Barbauld and Meditations

In his "short-lived rage," the sun seeps away leaving room for what we have been waiting many long hours for. Nighttime. Thoughts become visible and clear, even in their fury, and life awaits. Running free through the caverns of her mind, wandering through woods under Dian[a], the goddess of woodlands and the moon herself, wondering about the upwards that lies in the sky above her, she lives this moment of her life through her poem, "A Summer Evening's Meditation." As I read this I could feel the light dissipating in a gradient as the curtain of night is pulled over the poem. She accomplishes this by using imagery such as "with sweetest beam/Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood/Of soften'd radiance from her dewy locks./The shadows spread apace ; while meeken'd Eve/Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires/Thro' the Hesperian gardens of the west,/And shuts the gates of day." Even in those phrases alone, the reader gets the feeling of a gradual change from day to night, and also is able to feel the impatience for the night's arrival which Barbauld references. Deepest thought and experience can occur during the darkest of hours, when the world seems empty in places, and more alive than ever in other places, remaining all the while a seemingly limitless world of possibilities. This could be represented by her journey to the stars, grasping on to the farthest realities, feeling she is able to reach them because of the freedom her mind is experiencing. There was a pattern in this poem of personifying nature, as well as characterising such abstract concepts as Contemplation and Thought. Barbauld also mentions gods, goddesses, and stars by their names. These aspect of the poem bring an other-worldly and mystical quality to this work as well. The natural imagery seen throughout becomes her muse and her inspiration, which inspires her to return home with a more open and enlightened mind, with a new mode of change now available to her. I like it when she returns to the natural world, back to the comfortable and familiar woods, the nature growing around her. Her soul is able to find peace in its original form; gaining the most from the nature around it, and protected from the wonders that lie far beyond the soul and which are profound and impossible to understand.

“What are men compared to Rocks and Mountains?”

“What are men compared to rocks and mountains?” These famous lines from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) resonate with many of the Romantics’ ideologies. Nature is nature; it simply is. Man, on the other hand, attempts to create an original or simply exist, and fails exceedingly. So why is there all this narcissism? From Blake to Wordsworth, these men proclaim themselves to be a “Poetic Genius.” They adore the outstanding ability of the natural world but turn into self-centered pricks because supposedly they alone can decipher nature or create an original. Wordsworth, for instance, believes that the poet is the translator for common man because it takes a particular talent (that he so happens to posses). However, the common man who he is speaking to does not care about poetry, so Wordsworth creates his own audience and redefines the common man. DeQuincy’s narcissism is also clearly present in his essay Confessions of an English Opium Eater. He is marginalized from even the marginalized Romantics like Wordsworth. His “gutter punk” persona seems to be crying out, “I am different! Pay attention to me!” so he creates a new group in society.

Are these Romantics right to be understood as better, smarter people? The complexities of these Romantic works require a great deal of interpretation and decipherability. I admit that I needed someone else to tell me what they were trying to say. These Romantics had a different view of the world, but the question still remains is different the equivalent of better? The Romantics were able to transcend outside of themselves through logic. (Think Kant diagram.) Nature, nonetheless, cannot do this. It cannot extend beyond itself but merely regenerate what once was. Does logic go against nature? If so, then it is harder to go against one’s nature. What is nature compared to Man?*

*Seen in Percy Shelley's "Mont Blanc." The poet puts his perceptions onto the mountain, which is then reflected to himself. In the beginning of the poem, it seems as if the mountain is putting meaning on the person, but this notion is flipped by the end.

In regards to Pansies:

When I saw this course was available way back when, I remember thinking, “Now here is a class that I want to take, a class about a bunch of pansies who write about, well… pansies.” I like pansies. I would admire them, for although they did nothing particularly useful, they actually got their heads out of the clouds for a minute and wrote down a poem or two; they weren’t total procrastinators (like I am, see: this post date), but a group who chose to avoid real life like I do, who lived in their own little bubbles floating along a river somewhere deep in an enchanted forest. I could connect with them.

Had I misjudged them, or what?

