Sundry Bryantesques
Now, to leave the Marxist psychobable behind me firmly (to all those whom in my posts I offended, repulsed, or otherwise amused, I officially apologize for those interruptions) and to think very hard about William Cullen Bryant:
Fact: Bryant leaves me cold.
For all his critical acclaim, he's got nothing on Anne Bradstreet, nothing of her charm or warmth. Looking back at his biographical notes, even his supporters were reserved in treating him as a poet, regulating him firmly to the second rate. He got fame mainly as being the best of a literary tradition that didn't exist yet. As a person, he himself was described as cold. Why?
It's an interesting question because the answer obviously doesn't lie in his technical skill as a poet. Thanatopsis proves his abilities ten fold. There is drama and beauty in every line. He has the considerations of a real lyricist. But there lies the problem.
What is lyricism? Webster defines it (in the sense we're after) as: "an intense personal quality expressive of feeling or emotion in an art (as poetry or music)." It's something which characterizes many of the Romantics, from what I know already, Whitman especially. It's the poet's ego laid out on the page in a kind of selfless act. (But, perhaps for selfish reasons.) We can take messages, note similarites, be vindicated or enlightened by it. More directly, we can feel the emotion the poet is trying to get across as perfectly as if we were the poet ourselves. To achieve that is the mark of a first class poet.
Bryant could have been a first class poet, but for his poetry. They aren't so much poems as thinly veiled personal philosphical tracts. They are the ego spilled out on the page, but the only emotion we feel is always the same one: a kind of triumphant realization that I've got the answers! But that emotion doesn't rest easy inside of us. As a personal matter, these poems form the core of Byrants conciousness, which must be respected. And not all poems representing the enlightenment of their author are bad. But Bryant doesn't seem to move beyond them. In a phrase, his poems aren't human.
Anne Bradstreet's poems are human. They represent not the glory of an individual psychology, but powerful situations who's emotions come through in a perfect medium. Despite the restrictions of living in a Puritan society, that alieness, of centuries past and people far removed, her poems, her expressions are immedietly recognizable. The burning of her house, the death of her grandchild, it feels real. The poems, in their exploration of situations, reveal shades of basic human truths, of human existence.
She doesn't need Bryant's accouterments of language. In her poems, reading them, the language floats past you. It becomes one with a continuous stream of human feeling from the past.
You could say, well, what could be more human that contemplating death or the purpose of our lives, as Bryant's poems seem to do? But they sound artificial, say, the artifice of the waterfowl is too apparent. Not to rip open old wounds too soon, but it's essentially the same problem with communism. (giggle) In Thanatopsis, the image of earth as sepulcher is a powerful, dramatic one. It's equality for all. In death, we're all equal, even to the greatest kings. No one better and no one worse. Technically true, but death isn't really like that. Just like communism, it's an unnatural way of thinking of things. It's trying to change human nature. Communism asks you to subvert yourself to welfare of the collective. But that's not human. It's just like those advocating free love, invariably feeling jealousy. It's basic. Bryant is asking us to forget questions of life and death-- a "Power" will handle it. Sure, we all die alone, but some deaths are clearly more significant, maybe not in the whole strech of history, but at least in people's minds. Romanticism is an unnatural way of thinking. Ironically.
That shouldn't really come as a surprise. At the beginning of the unit, we all admitted Romanticism failed. It crops up every couple of decades or so and then dies again. It can't sustain itself. You can go out and try to live in nature. You can take all the lessons you want from waterfowls flying into the sunset, and that's valid, but sooner or later real life comes back to bite you in the ass.
I think Bryant himself knew this, perhaps, deep at heart. In the end, he focused not on his poetry, but on his paper and his politics.
Then again, maybe I'm all wrong and Bryant leaves me cold 'cause it's just really, really cheesy. But that's hardly as interesting.
Fact: Bryant leaves me cold.
For all his critical acclaim, he's got nothing on Anne Bradstreet, nothing of her charm or warmth. Looking back at his biographical notes, even his supporters were reserved in treating him as a poet, regulating him firmly to the second rate. He got fame mainly as being the best of a literary tradition that didn't exist yet. As a person, he himself was described as cold. Why?
It's an interesting question because the answer obviously doesn't lie in his technical skill as a poet. Thanatopsis proves his abilities ten fold. There is drama and beauty in every line. He has the considerations of a real lyricist. But there lies the problem.
