The Hero that exposes himself to the White Heat

For Emily Dickinson to be a poet is to have a social obligation. The obligation to rebel against what others demand us to do. Very similarly, Hemingway also believed that being a writer was a moral obligation, more specifically he had a commitment with telling the truth. What’s more, Hemingway wrote The sun also Rises in a style that tended to avoid ornaments, and over descriptions. He wanted to unsettle the reader.

Similarly, Dickinson through her style full of elisions, ambiguity also tried to challenge and unsettle the reader encouraging him to react and find out what was going on .

In one of the poems written by Dickinson, specifically the one regarding white heat, she tries to express that passion is a dangerous and a perilous thing. If you get too close to the ''heat '', you can get burned. So, she invites the reader asking him if he/ she dares... if he / she has the guts to confront intensity.

This idea is very similar to the one presented by Hemingway. As we know, in the Hemingway world there are two types of people, those who are true aficionados, heroes with a code or those who are tourists.

So, in a way, Hemingway also points out that in life being a hero with a code implies, resisting stubbornly, defending your values, learning how to extract them from your experiences, defend your principles to the end and feel true passion for what you do and never give up. Even if that passion implies suffering. So, when Dickinson invites the audience to confront intensity she is also asking the reader if she or he is brave enough to be under Hemingway vision a ''true hero'', a heroe that dares to ''confront intensity'', to give up illusions, false and banal things in life.

In the same token, Dickinson in her poems highlights that the heat may leave scars and may cause pain and hurt if you get closer. Essentially, she is telling us that things in life might leave scars and dissatisfaction. Even reading her poems implies effort and pain, but you get the truth, and truth sometimes may hurt.

Only trough hardships we get closer to our own soul, and our strength arises from the need to resist to the true fir, very similar to Hemingway's vision. Only trough suffering and pain we get to be heroes, never giving up and always resisting stubbornly.

http://thelovesongofdbloggingstudents.blogspot.com/2014/09/hero-that-exposes-himself-to-white-heat.html
References

Dickinson, E. (1986). The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press.

Rovit, E. H., & Brenner, G. (1963). Ernest Hemingway (Vol. 41). Twayne Publishers.

Robert Frost and the concept of nature

Robert Frost is one of the  most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century. In his wildly recognized career he has repeatedly used the concept of nature. The rural has become a characteristic in some of his poems. In an interview he explains why:

“Poetry is more often of the country than the city…Poetry is very, very rural – rustic. It might be taken as a symbol of man, taking its rise from individuality and seclusion – written first for the person that writes and then going out into its social appeal and use.”

As we could see in the previous classes, Robert Frost always wanted to be a farmer, even though, until he was an adult he bought a farm in New Hampshire, maybe was this  what intrigued him so much, that he kind of obsessed with nature. 

Frost uses nature not as a background (as some of the other poets), but as a central character. I would like to link his passion about nature with Design:


I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
 

The central characters in this poem are; the spider, a flower and the moth, all of them white. When I think in whiteness I think in purity, but when I read that the spider, the flower and the moth are all white, it makes me think that he's not referring to purity, he is kind of referring to something dark and scary. This “design” of nature, makes me think on a horrific and Gothic nature, that is connected with death as his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” in which he writes:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

In this case, the use of the woods is deeply connected with his attraction to death, and with the vision of darkness and ambiguity that has a hypnotic effect on him. For him, nature is the opposite of civilization, that brings loss of identity and blindness. On the other hand, individuality is closer to nature, authenticity and originality.
All in all, for Frost, nature is thought as a container of complex images that understand and represent the beauty of ourselves.

Refereces:

http://www.ablemuse.com/v9/essay/andre-naffis-sahely/dark-pastorals-robert-frost-hayden-carruth

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetry-and-power-robert-frosts-inaugural-reading

 "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Pure Negative Capability

During the first period of this course we covered the subject of the Romantic era, and based on that we studied John Keats’ life and works. Moreover the first poem that we analyzed was "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" that particular poem called tremendously my attention because of the embedded meanings that it has, and also because from my point of view it is a clear representation of what negative capability is.

