I'm Home Sick Today, So Why Not?
This was originally a comment, but since it's so long, a post it is.
Will: I agree that Romanticism represents a basic human desire. To some extent, all of us have very romantic ideas about this or that and those ideas make life richer.
The grey area comes in when we consider the meaning of "romantic" or "to romantize." The latter is often used in sentences like, "People often romantize about the farmers of the Middle Ages," meaning that people often look back and proclaim that we should all return to that personal, living off the land, natural ethic 'cause that's better, more natural. In their righteous haste, they forget the fact that farmer's lives in the Middle Ages really were nasty, brutish and short and there was nothing particularly romantic about it at all.
"Bad" literature tends to romantize. Let me correct that and I'm not really sure the right way to word it so it doesn't sound offensive. But I don't mean bad. Non-serious doesn't work because that implies that serious works are no fun or "too intellectual for the common folk." Pehaps feel-good literature carries a suitable connotation, but then again real literature makes you feel better than any feel-good lit can. Propoganda the word, as we've learned, necessarily leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Maybe the best way to define what I'm after is in terms of the author's intent.
Real literature is an exploration, not an explaination. Real literature doesn't take sides. Real literature takes a look at an aspect of the human experience and explores it in the deepest way possible. Real literature doesn't romantize, because to romantize is to tell an untruth. Real literature is composed of truths. Not facts, but truths. Real literature can contain romantic ideas, but only because they reflect an aspect of human nature that is fundamentally romantic.
Now we're at the crux of the matter. Is Bryant's romanticism exploring a fundamental, but romantic idea or is it simply an artificial exposition? In a less obscure sense, is it a meditation on life or a manifesto for life?
To tell you the truth, I don't know. But the value lies in the question, not the answer. Literature isn't a puzzle to be worked out. But neither does its beauty lie in it's ability to go either way. The former inspires terror with far too much meaning, and the latter propogates apathy with its meaninglessness. The beauty of poetry lies in its ability to apply to all and sundry situations across time and place and individual. Great poetry achieves this by truths. The difference, to bring this back to Marx (yay!), is between reading, say, Dickens and the Communist Manifesto. Both inspire an upswell of feeling but for different reasons.
Now, I don't argue that "Thanatopsis" is in the same vein as the Communist Manifesto. Probably, this discussion has moved beyond Bryant himself. And, for the record, Dickens and Marx both no doubt show up together on those interminable lists of greatest this or that. But for different reasons. We still read Dickens today and not just as a lesson in 19th century life. It's timeless, not timely. Reading Marx helps explain over a century of global history. But only the most ardent and deluded Marxists would argue it's timeless.
If we are indeed moving beyond Bryant, we may as well take Longfellow along with us. Now, I missed the day we talked about "A Psalm of Life" in class due to the National Latin Exam, so I don't know exactly what was and wasn't said. But I'd like to point out what makes Longfellow different from Bryant.
Looking back, "Thanatopsis" could very well be both a meditation and a manifesto. From the start, the poem clearly is a kind of meditation and it evokes that specific kind of feeling from across time which is the mark of a good poem. But at times it swoops into that kind of preaching that "To A Waterfowl" makes clear. Is he describing a situation or proclaiming his own views? Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" has one crucial difference. I would have written my post on the failings of Longfellow, not of Bryant if not for this single line, not even in the poem proper: "What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist." That line means everything.
In that single line, the poem becomes not a Manifeso for Carpe Diem, but a point of view, a characterization, a description, an exploration, a meditation. The poem is not exhorting us to "Act, --act in the living present." The poem is a poem about youth. Longfellow isn't giving us any morals, no imperatives. There's no message. It's about triumphs and travails, the foolishness and fiery hearts of youth.
I just finished Milan Kundera's "Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and at one point he describes how he and his fellow students in the late 40s thought they could change the world, change human nature and create a real paradise on earth by bringing Communism to Czechoslovakia. I quote: "People have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightengales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like and insect... And suddenly those talented young, intelligent radicals had the strange feeling of having sent something into the world, a deed of their own making, which had taken on a life of their own, lost all resemblance to the original idea, and totally ignored the orginators of the idea. So those young, intelligent radicals started shouting to their deed, calling it back, scolding it, chasing it, hunting it down. If I were to write a novel about that generation of talented radical thinkers, I would call it Stalking a Lost Deed."
