looked at bodies of text as if they were Frankenstein's monster, when we publish a book, we cannot control it; once it is published, the creation becomes its own entity. With blogs we can shape and reshape our creation over and over (I've edited this three times). We do not have to stick by our ideas therefore we do not let the creation stand for itself. It is as if we are frightened to let it do so anymore.

The Internet seems to satisfy our Manfredian desire to know everything, to have every power at our fingertips, yet we do not want this power to belong to everyone else when it comes to exposing our own ideas. The Internet is certainly out of any individual's control, yet we believe there is some power out there that could send it crashing down (bring the actual world down with it?). Tangible books and hard copies of writing have not really changed format; perhaps they represent Blakeian heaven, and the internet, always changing and remanifesting itself, is his hell. Can one truly get by today without descending into the possible evil of the web? Will this hell devour all the hard-back books that belong to heaven? If this happens, could the internet possibly decay taking all knowledge with it? What type of worm would wriggle through the lines of html and what would come out the other end?

The Capitol Ruins

2009-11-30T13:35:00.002-06:00

During my yearly stays in Maryland for Thanksgiving, I remember how much I miss seeing the trees in Fall and moving into winter. I drove by a landscape on a dreary, gray day on the side of a winding road. There were several trees, completely stark, black and set against the overcast, lit, sky. In the midst of these wintered trees stood a smaller tree with brown bark peeling into white. The tree held the same red-orange leaves which blanketed the entire area as well as the receding forest.

At around 5:00pm on Saturday, Renee (friend since 5th grade), Sam (her boyfriend), and I drove to Rock Creek Park and parked near stables which Sam claimed should not have existed in a small park in the middle of D.C. We walked down through a forest (different forest) along the multiple horse trails, finding nobody but ourselves and one passing runner there. We came upon a large puddle of muddy water which surrounded the beginning curve of an open area filled with piles of various items. It was a large ring, a clearing in the middle of the woods. There were large piles of gravel, red rocks, bricks (as one would see on a construction site), and a small forklift, sitting and slightly neglected. To the right of this clearing was what looked like a small city of stacked cement slabs, some decorated with scrolled carvings, as can be seen at the top of some columns on buildings. They were stacked high so we had to climb on them. These large pieces of cement, creating a small, walled city became even more similar to a graveyard when Renee mentioned that these were pieces of the old Capitol building. People had moved the pieces to this clearing after the renovation. We sat on top of the stack, probably about ten feet tall, and watched four deer in the distance. Two of them were Bucks... and had antlers. The hills in the forest cascaded down and we wandered around for a while over there, spotting huge cement cylinders lying on the grass, spots of spanning mud, and a setting sun.

We sat on the bed of Sam's truck and watched the sky turn from gray and blue to dark pink and orange, through hundreds of tall, black, slender trees. There branches crossed and intersected because they were so close together. The cold clung to every bit of the air around us.

Frankie: A Monster?

2009-11-22T21:32:00.005-06:00

I am not sure when I first heard of Frankenstein. Perhaps it was looking at the costume provided in Party City’s Halloween Book. Perhaps it was from watching Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein or an episode of one of my favorite cartoons called, Scooby-Doo and the Frankenstein Monster. Regardless of my first introduction to Frankenstein, I have always known that Frankenstein was considered a monster. However, what I learned as a young child was that Frankenstein was often misunderstood; not possessing the same attributes that were typically associated with being a monster. Thus, I always pitied the monster for being brought into the human world but never truly being apart of it.