What is lyricism? Webster defines it (in the sense we're after) as: "an intense personal quality expressive of feeling or emotion in an art (as poetry or music)." It's something which characterizes many of the Romantics, from what I know already, Whitman especially. It's the poet's ego laid out on the page in a kind of selfless act. (But, perhaps for selfish reasons.) We can take messages, note similarites, be vindicated or enlightened by it. More directly, we can feel the emotion the poet is trying to get across as perfectly as if we were the poet ourselves. To achieve that is the mark of a first class poet.
Bryant could have been a first class poet, but for his poetry. They aren't so much poems as thinly veiled personal philosphical tracts. They are the ego spilled out on the page, but the only emotion we feel is always the same one: a kind of triumphant realization that I've got the answers! But that emotion doesn't rest easy inside of us. As a personal matter, these poems form the core of Byrants conciousness, which must be respected. And not all poems representing the enlightenment of their author are bad. But Bryant doesn't seem to move beyond them. In a phrase, his poems aren't human.
Anne Bradstreet's poems are human. They represent not the glory of an individual psychology, but powerful situations who's emotions come through in a perfect medium. Despite the restrictions of living in a Puritan society, that alieness, of centuries past and people far removed, her poems, her expressions are immedietly recognizable. The burning of her house, the death of her grandchild, it feels real. The poems, in their exploration of situations, reveal shades of basic human truths, of human existence.
She doesn't need Bryant's accouterments of language. In her poems, reading them, the language floats past you. It becomes one with a continuous stream of human feeling from the past.
You could say, well, what could be more human that contemplating death or the purpose of our lives, as Bryant's poems seem to do? But they sound artificial, say, the artifice of the waterfowl is too apparent. Not to rip open old wounds too soon, but it's essentially the same problem with communism. (giggle) In Thanatopsis, the image of earth as sepulcher is a powerful, dramatic one. It's equality for all. In death, we're all equal, even to the greatest kings. No one better and no one worse. Technically true, but death isn't really like that. Just like communism, it's an unnatural way of thinking of things. It's trying to change human nature. Communism asks you to subvert yourself to welfare of the collective. But that's not human. It's just like those advocating free love, invariably feeling jealousy. It's basic. Bryant is asking us to forget questions of life and death-- a "Power" will handle it. Sure, we all die alone, but some deaths are clearly more significant, maybe not in the whole strech of history, but at least in people's minds. Romanticism is an unnatural way of thinking. Ironically.
That shouldn't really come as a surprise. At the beginning of the unit, we all admitted Romanticism failed. It crops up every couple of decades or so and then dies again. It can't sustain itself. You can go out and try to live in nature. You can take all the lessons you want from waterfowls flying into the sunset, and that's valid, but sooner or later real life comes back to bite you in the ass.
I think Bryant himself knew this, perhaps, deep at heart. In the end, he focused not on his poetry, but on his paper and his politics.
Then again, maybe I'm all wrong and Bryant leaves me cold 'cause it's just really, really cheesy. But that's hardly as interesting.
5 Comments:
I have to disagree again.
I have a slight problem with your description of Bryant as "cold." Certainly, Anne Bradstreet wrote about ordinary life and daily struggles. It was all very charming, but her poetry is completely different from "Thanotopsis" and "To a Waterfowl." Bradstreet's poetry is a reflection of concrete events- what was happening in her life. She wanted to describe the emotions that resulted from actual events, like the burning of her house and the death of her grandchild. Bryant, however, is struggling to define abstract concepts. Some people mentioned in class that his poems are a sort of propaganda, a literary campaign for romantic ideals. I tend to think of Bryant's writing as more meditative than propagandistic. It seems that he is simply trying to verbalize his heartfelt philosophies. I do not think that it is fair to accuse Bryant of being cold and egotistical because he reflects on the nature of death rather than what is happening in his life. After all, death and the purpose of life are as human as domestic affairs. The metaphors in Bryant's poems are intended to be artificial so that his readers can grasp the actual meaning of the lines. Bryant may be introspective, but that does not automatically make him cold.
I like the comparison of romanticism and communism. Puritanism, if you remember, also died out. At the very least, one needs to recognize that romantic movements spring up every few decades. You can dislike it all you want (even if Ms. Hughes disagrees), but it is hard to ignore romanticism's social and literary value.
I am fully prepared to accept the consequences of this post, I think.
Well, sadly, Theresa, I have to agree with you.
You're entirely right. I agree that Bryant and Bradsteet have different motivations in writing their poetry and that Bryant's poems are meditative. I don't dislike (litotes!) Romanticism and don't underestimate its influence. Introspectivity doesn't equal coldness and if it did I'd be a block of solid ice. What Bryant was doing in his poetry is perfectly valid, and awesome and powerful. It's not egotistical, especially because all poetry, to some extent, is an exercise in narcissism. Our very modern culture is based on narcissism. Private vices make public benefit. It's all good, folks. And yet...