In those times, this poet thought that beauty was truth, and truth beauty, but it is not in the material world, because everything and all that could be found were material representations of ideas, which were limited. So under his perspective to discover the world we have to re-evaluate our attitude to physical pleasure, leaving apart reason and using the negative capability, which implies not reasonable thinking neither analyzing the objects, but being able to enjoy a pure essential moment that is translated into an absolute feeling that allows you to appreciate beauty. For that we have to use our imagination. In other words, negative capability is the action of diving into the unknown to appreciate beauty, not for what society has defines in its canons of beauty, but what beauty is by itself.

Keats’ poems were manifestations of beauty, and also beauty at the same time because of their structures and topics, and because they allude to nature, which as we all already know, had a key role in romanticism. According this belief I can say that "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is describing the process of negative capability through its stanzas.  

The poem begins with a description of a grim scene, and we can realize that through the use of adjectives and verbs, such as; ail, palely, withered, no sing, and haggard in the first 3 stanzas. So there we have the representation of a person (the knight-at-arms) who is in a physical world, where the beauty is not appreciated.

Then, in the fourth stanza that person meets a lady, who is described as fully beautiful “faery’s child”, and here starts a description of her characteristics in relation to her beauty. And here we can appreciate how in this lonely place, were tangible elements are not representing beauty; the person is able to find beauty in connection with nature.

But how can we identify this action? Well, that is explained in the next stanzas where he describes his contact with this lady (that is represented in nature) that contact is pure sex. And as we discussed in classes, there are clear evidences that support this idea, for instance “I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long,…” is alluding to how long they were having sex. Furthermore he describes how this contact is incredibly pleasant, at the point that he can achieve the absolute felling, he is able to appreciate real beauty by itself.

After he is able to dive into the unknown, which is represented by this mysterious entity, he realizes that he is not the only one capable of it, so he returns to the place of first stanza, since everything seems to happen in his dreams, as he says “The latest dream I ever dreamt…”, and we all know that for romantics, sleeping was the moment in which they were able to access to other worlds. The thing is that after he realizes that he is not the only one (stanza X), he understands that after having a taste of perfection, a contact with the truth that is beauty, there is nothing else beyond. And here I remember the example that we talked about in classes, for example, when you have sex with the person that you ever wanted, and it is so amazing that nothing else can be compared, the rest of your sexual life gets ruined, and that happened to this knight at arms, so he returns to his initial emotional state.

All things considered, and having into account that it is my perception of the poem, based on what we covered in classes, and what I read about in the Internet (links attached below), I can say that in this poems Keats shows in an implicit way to us how the negative capability occurs and what happens when we are able to be in contact with real beauty out of the real and reasonable world. 

 

References:

http://www.keatsian.co.uk/negative-capability.php

http://literary-devices.com/content/negative-capability

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100227203

http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/01/john-keats-on-negative-capability/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-london/plain/A813962

http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1710304/negative-capability

http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508675/Romanticism

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm

http://arthistory.about.com/od/renaissancearthistory/a/Romanticism-101.htm

Joan Rivers and Emily Dickinson : Two fearless women who paved the way for others.

Today, September 4th/ 2014,actress and comedian Joan Rivers died at age 81. For the last 12 hours all I´ve seen on the internet has been links and videos showing River´s best puns, jokes and comments. Web pages have been flooded with comments appreciating Joan´s unapologetic, satarical and offensive sense of humor. One of the BuzzFeed comments says " Joan was a truly fearles comedian, a woman ahead of her time. She re-invented the concept of female comedian"

" Man don´t like smart women, no man has ever put his hand up on a woman´s dress looking for a library card"

 One may think " how does Joan River´s death relate to any of the authors or contents of the class?", well, just like Joan, there was another female who was also fearless, ahead of her time, rupturist, innovative and that re-invented the concept of female writer: Emily Dickinson. Believe it or not, both artist have more in common than what one may expect, despite their obvious differences.

Woman in a world ruled by man.
Emily Dickinson lived in a period of time where all literary genres where ruled by man. Although there was a fair amount of creative female writers, not a lot of them were publised, nor gained any success. Emily´s early publications were heavily critized (by man critics and authors). Dickinson was a pioneer among female poets and dared to step outside the confort zone by being an author. Although there were other known female writers at the time, such as  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dickinson has become known for breaking the patriarchal nature of american peotry.

On the other hand, Rivers also became known for breaking the patriarchal pattern in comedy. Joan was the first female to have a solo stand up comedy show, she was also the first woman to have a late night show and one of the first woman awarded by her comedy skills. In a world were there comedy was a field of men, Rivers made a career of her own.