What I am struggling with while reading this novel is whether or not Frankie (well Frankenstein as a name, sounds really mean, and “it” sounds meaningless; honestly what name would you give?) is truly a monster. As I stated earlier, if Frankie is a monster, then he seems to be one that is misunderstood. Frankie has not committed mass murders in search of food or because of anger issues, nor does he growl, roar, or emit sounds and noises that would definitely identify him as a monster. If Frankie is not a monster then what should we identify him as? While monster, creature, etc. have been used, perhaps Frankie is human or, at the very least, part human. Of course, problems immediately stir from this theory because Frankie was not created in the same manner in which humans were. However, what makes Frankie part human is his actions; he does not eat meat and he is able to think; coming to conclusions about himself, particularly why he is feared.
I think that Frankie’s face, despite the grotesqueness associated with the watery eye and skin color, is also what makes him human. Although Victor believes that this is the one feature that is his flaw, the one thing that makes him appear as something that should be placed within the “other” category, this face could also be the link to being human. If Frankie’s body was not ridiculously large and the face was not flawed, then would Frankie finally be seen as a human? Also, without the speculation of a perfect creation, are humans not flawed in some way? Many humans, I am sure, that were bore doing this time as well, are born with undeveloped limbs, watery eyes, and physical problems. I think that I also can’t fully understand why Victor saw him as a monster due to this flaw.
Maybe the creator has the true flaws. I think it is even safe to claim that all humans are monsters when they see the physical flaws first; judging before knowing. Perhaps this was a message of Shelly.

FRANKENSTEIN!!!!!!!! AND SCIENCE FICTION AND ROMANTICISM!!!!!! AHHH!!!!!!!

2009-11-19T20:23:00.002-06:00

FRANKENSTEIN!!!! I cannot convey my excitement to you in words, but I’ll try my best. For anyone that doesn’t know me too well (and that’s just about everyone in our class), I’m a science fiction nerd. I’ll avoid explaining how this came to be and instead focus on Frankenstein, science fiction, and romanticism, three topics that I’d like to explore in several blogs over the next couple of weeks. (You might be asking why but as I’m sure you’ll see at this end of this blog, as well as the others I intend to write, science fiction and romanticism share a lot of similarities.)

As Janelle mentioned in class the other day, many people (Brian Aldiss and Isaac Asimov included) acknowledge Frankenstein as the first work of science fiction. This tells me two things:

(1) Frankenstein meets all the credentials required to be a science fiction work.
(2) No other work before Frankenstein met these credentials, whatever they may be.

I haven’t read Aldiss’s Billion Year Spree, where he proposes his argument for Frankenstein as the first work of science fiction, but I believe that I’ve managed to pick up enough from Asimov (I now realize this is the second time that I’ve mentioned this name—for those of you who don’t know him, Isaac Asimov, though dead now, was arguably the greatest science fiction authors of all time) as to why Aldiss thinks this.

According to Asimov (and this is Asimov’s own definition of the genre), science fiction is anything that has the following:

(1). Takes place in a world that is neither our own nor so foreign that it couldn’t be our own (in other words, our world isn’t this but could be this some day—Asimov says this to distinguish science fiction not only from realistic fiction but also from fantasy fiction);
(2). Science fiction deals with some sort of social change.

(2) chiefly interests me because it bears a lot of relation to a subject that we’ve discussed minimally that itself bears a lot of relation to romanticism: the Industrial Revolution. According to Asimov (and possibly Aldiss, too), the Industrial Revolution is what made science fiction possible because it made social change visible to people in their own lifetime, probably for the first time in history. In other words, after the Industrial Revolution came about, people could (and would) see changes in their daily lives (the erection of factories is just one example).

For the most part, these changes stemmed from technological advancements, and technology, as we all know, is generally the offspring of science. Frankenstein’s monster is an example of technology (insofar as the monster being an advancement, that is, in my opinion, debatable—perhaps I can address this in another blog), and this is how we probably arrived at Aldiss’s conclusion about Frankenstein—it deals with a technological change that could be observed in one’s (Victor’s) own lifetime. Moreover (and this is a common staple of science fiction), the technology or creation (i.e. the monster) comes back and bites the creator (Victor Frankenstein) in the ass.

Frankenstein, however, is not the only Romantic work that shares similarities with science fiction: Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us” and “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” are two other good examples, and I promise that I’ll list several more in the forthcoming blogs. The point is, the Romantic poets were living in a time when rapid social changes were occurring, social changes that they could observe, and there is no doubt that these changes influenced their writing.