My point was simply this and it actually has very little to do with the core of our discussion on Bryant and relates, actually, only tangentially to the whole unit. The question (which, I guess, I never really made explicit) was "what makes Bryant a second-rate poet?" I was looking for some kind of justification for that label from the biography. The idea of a second-rate poet leads directly to the idea of the first-rate poet. Why makes a poet first-rate?
The nexus of the question lies outside of any so-called literary movements. It's something, in a sense, deeply personal, but at the same time objective. I was looking for the objective. I chose the foil of Anne Bradstreet because I think what makes her poetry great is that is transcends Puritan poetry. Perhaps to understand her we need to understand her Puritan context, but her poetry stands as a monument to her and her alone.
My characterization of Bryant as "cold" was the subjective side. My following analysis was the objective. When mixed, the result is always dangerous, but I took that leap because I think investigating where the line between objectivity and subjectivity lies is at the core of literary criticism.
Hello all, I finally got the courage to post again despite my incompetence.
In Longfellow’s A PSALM OF LIFE, which we discussed today in class; I had a few things to say that for some reason I didn’t bring up.
Firstly, I feel that despite Longfellow’s bout of depression the poem is telling the reader to live life to the fullest. Perhaps there was something going on in his life that made him have regrets, and he wanted people to be wary of that. I think the poem is not meant as a meditative poem, but was meant for an audience to heed his warning. We see that he believes you should live to be remembered several times in the poem. Like in lines 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, and 35. Each of those lines has a connotation of remembrance to me. Like in stanza 7,
Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.
"The lives of great men all remind us", what makes a man great is not relevant. The only way we know of great men is that they are remembered for something no matter what it is. Then in the next three lines we are directed to do the same, and leave our "footprints on the sands of time". That means were remembered because a footprint in the sand is lasting, until it gets washed away or blown over; so one could argue from that imagery that history repeats it self, (footprints vary among different people but stay constant to themselves)but ironically erases itself over time as well.
In stanza seven Longfellow seems to be telling us to forget about the past and future which confuses me. He says "act-act in the living present", I thought since he's talking about being remembered he would want you to look in the past and see how the great men were remembered; or look to the future and imagine what you want to be remembered for.
Lastly if someone could explain the shipwrecked brother I'd be golden. Is it someone who died, or is it someone who got lost trying to find themselves, or something else?
Although he's saying not to make plans and to have faith, that doesn’t seem like something a depressed person would say. Maybe he's saying don’t worry about being remembered, and live for today, you know don't go life to fast enjoy it, but don't become lethargic. Well I’ve realized how thoroughly confused I am about this poem. I'd appreciate any insight.
Um, yes, I agree with Theresa too. And I had this whole comment prepared disagreeing with Matt's, but he's already sort of rescinded his first statement. So uh...I'd just like to add that the Wikipedia entry on Thanatopsis mentions that it was included in a collection called The 100 Best Poems of all Time, so I get the impression that people connect with it. I like to think they're impressed not with its grandiosity or language but the basic ideas and wisdom it imparts on the reader.
I also think the fact that Romanticism fades in and out of the public consciousness is not a mark against the genre. I think it actually represents a basic human striving for something grander or more beautiful than the real life that will bite us in the ass, as Matt so bluntly put it. This instinct is pretty harmless, and I think it's the same desire or necessity that results in religion. Also, maybe everyone's been around too many McMansions or shopping malls lately, but nature can be like, really beautiful. It's sort of sweet and noble and understandable that people would try to dedicate their lives to it in such a poetic way. Or maybe I should go study Goddess Worship at a small liberal arts college and try to become one with the earth. Eh..I'm sort of ranting. Don't take this to heart too deeply, please.
To respond to Billy's post, I also think it's hard to put one's finger on the whole gist of the poem. In the 7th stanza, I think Longfellow is advising us not to completely obsess with the people of the past, and to focus mostly on our present lives (big surprise). The shipwrecked brother is just an example of a future person who could see what one of the "great men" did during their present, and that brother could be inspired to carry his life out to the fullest. Yeah.
-Will
Bill. To respond to your question about Act,- act in the living Present! I agree with Will in that the author is telling us not to live in the past.
The sixth stanza is basicially saying that you cannot trust the future and that you have to activly work to achieve your goals, they will not materialize out of nowhere. If something went wrong in the past, forget about it and move on. Now onto the part of your question. Act in the present is you cannot change your past or predict your future. You have to take an active role in your life and create your own path.
Kaitlyn
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