Creative , innovative and rupturist.
 Unlike her predecessors, Rivers was an insult comedian, which basically mean she made fun about everything (incuding herself) even if it was politically incorrect.  In the 70's she talked about topics that no comedian had talked before : sex, drugs, abortion, plastic surgery, homosexuality, celebrities and her own personal life. Joan was not only innovative in her topics, but also in her style of delivering jokes: a single woman and a microphone,fast-talking, sharp tongue, raspy voice and ugly facial expression were all part of this artist style.

Emily Dicksinson was also an extremely innovative artist, unlike many other
transcendentalist authors, this artist was not only inetrested in nature, the connection with god and the meaning of humankind, but also talked about more secular and personal matters such as love, rejection, beauty, family and house. Her witing style has also unique and creative : un.structured grammar, random dashing and capitalization, layout of lines, iregular rhyme and lack of punctuation make Dickison´s work stand out from the poetry at the time and the common writing conventions.

Dickinson's style

 

Rivers' creative topics

Misunderstood and ahead of their time.

Joan´s offensive style was not always (and still is) completely understood by the public. She was heavily critized by her conflictive nature, lack elegance, lackk of touch and lack of empathy. At the beginning of her career, this comedian was concidered tacky and un-lady-like, yet within time her sense of humor became a trend and it is the inspiration of many current comedians. Rivers has definetly ahead of her time, since her signature style remains current as of today.

The same phenomena happend with Dickinson´s work. Misunderstood at the begening and praised years later. In early publications,some called Emily " talentless". It has not until the beginning of the XX century when her work started to be priased and considered a classic.


As we can see, both women have many features in common: they paved the way for many other artist due to their singular creative and innovative style.

Can you think of other artists that we have read that share similarities with modern artists?

Is the world of literature and comedy still ruled by man?

"I´ve had so many plastic sugeries, that when I die, you will have to donate my organs to Tupperwear" (Joan Rivers)

 Sources

Melani, Lilia. "Emily Dickinson: An Oerview." Department of English: Lilia Melani. Brooklyn College, 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Mar. 2010. <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dickinson.html>.

web pages used as source

 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/emily-dickinson

 http://www.emilydickinson.org/

 https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/

WHITMAN'S SEXUAL LIBERATION

Walt Whitman is one of the greatest poets in the American history and he is very well known for having written several poems I which he openly expresses sexual-related contents which by the time were almost forbidden and highly criticized by the society. Above all, Whitman is recognized for having started this “sexual and homosexual” liberation, which soon lead to the generation of social movements.

In some of his poems, the author mentions this brotherhood love which has been translated by many other authors and investigators as gay love. The truth is that all this theories of Whitman being a gay person makes sense, meaning that this could be one of the source from which he took material to write about. He might have been homosexual and he might not have been homosexual. From my point of view this is not what is important, what matter the most is his invitation to open our minds in all senses, to fly out of our cage and knock down the boundaries we put to ourselves. In simpler words I believe he is inviting us to enjoy the love the way it is, without gender discrimination.

Furthermore, Whitman’s sexual and emotional life is a complete riddle; he went through different episodes along his life which he posted on his poems. Whatever reason, Whitman certainly became a prophet of the sexual liberation and the self experimentation, which caused his poems to be banned several times.

“Some say that Whitman is America's greatest embarrassment, because if what he says about democracy is true, that gay liberation is inevitable, then the American ideal of universal equality is inherently homosexual, and homosexual love is the physiological basis of democracy”.

WE TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING

We two boys together clinging                            

One the other never leaving
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach

dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,

Fulfilling our foray.

 Further reading:

http://www.directessays.com/viewpaper/99230.html#

http://rictornorton.co.uk/whitman.htm 

http://msendaba.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/why-did-several-poems-written-by-walt-whitman-have-homosexual-themes-if-he-was-not-gay-redone/#

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

To begin with, let’s define transcendentalism. As many other concept within the humanistic sciences, this one has not a universally accepted definition.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered on Ralph Waldo Emerson.

According to the U.S History, it is people who have knowledge about themselves and the world around them that "transcends" or goes beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch or feel.

According to what I know so far, it is a concept closely related with context. First of all, it is a movement which emerged -as many others before- as a protest against the society of that time, specifically against the Enlightenment intellectual movement and the Unitarism religious movement and whose main flagship is the idea of people and nature’s virtue.