I now realize that this blog has carried on far too long, so I’ll wrap it up here. Before ending it, though, I would like to say that if you have any interest in the science fiction/romanticism parallels, please talk with me about it or respond to my blog. I love discussing the two subjects and, as I said earlier, I’m hoping to write more blogs on this topic.

A monster - or not?

2009-11-19T11:34:00.004-06:00

I read Frankenstein for the first time. (It is so interesting to see how the literary canon differs from country to country, I haven't read any of the novels or poems before. And I also don't know a lot of the references which are made). I always thought that Frankenstein is just a spooky horror-story...I even do not know how the story ends except that the monster somehow turns against its creator. I have never seen a movie about it and my only associations with this topic were the green-skinned, tall monster and 'never try to play God - it will come to a bad end'. And I also thought that Frankenstein would be the name of the monster.
Now, everything changes. Surprisingly, the monster does not eat meat! Yesterday evening/night I read the chapters about the monster's first winter in the little shed close to the poor family. And I was deeply moved by the description. The monster seems to be so innocent, so kind, so helpful. He (and here I knowingly say 'he' instead of 'it' as he shows a lot of human chracter traits and acts very human: he can feel sorrow, pity, joy etc.) feels pity for the family, tries to help them by collecting firewood. He tries to find a way to become part of the family, and so he learns the language and how to read. In all his behavior he is like a little child, eager to learn more about the world. And at the same time, he is more than a child as he can already reflect on why people fear him. He is lonely and he knows why. He is othered and longs for community and love. This makes me so sad.
And I wonder how he will change, what will happen to him that he becomes a monster. Is it because of his lonelyness, his otherness? What is it that transforms an almost human being (related to the behavior, not to the outward appearance) into a beast? In how far is Victor responsible for this changing, is he alone to blame for it? Did Victor made him a monster?
I can't wait to read more.

Manfred - or, unanswered questions

2009-11-18T21:41:00.007-06:00

It is a bit late for this post but in some sense it still fits. The poem Manfred is still working in my head, now even more b/c Frankenstein is looking for the great secrets - and so does Manfred. I realize that I still have more questions than answers, no matter how often I reread the poem. And honestly, I feel a bit caught by the question if we all become Manfred in some way - looking for answers, clues, explanations. I thought that Manfred is cursed because of his never ending quest for knowledge and the misuse of it. Maybe there is even more as the voice in the incantation accuses him of guile, hypocrisy, a serpent smile. Regardless of this: here I am, asking questions. I don't know where this leads to...
Manfred himself is his worst enemy. The strongest gift the voice coudl find is his own poison. He lost himself in thinking about things beyond his nature and so he 'forgot' to learn something about daily life. He knows too much about mankind, but at the same time the common man is totally alien for him. He is even alien to himself. And he put himself into this position. He lost contoact to the earth, mataphorically, spiritually as he regards himself as being better than men and equal or even mightier than the Spirits. And yet, he has to stay on earth, cannot get out of it, cannot die. At least, this is what the voice says: "nor to slumber, nor to die, / Shall be in thy destiny" (ln. 254f.). But then I don't understand why he dies in the end. Something must have changed but I cannot see what this could be. Manfred asks for oblivion but this wish is not fulfilled. He asks for forgiveness - but does not get an answer. Or is the prophecy that he will die the next day some sort of forgiveness? In the sense taht he is redeemed from his restless, forlorn life? The voice also says that hhe can never be alone - but as I see him, Manfred is the loneliest person on earth. Does this mean that he will always be persecuted by his thoughts, always persecuted by the "Spirits that (he) called" (Goethe: Der Zauberlehrling)?
The question is still there: what has changed, where and when did Manfred change? Did his constant suffering make him humble? I don't really believe this.
And there is the question about the abbot, why an abbot, why Manfred asks for his hand... I don't have any answers eiter. And I can hardly think about these questions, the thoughts criss-cross in my mind, create confusion. This is frustrating. Yes, I somehow become Manfred, I want to know the answers. Or do I have to accept that there are no answers?

Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the setting of Manfred

In view of this breathtaking landscape - should not I just stop asking questions? And admiring, enjoying the beauty of Earth?

Death is all around

2009-11-18T19:52:00.005-06:00

I was thinking about why mankind is so obsessed with death. We hear about it everyday through news and media, everyday life, and our literature. Constantly, the theme of death resonates. But why do we keep going back to that. Just looking at the New York Times you can easily find stories like:

2 Men Arrested in Chicago May Have Links to Mumbai Attack

By LYDIA POLGREEN 3:28 PM ET

Investigators in India are retracing the steps of two men arrested in Chicago by the FBI to see if they helped plan the attacks that killed more than 160 people in November 2008.

OR...

Pirates Attack Maersk Alabama Again

By ALAN COWELL

Published: November 18, 2009

LONDON — Seaborne raiders in a high-speed skiff tried again on Wednesday to commandeer the Maersk Alabama, the American-flagged ship seized by pirates in April, the United States Navy said.

In a separate episode, the captain of a hijacked chemical tanker was reported to have died of gunshot wounds inflicted when pirates seized the MV Theresa with 28 North Korean crew members northw est of the Seychelles on Monday. The spate of attacks reflected the increasing boldness of pirates roaming far from their bases in Somalia to seize vessels and sailors to hold for ransom.

Everywhere in all types of ways people are acting on death or talking about death or writing about death. Victor Frankenstien was so obsessed with the dead versus the living that it ultimately led to his great demise. But if death is so hard to handle in all different aspects why do we dwell? Shouldn't we focus on life itself? Or do we focus on death because it is the only reason why we have motivation to live fully? Even after Mary Shelly came Anne Rice then (God love) Joss Weadon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in today's entertainment.
And how many tweens to moms across America are going to be watching the mid-night premere of Twilight Saga: New Moon? God knows I will be. But WHY??????? Isn't the HBO show True Blood just a serise about the living dead's soft porn?

Life and death is all around us and we can't stop obsessing with it in so many different outlets. Zombies, vampires, worms - is mankind doomed to forever focus on the unknown?

addendum

2009-11-18T14:07:00.003-06:00

My computer skills are not that great. I don't know how to include a direct link to these stories. they can be read at :

http://www.sff.net/people/DoylemacDonald/l_frag.htm

and

http://www.sff.net/people/Doylemacdonald/l_vampyr.htm

Set up for Frankenstein

2009-11-18T13:53:00.004-06:00

I am reading Frankenstein for the third time and it just gets better and better. The conception of the novel really interests me-Percy Shelly and Mary Shelley vacationing with Byron and John Polidori in the Swiss Alps. I took a class two summers ago entitled "Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves in Literature and Film." We spent a lot of time discussing the formation of the popular vampire image and it is rooted in the meeting of these four in the summer of 1816. As Mary Shelly stated in the original introduction to Frankenstein, the idea for her novel came out of reading ghost stories when the weather prohibited the group from going outdoors. Percy Shelly produced nothing, Byron his "Fragment of a Novel," and Pollidori "some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady." A few years later, "The Vampyre" was published and its authorship was attributed to Byron. John Polidori, however, claimed authorship of the story saying that Byron's "Fragment" served as the inspiration. I have included links of both these stories in case anyone is interested in reading them. Polidori's vampire remarkably resembles the popular view of Lord Byron at the time. Just thought it would be cool to look at what else came out of that summer beside Frankenstein.

"No Pure, Pure Rose"

2009-11-09T23:57:00.002-06:00

Response to:

"A Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June;

O my Luve's like the melodie

That's sweetly played in tune

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will love thee still, my Dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear

And the rocks melt wi' the sun;

O I will love thee still, my Dear

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Luve

And fare thee well, a while

And I will come again, my Luve,

Tho' it were ten thousand miles!

"His Love is no Pure, Pure Rose" by Brooke Anderson

O his Luve's no pure, pure rose,

(But) Perhaps dying for Fall;

O his Luve's no sweet song

(But) Perhaps doom and gloom for all.