In some sense the passages are really about the same thing: the mistakes of youth, of children. Longfellow writes, "Let the dead Past bury its dead!" Later in the book, Kunder writes: " 'Children, never look back,' he cried, and what he meant was that we must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory. Children, after all, have no past whatsoever. That alone accounts for the mystery of charmed innocence in their smiles... The idiot of music finished his song and the president of forgetting spread his arms and cried, 'Children, life is happiness.' " To live in the constant present is childish. Anyone who seizes the day without thinking is not to be trusted. And both passages also share something: distance. They are passages about something, not of a certain view.
I quoted those lengthy passage also because I wanted to mention that Kundera is one of my favorite authors and a lot of my ideas about literature derive from him. He's written multiple books on the art of the novel and of them (I think there are three) I've read his most recent, "The Curtain." I highly recommend him to all of you.
Will: I agree that Romanticism represents a basic human desire. To some extent, all of us have very romantic ideas about this or that and those ideas make life richer.
The grey area comes in when we consider the meaning of "romantic" or "to romantize." The latter is often used in sentences like, "People often romantize about the farmers of the Middle Ages," meaning that people often look back and proclaim that we should all return to that personal, living off the land, natural ethic 'cause that's better, more natural. In their righteous haste, they forget the fact that farmer's lives in the Middle Ages really were nasty, brutish and short and there was nothing particularly romantic about it at all.
"Bad" literature tends to romantize. Let me correct that and I'm not really sure the right way to word it so it doesn't sound offensive. But I don't mean bad. Non-serious doesn't work because that implies that serious works are no fun or "too intellectual for the common folk." Pehaps feel-good literature carries a suitable connotation, but then again real literature makes you feel better than any feel-good lit can. Propoganda the word, as we've learned, necessarily leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Maybe the best way to define what I'm after is in terms of the author's intent.
Real literature is an exploration, not an explaination. Real literature doesn't take sides. Real literature takes a look at an aspect of the human experience and explores it in the deepest way possible. Real literature doesn't romantize, because to romantize is to tell an untruth. Real literature is composed of truths. Not facts, but truths. Real literature can contain romantic ideas, but only because they reflect an aspect of human nature that is fundamentally romantic.
Now we're at the crux of the matter. Is Bryant's romanticism exploring a fundamental, but romantic idea or is it simply an artificial exposition? In a less obscure sense, is it a meditation on life or a manifesto for life?
To tell you the truth, I don't know. But the value lies in the question, not the answer. Literature isn't a puzzle to be worked out. But neither does its beauty lie in it's ability to go either way. The former inspires terror with far too much meaning, and the latter propogates apathy with its meaninglessness. The beauty of poetry lies in its ability to apply to all and sundry situations across time and place and individual. Great poetry achieves this by truths. The difference, to bring this back to Marx (yay!), is between reading, say, Dickens and the Communist Manifesto. Both inspire an upswell of feeling but for different reasons.
Now, I don't argue that "Thanatopsis" is in the same vein as the Communist Manifesto. Probably, this discussion has moved beyond Bryant himself. And, for the record, Dickens and Marx both no doubt show up together on those interminable lists of greatest this or that. But for different reasons. We still read Dickens today and not just as a lesson in 19th century life. It's timeless, not timely. Reading Marx helps explain over a century of global history. But only the most ardent and deluded Marxists would argue it's timeless.
If we are indeed moving beyond Bryant, we may as well take Longfellow along with us. Now, I missed the day we talked about "A Psalm of Life" in class due to the National Latin Exam, so I don't know exactly what was and wasn't said. But I'd like to point out what makes Longfellow different from Bryant.
Looking back, "Thanatopsis" could very well be both a meditation and a manifesto. From the start, the poem clearly is a kind of meditation and it evokes that specific kind of feeling from across time which is the mark of a good poem. But at times it swoops into that kind of preaching that "To A Waterfowl" makes clear. Is he describing a situation or proclaiming his own views? Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" has one crucial difference. I would have written my post on the failings of Longfellow, not of Bryant if not for this single line, not even in the poem proper: "What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist." That line means everything.
In that single line, the poem becomes not a Manifeso for Carpe Diem, but a point of view, a characterization, a description, an exploration, a meditation. The poem is not exhorting us to "Act, --act in the living present." The poem is a poem about youth. Longfellow isn't giving us any morals, no imperatives. There's no message. It's about triumphs and travails, the foolishness and fiery hearts of youth.