I did vaguely recall from high school that there were more to these pansies than what meets the eye as reactionaries against the Great Enlightenment Figures of Reasoning. But what struck me the most was the immense complexity of the poems. I’d walk out of class even more confused than when I went in, but I liked it! Thinking. Thinking. Thinking. It was all that I could do. By grappling with these texts I was forced to think about my life and life in general. Paradoxes that were logical: A fragment made whole, an original from imitation. The Hegelian dialectic applied to more than just History. All these poems shocked me into thinking, none more so than Blake. For example, in “Thel” we are imprisoned by our senses and yet what do we know without our senses? How would we experience things without them? Do we bring them with us to the afterlife even though we have no body? Or do we have a body? What is our purpose in life? Is it to be food for worms? Is there such a thing as a static figure because everything changes and transmutes? In “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” Blake turns everything I learned as a child upside down, but it makes perfect sense. If Heaven is perfect, it is therefore unalterable. If Hell is not perfect, then it is changeable and there is a sense of progression, which takes on a positive connotation for me (a positive corrosion). Blake attempts to answer these questions through his mythology, but I still have no answers.

I have come to the conclusion that these poets were special pansies. Their lives were rather depressing (Not pansy like). They pushed the limits more than anyone else in history, more so than those of the Enlightenment (Not pansy like). They were a bit weird; they tended to live in their heads after exposing themselves to life. Their ideas are so unique. (Every pansy has his/her own eccentricity). They left us without answers to their questions. But it is their thoughts that push us forward into the realm of thinking and bring us back to the real world. The cycle continues; pansies come and pansies go (both flowers and people). We live. We die. We become fertilizer for future flowers. We think about what the Special Pansies thought… we come back down… and write about what we think for future generations to come. Maybe they’ll be able figure it all out…

What We Want II: A Poem

"Peaceful" wills the homeless heart.
Towards soft essence then tearful part.
Hold close once more a sigh so sweet,
An open door, a steady beat.

Lose you again takes years to do,
The road will bend our love so true.
A swell of faith or mind of fear,
Both for souls sake, both cause tears.

To touch once more would be divine,
So on the floor I'd crawl to find.
This door may come, but enter my choice.
For where I'm from, death is the voice.

Take hands to lead and arms to pray,
A hunger to feed, but - love stay away.

Where Does Man Fit in Nature?

Wordsworth's "Lines Written in Early Spring" is uniquely powerful and characteristically Romantic poem. As Professor Schwartz pointed out, it is incorrect to say the romantics simply wrote about nature. Rather, they wrote about nature as experienced by man and about man's relationship to it. Romantic literature addresses the questions of where man fits into nature, of whether or not a harmony between nature and man is possible, of whether nature is sympathetic or indifferent to human concerns, and if man is the summit of creation or a perversion of it. In this poem, Wordsworth takes a stab at answering those questions, but in the end is more sadly confused than he began.

The twice repeated line "What man has made of man" (8, 24) is first a declared statement and later asked as a question. In between, the poet reflects on the beauty and happiness in nature and how alienated man is from that happiness. The poem begins with the narrator (presumably Wordsworth) reclining in a grove, engaged in a reflection moving from sweet to bitter thoughts. The beauty of nature he metaphorically hears as "a thousand blended notes" (1) of sweet music. I don't think I'm off base when I claim that Wordsworth sees an original unity between man and nature. As he says "To her fair works did Nature link / The human soul that through me ran" (5-6). Man is of nature and ought to play his part. But something has gone wrong. Man has made something of himself (or tried to) which nature never intended for him to be. Wordsworth never specifies what it is, but the reader's imagination immediately conjures up images of war and poverty, hatred and oppression, environmental degradation and urban jungles that humans were never meant to live in. Stanzas 3-5 artfully describe the beauty of flowers, birds and baby trees as they grow and thrive. The narrator believes there to be a "pleasure" in every moment of the lives of these creatures, as short as their existence might be. He admits that he "cannot measure" (14) the thoughts of these creatures and this can be taken as evidence that there is a fundamental separation between man and other parts of nature. The poet cannot empathize with what it means to live every day for the beauty of it, accepting all parts of existence, even death. Humans don't do this. Rather, they plan and plot for the future and seeks immortality through religion, through potions and through glory.