With words, he claims to love me long

And withstand the testing tides;

Until the drying earth, he claims,

By me, he'll stay beside.

By me, he'll stay beside, he says

Apocalypse on the horizon;

His words mean nothing more,

than youth to the wizen.

And fare him well, from his Luve

And fare him well, for long;

In hopes of no return, my Luve

Together we don't belong.

Model Poem- Bright Star

2009-11-09T21:36:00.000-06:00

Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in love splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like natures patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure abultion round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

Luminous Venus, if only I were as immortal as you--
Not alone in speldour but forever with companions
Constantly watching without faulter,
The ever enduring earth, forever vigilant,
The blowing wind purifying the air
Cleansing the land and sea,
Or contemplate the concealment on waves
Over the rocky, jagged edges of the deep sea—
No—Forever still immortal, still stable,
Pinned against true loves beating breast
Awake and alert without wasting time sleeping
But now to hear that sweet breath cease
And live with love forever—or invite everlasting rest

Failed Attempts

2009-11-09T13:50:00.002-06:00

Step by step I leave the earth,

The second floor my destination.

As distance from the ground grows,

So too does my drowsiness.

The day’s worn clothes still cling to my body:

A collection of the day’s memories.

Scents, frustrations, and laughter

Only add to the familiarity of my blue sweater,

To the comfort of my jeans.

Climbing into bed, these clothes remain on.

They experienced the journey with me;

Not only are they my companions,

But my last attempt to possess the day.

Lying there, I reflect on all

That has occurred:

Friends, new and old,

The taste of coffee and a bagel,

The sight of my father sitting on the couch

As I walked in around midnight,

The noon of thought.[1]

Some days you want to keep,

While others you don’t.

I want Today.

Yet, escape from sleep I cannot;

Eventually relinquishing control,

I give into the natural forces

Pressuring me to give up the day.

All attempts prove futile as

My eyelids grow heavier

At this juncture of control and vulnerability,

Immediately before an inescapable slumber.

My clothes ground me for one last instant

Before plummeting into my dreams,

A culmination of experiences and desires,

Fading into one another,

Reminding me that I cannot possess time:

We are at nature’s mercy.

As the new day rises along with my eyes,

The slept in clothes no longer

Have the appeal they once possessed.

A new day requires new clothes,

A blank canvas waiting to collect

New memories and feelings.

Ultimately I will never posses the day,

Yet, I will continue to try

As I put on another sweater,

Another pair of jeans: the clothes

That will accompany me to sleep.

[1] Barbauld, Anna L. “A Summer Evening’s Meditation.”

Freshman Year (a response to Wordsworth's "Surprised by Joy"

2009-11-09T13:25:00.003-06:00

I'll preface this model poem by saying how much I love Wordsworth's "Surprised by Joy". The brief and powerful sonnet has stuck with me since I first read it in Biguenet's Reading Poetry class two years ago. As Biguenet brilliantly put it, "Wordsworth's only consolation is that remembering the death of his daughter is not quite as painful as actually experiencing it. And the next he remembers it, it will be a little less painful still. For time to make the loss of child less painful is itself tragic, but how else can you get up in the morning?" In approaching this assignment, I had to take a lot of time to think about how to model my poem on Wordsworth's. Should I directly react to what he is saying or should I write something totally different with basic romantic themes in mind. Eventually I remembered an experience I had last year when I was woken in the morning by Regina Spektor's "Fidelity" playing softly on my roomates computer. I can only describe how I felt as being "wonderfully heartbroken" because this particular song reminded of five or six different life changing experiences freshman year. At least three of them the song was directly playing when or near when they happened. So I decided to write romantically about it; that is to recollect the emotional experience of hearing this song, which itself reminded me of several very emotional experiences and to process it through poetry.
I have adopted Wordsworth's rhyme scheme, through I fell well short of writing my poem in good iambic pentameter.