I just finished Milan Kundera's "Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and at one point he describes how he and his fellow students in the late 40s thought they could change the world, change human nature and create a real paradise on earth by bringing Communism to Czechoslovakia. I quote: "People have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightengales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like and insect... And suddenly those talented young, intelligent radicals had the strange feeling of having sent something into the world, a deed of their own making, which had taken on a life of their own, lost all resemblance to the original idea, and totally ignored the orginators of the idea. So those young, intelligent radicals started shouting to their deed, calling it back, scolding it, chasing it, hunting it down. If I were to write a novel about that generation of talented radical thinkers, I would call it Stalking a Lost Deed."
In some sense the passages are really about the same thing: the mistakes of youth, of children. Longfellow writes, "Let the dead Past bury its dead!" Later in the book, Kunder writes: " 'Children, never look back,' he cried, and what he meant was that we must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory. Children, after all, have no past whatsoever. That alone accounts for the mystery of charmed innocence in their smiles... The idiot of music finished his song and the president of forgetting spread his arms and cried, 'Children, life is happiness.' " To live in the constant present is childish. Anyone who seizes the day without thinking is not to be trusted. And both passages also share something: distance. They are passages about something, not of a certain view.
I quoted those lengthy passage also because I wanted to mention that Kundera is one of my favorite authors and a lot of my ideas about literature derive from him. He's written multiple books on the art of the novel and of them (I think there are three) I've read his most recent, "The Curtain." I highly recommend him to all of you.
posted by matthew weiss | 7:23 PM
6 Comments:
I'd just like to bring up "The Slave's Dream" because many of us had different interpretations as to whether Longfellow was simply writing a Romantic poem about death, or whether he was writing as part of the abolitionist cause. Perhaps Longfellow is simply like Bryant in that everyone can have a different interpretation. Here is my interpretation as to why he wrote this poem, and please let me know whether you agree or not, and why.
In class, some people believed that perhaps Longfellow wasn't all that sympathetic to the abolitionist cause, and he merely decided to use a slave as a character in a Romantic poem. The poem is of course about a slave who dreams of "his Native Land," and gets whipped to death at the end, not feeling "the driver's whip" becasue he is so absorbed in his dream. Some felt that this emphasis on death not necessarily being a bad thing was just a common theme of Longfellow, and the slave was like anyone else.
However, I personally think that although this poem shares a theme with Longfellow's other poems, the fact that he chose a slave as the main character is greattly significant. This poem was written antebellum, when slavery was a heated issue. People are always debating whether or not the Civil War was really about slavery, but it is a fact that Abraham Lincoln said the war was about protecting the Union, and not about slavery. Even if Lincoln believed the war was about ending slavery, he couldn't say so becasue even in the North abolitionist were a minority. If Lincoln had made the war about slavery, no Northeners would want to fight. Many people believed that slavery was just fine, and if Longfellow were indeifferent to abolitionism, he would pick the side of slavery supporters becasue being an abolitionist was tough back then. By writing about a slave who dreams of this beautiful and ideal land and gets killed at the end because he is so absorbed in a dream, Longfellow is asking for pity from the reader. Although Longfellow doesn't literally write "the slave died, isn't that so sad?" I believe that that is the reaction he wants to get from the reader. And as to the term Caffre, Longfellow didn't necessarily use the derrogatory term because he wanted to insult blacks. On the contrary, he could have used this term to show the views that others had and by making the slave die in the end, he is showing how terrible those views are because they lead to the destruction of humans.
Well, there is my interpretation. I just believe that nobody in the early 1800's would write about a slave's death and "soul" (many people believed that blacks didn't have souls) unless the person was truly sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. However, I'd love to hear what others think, so please tell me.
--caroline
It's honestly hard to say. I will point out a few things, though. To support the idea that Longfellow was sympathetic to the abolitionists, from the bio: "He journeyed again to Europe, wrote 'The Spanish Student', and took his stand with the abolitionists, returned to be married in 1843."
Now, that basically sheds light on nothing and is wonderfully vague. By the order of the phrases it seems he "took his stand with the abolitionists" while in Europe. So I don't know if these were the same abolitionists we're talking about. The wikipedia article, unfortunately, isn't incredibly helpful either. So, that seems to be a dead end.
I don't think the question comes down to "whether Longfellow was simply writing a Romantic poem about death, or whether he was writing as part of the abolitionist cause." Clearly, it has something to do with slavery. The question is, what exactly is that? Is the poem "propoganda" for abolitionism, or simply a poem expressing an understanding of slavery in the context of Romanticism (or, perhaps, an understanding of Romanticism in the context of slavery).
We didn't read it (why not?) but his most famous poem seems to be "Song of Hiawatha," which is, of course, about Indians. His poem "The Courtship of Miles Standish" is the historical tale "of John Alden and Priscilla," his ancestors. Then we have "Jewish Cemetery at Newport."