Reading this poem left me agreeing with Wordsworth in part, but mostly with questions for him. Does he think there is a solution, a way for man to unmake himself and become natural again. If so, what is it? The poem has a feel to it which echoes the creation story of Genesis and the fall of man. Is Wordsworth saying that the fatal flaw in man is really his inability to accept himself as a part of nature and be content with it? If so, is there a way back to the garden? Additionally, Wordsworth seems to regard the ideas this poem expresses as revelations from a higher power. What is that power and what relevance does it have for both man and nature? It's a good poem, but reading it left me wondering.

Exploring Keats

After both reading and enjoying Keats’ “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,” I decided to scan through some more of his poetry in our Norton text so that I could see how my interpretations of the readings have either gotten better, worse, or stayed about the same. Here goes my understanding of “Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell.”

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No god, no demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once—
Heart! thou and I are here, sad and alone;
Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness! darkness! ever must I moan,
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain!
Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease—
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads:
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds.
Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed,
But death intenser—death is life's high meed.

Instantly, Keats presents the reader with a question that proves unanswerable by gods and demons, two polarities. Realizing that these two external forces are unable to provide an explanation for Keats’ laughter, the poet suddenly believes he has found the source for this plaguing question: the heart. Feeling both excited and assured, this realization marks an important turning point in the poet’s quest for answers; he pleads for an answer from within. However, as the poet searches within, he discovers only darkness that once again leaves Keats answerless. The source for the answer is neither wholly external nor wholly internal.

Keats poses his question for the third and final time, though this time he comes across as more composed as he begins to discover the reason for his laughter. While he recognizes the fact that happiness can be found through different outlets in life—particularly through “verse, fame, and beauty”—he nonetheless would leave it all behind, life ended. The image of the “word’s gaudy ensigns” all shredded up paints a particularly apocalyptic scene.

In the final line, Keats acknowledges the fact that while there may be sources of intense joy throughout life, death nonetheless overshadows the things most important to all of us; death is life’s greatest reward. At first I had trouble understanding this line because never had I heard death described as such. Most often, death is viewed negatively as it reminds us of our mortality, ultimately all of the limitations that bound us to some degree. However, Keats takes another approach. By describing death at “life’s high meed,” the poet portrays death as a reminder that in this moment we are alive.

Throughout the poetry we have been reading in class, man’s ability to reflect has come across as a nuisance, a burden to our existence; however, in this poem, Keats seems to celebrate this ability. We can recognize that death represents an end, and because of this, people can live. People can laugh.

What We Want

Something that caught my interest from the piece, "Isabella," by John Keats is the relationship between Isabelle and Lorenzo. Their passion and love is so strong that it is obvious that nothing can break it. It reminded me of all the stories that we have been taught over the years. Its all about LOVE. Whether a childhood story about princesses and magic carpets, movies with notebooks, or songs on the radio that "bleed love," this idea of timeless love is universal and unwavering. Regardless of generation or artistic outlet, we are as a race, obsessed with love.
We use it as a reason to live- in hopes that we will have the perfect family, to do certain things- like going out to a bar seeking a connection, we concentrate on it as if it will solve all of our problems, fears, and doubts. But will it really do all of that? Certainly Isabella didn't get the perfect family or have her problems solved.
So what did Isabella and Lorenzo have that could possibly make up for all their pain? They lived a passionate life which consumed their souls until and beyond death. As "nice" as that all sounds, its not exactly what dreams are made of . Even "Romeo and Juliet," that's not the real title. Its called, "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet." People want to be in this romantic state where they find someone who they can't bear to live without, but in the end, it always destroys. This is because along with passion and love is obsession and rage and destruction.
Although we know this we still want it. We focus on all the goodness of the story, on the maybe two scenes where the lovers were happy and hope that we could have that one day. But what we really want it to have that and have the happy ending as well. We want to have the story of Romeo and Juliet and be strong enough to fix the ending- to get Romeo the letter before its too late. Theres always little factors we think we could fix if it was us. Isabelle should have stopped Lorenzo from going out with her brothers; she should have seen something. But love isn't this ever powerful essence that we can control or conform to our will.
Love is hard. Love is painful. I'm no literary character, but that much I know. In real life love is almost always confused with lust, love can seem clinging to the other party, or love can destroy the good that was already there. In real life someone if not both parties loose.
Call me pessimistic or a Debbie Downer, but art imitates life and vice versa and art has been telling us a message. Maybe we should pay attention.