Freshman Year

Awoken by the sunlight birthing the new day,
I heard in mind the grandeur of the fading song,
Of Regina's voice both trembling and strong,
Recollecting an eternity of joys once held, now flown away.
Three-forth's a year from August until May,
Three-forth's a year unlike the whole eighteen before,
Nine months where every coming moment had something beautiful in store;
Dancing with a beautiful Mexican girl and the way
Anjle's voice echoed through the silent midnight hall
That we broke into just because we were alive
And young, and holding back is no way to live at all.
And so I dressed and into that new day did dive
And since exist in every moment proud and tall
Knowing life's brevity and to pass it well do strive.

Surprised by joy

Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind-
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!-That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Model Poem

2009-11-09T13:07:00.001-06:00

-Modeled Off of "The Haunted Beach"

Resting Uneasy

Upon the red looming Mars
Where starry dust was scattered
A twin-size bed uprear’d its head,
Amongst the king-sized mountains.
The foo-nu’s gathered at the foot
A sleepful rest they wished;
And, all around, the deaf’ning roar
Re-echo’d on the Reddish Planet
By the still wind feigned.

Above a floating isle was seen
Where Jub birds hover’d, pacing;
And up and down and all around,
Foo-nu clothed isle, waving.
And here and there, a rolling hill
Its lazy back display’d
And near a mountain, at sundown’s time
An old mattress was laid to rest
Where the still winds stay’d.

And often, while the silent wind
Swept o’er the sleepless commotion
The moonlight seen was all serene,
The land made scarce a motion;
Then, while the smaller mountains
The isle wrapped in shade,
The Marsman beheld the grand
Notion of Humans striding hand in hand -
Where the still winds play’d.

And swell their faces were with glee
And jocular they pattered;
And into space with enraptured face
They look’d as they remember’d.
And sometimes, from their gleeful glow
They cheerful guffaws made,
And while the echoes bounced strong and loud
The clear moon bathed the wondrous crowd
Where the still winds play’d!

And then above the peaceful twin-size bed
The happier Jubs perched;
And around the bed, ended the reach
Of the sleepless commotion.
For in the Mars-ian bed,
A sleeping Human was seen laying,
Content smile on his lips
And deep were the sleep marks on his cheek
Where the still winds play'd.

A sleep-bound parody was he
Of his home and kin around;
Who swore to be on Mars
Gracious and excited ever!
But just before sleep took over
A Nyquil bottle his lips felt,
Cool and green, effects untold,
And unlike any human before,
Slept where the still winds play'd!

His human kin, forever blithe
Continued in the yawn-less commotion,
While to each other his eyelids fast,
Clung from spell of potion.
The wintery moon upon the mountains
A silv'ry covering gave,
And showed the Sleeper in new slumber
With empty plastic by the pillow
where the still winds play'd.

And since that hour the Marsman
Has watched and watched the happy game;
For the moon-lit night
gleams on both, the Sleeper and Humans alike!
And when the moon itself is 'sleep,
Commotion, sleepless presides over all
And nothing lights the mountains,
Where the still winds play!

Full eternity, the Sleeper's fate,
So day and night mean nothing;
For Sleep assigned his slumbering mind
Should dream about all things.
Bound by sealed eyes and foggy brain,
He has not pow'r to stray;
But destin'd pensive to remain,
He thinks, with Genius and without,
Imagination, fiery and curious now.

Response to the Haunted Beach

2009-11-09T13:00:00.004-06:00

The Haunted Beach by Mary Robinson

Upon a lonely desert beach,
Where the white foam was scatter'd,
A little shed uprear'd its head,
Though lofty barks were shatter'd.
The sea-weeds gathering near the door,
A sombre path display'd;
And, all around, the deafening roar
Re-echoed on the chalky shore,
By the green billows made.

Above a jutting cliff was seen
Where sea-birds hover'd craving;
And all around the craggs were bound
With weeds–for ever waving.
And here and there, a cavern wide
lts shadowy jaws display'd;
And near the sands, at ebb of tide,
A shiver'd mast was seen to ride
Where the green billows stray'd.