All these show Longfellow's diverse inspiration. In the context of slaves, Indians, cemeteries, and Puritans, Longfellow is plying his trade. In that light, I don't think he necessarily has to be an abolitionist to use a slave as inspiration for one of his poems. He has the ability to see connections between disparate cultures and times. In "The Slave's Dream," from the perspective of the slave, he sheds light onto a deeper truth.
It is significant that Longfellow chose a slave as the subject of this poem. Though the poem also focuses on the concept of "creating one's own reality" or "escaping reality," Longfellow could have created that concept without using a controversial slave as a sort of protagonist.
At the very least, Longfellow sympathized with the abolitionists and with the plight of the slaves; however, I think it would be an exaggeration to say that Longfellow felt blacks were equal to whites in all ways. I think the word caffre crept into “The Slave’s Dream” because Longfellow had heard it himself. Though the word caffre admittedly had a fairly strong negative connotation when Longfellow wrote this poem, I don’t think it had such an incredibly strong negative connotation that it could “show how terrible these views are because they lead to the destruction of humans.” That is, slavery certainly does lead to dehumanization and often to premature death, but I don’t think one can put such an incredible amount of importance on the word caffre.
Feel free to refute. [Ah, alliteration!]
Your tired blogger,
Danielle
I agree that Longfellow didn't "necessarily have to be an abolitionist to use a slave as inspiration for one his poems," since poets can use pretty much any character in their poems. However, the fact that he chose a slave as the main character shows that he, according to my opinion, was at least sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Although I feel that he was sympathetic to the abolitionist cause, I don't think that the poem was used for abolitionist propaganda, but rather to simply enlighten the reader about slavery.
As to the term Caffre, I agree with Danielle that "I don't think one can put such an incredible amount of importance on the word," but I mentioned a possibility of why Longfellow used the word, to give the opposite view to the easy reaction of assuming that he was being degrading in his use of this word. Because I feel that this poem is sympathetic to the slaves, it seems unlikely that he used this word because he had negative views toward blacks. So I mentioned the possibility that he could have used the word ironically (ah, another rhetorical device!) to show the common attitude toward blacks and then by having the slave die in the end, he is almost making the prejudiced reader (assuming that some pro-slavery people read them poem) feel sorry for that attitude. Or perhaps, the word was used in a sarcastic tone, but I'm not so sure that this is valid because the rest of the poem isn't sarcastic in tone. To make matters short, the word Caffre probably doesn't have too much significance, but I wanted to give a possibility for why he used the word, other than the immediate response that he was fine with derrogatory terms against blacks (since I don't think he was fine with it.)
--Caroline
I still don't know how to start my own post so hopefully someone will find this entry about Poe...
I guess I'll try to answer the question what makes The Cask of Amontillado romantic?
Throughout the story Montresor demonstrates how he uses his emotions rather than rationality to base his decisions. He relies on his gut feelings rather than trying to sensibly solve a problem. All Montresor has to do is convince himself to go through with his plan. He does this by giving Fortunato multiple ways out of the situation but Fortunato refuses. This suggests that rationality is an afterthought in Montresors mind. This idea is consistent with the Romantic idea that a person feels and senses things before he/she has a chance to think about them.
Poe also makes sure that the setting of the story is in some unknown place. In this way, Poe attempts to give the story a sense of universality. By setting the story in an obscure place, the reader can't be distracted from the emotions and atmosphere that he created by contemporary ideas and references to well known places. Much of the Romantic work we have read has dealt with things of a different world or things that are unexplainable and vague in this world. Just like these writers, Poe liked to introduce readers to a realm unlike the everyday world. This is also why Poe dealt with bizarre subject matter. Poe wanted his work to be an escape from the mundane and a place where readers could encounter things that they would not come in contact with otherwise in their everyday lives.
This is in response to Winnie with "The Cask of Amontillado". I agree with everything Winnie had to say. Montresor did give Fortunato ways out of his impending death. Montresor came up with a perfect plan but he wasnt sure he wanted to go through with it, that is most likely the reason why he gave Fortunato options. Another outrageous Scott theory is that maybe Montresor was testing him. Montresor might have said to himself, "well if the guy is dumb enough to follow me down to a cellar where no one else is then i mineaswell kill him for his stupodity." The options to leave for Fortunato could have been part of this test. Which Fortunato failed miserably at.
Montresor is not crazy or sick. He is just misunderstood.
Love,
Scotty P
Post a Comment
<< Home