After an independence process –from Europe-, the United States or “America” was forming itself as a country, looking for its own features. As a result, new concepts, new interests and new visions of the world came out.

Within the new visions of the world, there is the transcendentalism movement which proposed a sense of togetherness in which we and the world are one, in which we are individuals and at the same time part of the world, in which rational thinking was no longer working but feelings.

People who shared this vision of togetherness and the opposition -again- to the intellectuals of Harvard and Cambridge formed an association called the transcendental club in 1836. Some of its members were, of course, Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller… wait! a woman?!

To my surprise, while I was reading about transcendentalism I found a feminine name. As I said before, America was forming itself and did not have space -among others- for women, not publicly at least. However, this woman was absolutely significant for the development of the transcendentalist movement and history.

Margaret Fuller was a feminist activist, writer and critic. She also was part of the transcendental club, contributor and editor of the Dial, the transcendental magazine and literary critic of The New York Tribune as well.

By Man I mean both man and woman: these are the two halves of one thought. I lay no especial stress on the welfare of either. I believe that the development of the one cannot be effected without that of the other. My highest wish is that this truth should be distinctly and rationally apprehended, and the conditions of life and freedom recognized as the same for the daughters and the sons of time; twin exponents of a divine thought.

In 1845, Margaret published his feminist book called Woman in the Nineteenth Century making a critic of the chauvinist society by saying that there will be a time in which men and women are equal, in which the combination between both men’s and women’s intellectuality mean a enrichment for society. If we think about it, probably the Margaret’s feminist thinking was triggered by her father’s disappointment of having a daughter instead of a son.
It is also worth to mention that through this book, Margaret mentions the inequality of gender within the marriage and compares the lack of women’s right with the lack of slaves’ freedom in the society.


Sources:

- http://womenshistory.about.com
- http://www.ushistory.org
-  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/

Walt Whitman as a prophet of his own religion?

Many times I have heard that religions are different ways that lead to the same goal: to guide people on how to live and reach transcendence. After reading Walt Whitman’s “Song of myself” I found several lines that reminded me of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. Was Walt Whitman influenced by any religion when he wrote “Song of myself”? Is Walt Whitman at the same level of Jesus and Buddha? Should we be waiting for the second coming of Walt Whitman?

•  “In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass”

This verse can be traced in section 47. To me it depicts the idea that God and human beings are part of the same thing:  that God lives within us and we all are part of God as well. It reminds me of the Genesis 1:26-31 where the Bible says “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” in the sense that he sees God in him  and in every person because God created all man as equals and each one of us are part of his creation. Following this idea of all humans belonging to God, it also reminds me of the concept of Brahma in the Hindu culture, that is where all souls emanate from. Again, all humans being one with “God” as if there were no distance.

• ""The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me"

This verse can be traced in section 21. The connection between happiness and suffering is a connection that has been widely discussed in Buddhism. According to Buddhism, suffering and happiness are both extremes of the same thing, suffering as the lack of happiness and vice versa. Buddhism asserts that suffering is inherent in life and that experiencing suffering is the first step to start understanding and looking for happiness.

•  “I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,”
  By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.”

These verse can be traced in section 40 and 41. When reading those lines, it is hard not to think of Jesus whose miracles in which he heals suffering people are countless in the Bible. Also, the image of Jesus carrying the Cross –which represents all the sins and suffering in the world- means that we can rest in him and find peace, consolation and hope, as expressed in the second verse.

However, there are some verses that depict the contrary, that Walt Whitman did not want to be a spiritual leader, a role model as Jesus or Buddha, for example in sections 2 and 47

• “He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher”.
       

   “You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, not

  look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”

After reading those verses, I felt that although I found some lines that prompted me to make connections between “Song of myself” and different religions, Walt Whitman’s true desire was not to preach others on how to live and how to reach enlightenment –as religions do-, but to joyfully express his vision and to celebrate life, nature, the universe, everyone and everything through this song. He is also inviting people to “do their own journey” and not to get influenced by others who can tell you how life is according to their experience. That is why in section 6 when the child asks “What is the grass”, Walt Whitman answers “How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.”, because he wants the child to discover things by himself and to do that he has to “destroy the teacher”.