And often, while the moaning wind
Stole o'er the summer ocean,
The moonlight scene was all serene,
The waters scarce in motion;
Then, while the smoothly slanting sand
The tall cliff wrapp'd in shade,
The fisherman beheld a band
Of spectres gliding hand in hand–
Where the green billows play'd.

And pale their faces were as snow,
And sullenly they wander'd;
And to the skies with hollow eyes
They look'd as though they ponder'd.
And sometimes, from their hammock shroud,
They dismal howlings made,
And while the blast blew strong and loud,
The clear moon mark'd the ghastly crowd,
Where the green billows play'd.

And then above the haunted hut
The curlews screaming hover'd;
And the low door, with furious roar,
The frothy breakers cover'd.
For in the fisherman's lone shed
A murder'd man was laid,
With ten wide gashes in his head,
And deep was made his sandy bed
Where the green billows play'd.

A shipwreck'd mariner was he,
Doom'd from his home to sever
Who swore to be through wind and sea
Firm and undaunted ever!
And when the wave resistless roll'd,
About his arm he made
A packet rich of Spanish gold,
And, like a British sailor bold,
Plung'd where the billows play'd.

The spectre band, his messmates brave,
Sunk in the yawning ocean,
While to the mast he lash'd him fast,
And braved the storm's commotion.
The winter moon upon the sand
A silvery carpet made,
And mark'd the sailor reach the land,
And mark'd his murderer wash his hand
Where the green billows play'd.

And since that hour the fisherman
Has toil'd and toil'd in vain;
For all the night the moony light
Gleams on the specter'd main!
And when the skies are veil'd in gloom,
The murderer's liquid way
Bounds o'er the deeply yawning tomb,
And flashing fires the sands illume,
Where the green billows play.

Full thirty years his task has been,
Day after day more weary;
For Heaven design'd his guilty mind
Should dwell on prospects dreary.
Bound by a strong and mystic chain,
He has not power to stray;
But destined misery to sustain,
He wastes, in solitude and pain,
A loathsome life away.

Rafiq's Experiment...I mean...
Sky's Forest

High up above our silent heads,
where the white puffs are spread,
the flap of wings and angel things
showed that the sky wasn't dead.
The wind played the featres, and softly too
perhaps in breaking they feared
but still the dance of innocence flew
round and up and down in two,
with the azure ceiling seer.

Above a grove of birds and trees
where life was awake forever,
and time would see no end to bees
and bears and stags to enter.
What things beyond nature would come to pass
yet near the green,
many bushes perhaps,
a thing unnatural, a silver mast,
by the azure ceiling seen.

And perhaps the natural thanked never to hear
at that small moment today
for the doves and deer who felt no fear,
would change to flight from play.
In motion and silence a creature fell,
staggering on the ground bleeding,
The Hunter stepped from where he'd crouched
and had a smile upon his mouth
with the azure ceiling seeing.

The creature moaned and moved and bled,
its wish to survive was true,
the hunder stabbed the creature dead,
a merciful death to few.
And then the light turned into dark
a sudden and startling thing,
The Hunter dragged his kill'ed mark
alone, afraid and surrounded by bark,
under the azure's watering rings.

The rain would come,
and the wind would blow,
the trees would mourn and hum,
as a rumble was heard below.
The darkness would flash
the hunter fearing,
the trees then trashed
and thunder crashed
with the azure ceiling leering.

The Hunter wailed and cried;
he felt that death approached,
he left his pride and fled in stride,
and ignored the prize he'd poached.
The rain fell hard and on,
the trees lost their thirst,
the sky finally ceased its tearful song,
before the coming of the dawn,
which the azure ceiling burst.

The silence was heard
with sigh and relief;
The Hunter like a bird passed through word
of his story as a thief.
"I fear the forest,"
he said with feeling
"whose creatures were loved best,
the one where life is protected at behest,
of the wide azure ceiling."

An Imitation Poem

2009-11-09T11:41:00.007-06:00

"The Tyger" by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart begin to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

"White Wolf"
Through the haze of misty night
A white wolf bathed in glowing light,
Of what could make a creature fair
That in his teeth clutches despair?

How come thee covered in snowy fur
Disguised so as a creature pure?
What made thy icy, frightful eyes
That linger on the darkened skies?

Under the cover of the moon
A piercing howl, impending doom
Does thy heart, with every beat
Grow faster than the ones you eat?

How swiftly do thy movements make
It easy for his soul to take,
A flash of fangs, & blood runs cold,
Dare deadly virtue be so bold?

Terror reigns down through thine eyes
Heaven sleep & heaven cry
And of the maker of the Lamb,
Could thee be formed from that same hand?

Through the haze of misty night
A white wolf bathed in glowing light,
Of what dare make a creature fair
That in his teeth clutches despair?

2009-11-09T11:35:00.002-06:00

Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

Lines Written in the French Quarter

I often make this walk--inside the elderly bones of the
Vieux Carré, the “Quarter,” a place, a foreign place both
Mediterranean and Creole--when I’m uncomfortably
Embracing a strange philosophy.

My heavy eyes are downcast for long periods of time.
Though, momentarily, I give a quick glance at Spanish moss
Draped over oak branches like tunics on Roman Senators.

I, the taciturn and melancholic man in normal dress,
Walk slowly and impassively.

I hear pianos speaking in rare tongues and
Forceful human breath moving through brass skeletons of trumpets,
Wishing I could describe jazz the way in which those
Geniuses from the Harlem Renaissance could.

I briefly view Creole townhouses with beautiful front landscapes:
Light from gas lanterns projecting shadows onto auburn, tangerine
Façade brick, and stucco exteriors.
Headless roses, wildly growing ferns, and elegant, dictatorial Venetian windows overlooking
Elaborate gardens from second floor iron balconies.
In the center of one of the gardens,
A grey-stoned angel poises as a meticulous ballerina.

I calmly run my fingers down the statue to feel its skin, meticulously
Viewing the bone structure of my hand.

I smell Creole cuisine, exquisite fruits from Italian
Fresh produce dealers, and jasmine blossoms.
They come and go from walled courtyards and single chimneys.

I pass by glass boxes with smiling faces, elbows and half-finished coffee
Cups resting on white marble tables, fashionable clothing,
Intellectuals having stale conversation, and
Beautiful women with nuanced postures:
Crossed-legs, elegant gestures, thin figures with assumptive slouches,
Intelligent eyes listlessly moving around.
The peace of mind of these people.

Passing streets with French names, I consciously
Remember their proper pronunciations, saying them
Silently in my head, almost as silently as I tread these
Broken, brown historic streets.
Chartres, Dumaine, Prieur, Conti.

I continue to Royal Street, passing
Antique shops and boutiques,
Jewelry stores with crystal chandeliers grinning,
Ornate hand-carved furniture that belong in
Queen-Anne Style estates.

I peer into a well-lit gallery.
Inside, a beautiful woman intently analyzes an abstract painting.
She finds it creative as she, invented as she, beautiful as she,
philosophical as she;
She stands in awe of it as she does the architecture, the music, the history surrounding her—and
The mind and existence itself.
Why does she find the mind and existence special?

One day, you and I, will sit in silence
And mimic the graceful indifference of the
Vulgar velvet, silk-skinned iris flower as it gently meditates.

A Response to the Garden of Love

2009-11-09T10:50:00.003-06:00

The Garden of Love by William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

A Response to the Garden of Love by Gorgelia Pollard

I too went to the Garden of Love,
And just like my father before
Saw words writ over the door:
“For in this garden you are blessed”

I turned and saw a garden redeemed:
A gate was overtaken by the vines of roses
And the ground burst with flowers of all types
And revealed those insects touched by the divine.

No hint of evil dared into the holy garden,
For even death tip-toed through the green grass;
I left the garden satisfied with what I had seen
For love was indeed in the garden.