Additionally, I kept on doing some research about it and found the article “Walt Whitman’s use of Indian sources: A reconsideration”, in which it is asserted that:

“Since uniquely Hindu ideas are only minimally present in the first edition of Leaves of Grass, and since Whitman does not appear to have read extensively about Indian religion before its publication, it is reasonable to conclude that Hinduism did not have a significant impact in the formation of his philosophy” (Preston, N. 2012:6)

The author of the article makes it very explicit and clear when it states that Walt Whitman was not really influenced by Indian sources when he first wrote “Leaves of Grass”, although he had some knowledge of its culture.

References

Tran, T. C. (2004). The Buddha and the Way to Happiness. Infinity Publishing. Chicago.

Preston, N. (2012). Walt Whitman's Use of Indian Sources: A Reconsideration. The journal of cultural sciences, (627), 256-245.

Romanticism in a Chilean way

* I know that there is another post about the same topic, but my post is more descriptive *

In my opinion, it’s always necessary to get the knowledge in different aspects of our own country, especially culture aspect, even when we are studying a foreign language, since we tend to forget our roots, however we have a past and we share a common History as countries as Europe or United States. That is the reason why I will provide you with information about how was the Romanticism in Chile, so we will have an idea of it and to reinforce the knowledge not only in those foreign countries, but also in our country.

The background of the Romanticism in Chile wasn’t the same of Europe, because in the 1800s, the countries of Latin America had been gotten recently their independence. This literary movement is significant, because it is the first one occurred in Chile as independent nation.

Even if the background were not the same, the Chilean Romanticism had the same characteristics as the European Romanticism. For instance, the authors wrote about what honestly they were thinking, the writings were an evasion of reality, expression of the nature and loneliness and also, they shared the same nationalist feeling.

Another difference is that there were three generations of Romanticism in Chile. The first one, in 1837, was the folkloric generation in which writers tried to emphasize the reality in a satiric way. The second generation was the romantic-social generation, in 1842, in which writers wanted to express the liberalism more than the last generation.

I want to add at this point that the most famous exponent of Romanticism in Chile was Eusebio Lillo (second generation). In his poems, he expressed the nature, liberalism, and loneliness, in fact, he was a lonely man, he didn’t like to go out, and he stayed in his house for longer times. He was who wrote the lyric of our national anthem with the nature of Chile very well defined.

After that, in 1842, it was fond “La Sociedad Literaria”. The objective of this organization was to show off the nationalist identity by the Chilean literature which was one of the characteristic of Romanticism. Moreover, the Society rejected the Spanish romanticism since they felt that it was too conservative. As a consequence, Chile followed French, Italians and English tendencies, which were progresses and liberals.

Eusebio Lillo

In 1862, the last generation of Romanticism was the realistic generation. In this generation, was Alberto Blest Gana who wrote about the society of that time and how it was. Also, the third generation of Romanticism in Chile wrote about society in order to develop the ethical and moral in citizens, which was one of the big problems of the country at that time., for instance, in Martin Rivas he reflected the life and changes of a mid-class man. Also, his brother, Guillermo Blest Gana, was an exponent of Romanticism in Chile, but the difference between them was that Alberto was a writer and Guillermo was a poet. It’s important to take into account that both Blest Gana and Lillo belonged to “La Sociedad Literaria”.

At the third generation, Romanticism received many critics by a new literary movement. Realism came to replace Romanticism in Chile.

Reflexion:

Do you think that the lyric of our anthem has relation with Romanticism?

Have you ever read Martin Rivas? Do you notice some features of Romanticism in the story?

References:

- BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE CHILE. "Romanticismo en Chile", en: Romanticismo. Memoria Chilena. Disponible en http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-97612.html . Accedido en 3/9/2014.

- BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE CHILE. "Tendencia romántica", en: Guillermo Blest Gana (1829-1905). Memoria Chilena. Disponible en http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-94431.html . Accedido en 3/9/2014.

- BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE CHILE. "Movimiento Literario de 1842 o Generación del 42", en: Movimiento Literario de 1842. Memoria Chilena. Disponible en http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-96195.html. Accedido en 3/9/2014.

- Querelle y Cia Ltda. (n.d.). Generación de 1842. Profesor en Línea. Disponible en http://www.profesorenlinea.cl/chilehistoria/Generacion_1842.html. Accedido en 3/9/2014.

- Concha, J. (2010). Eusebio Lillo y el Romanticismo. Anales de Literatura Chilena, 11, 89-116.