Neruda

Latin America’s most important twentieth century poet, Pablo Neruda, was a social justice advocate and important political figure, who “adopted the role of public poet, putting his writing at the service of the people” (Puchner 1421). Neruda is part of the modernist literary movement, which is characterized by breaking away from conventional poetics. Modernists sought new ways to portray the experiences of a rapidly changing human experience that included great technological improvement as well as increasingly destructive weaponry and world war. “Walking Around” exposes urban poverty and suffering, creating an image of the city as desolate, dirty, and filled with suffering.

“Walking Around” shows “the marked influence of surrealism: the surprising juxtapositions, the shocking associations, the pursuit of disordering states of consciousness” (Cosgrove 22). Neruda conveys great sadness and emotional exhaustion with the poem’s opening: “It happens that I am tired of being a man” (1). Walking through the city, the speaker goes into “the tailor’s shops and the movies / all shriveled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan / navigating on a water of origin and ash” (2-4). This is a strange image suggesting that great loss has caused the speaker to withdraw into himself. Felt is made from applying heat, moisture, and agitation to wool, which could symbolize the experiences that have brought the speaker to this place of hopelessness. The water of origin and ash may refer to scientific theories around earth’s formation through collisions with asteroids which would create both water and ash. Swans are beautiful, elegant birds, but here beauty is an illusion.

The speaker talks of death, darkness, and “shivering with dreams” (19) and declares the he does not want “to continue as a root and as a tomb, / as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses, stiff with cold, dying with pain” (23-25). Loneliness and suffering are inescapable in this city, where even death is no escape from the “images of shame and horror” (38) that should make a mirror weep, but which society ignores. By the end of the poem, the speaker’s attitude shifts just a little, to include anger, but quickly returns to forgetfulness:

I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,

with fury, with forgetfulness,

I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopaedic appliances,

and courtyards hung with clothes on wires,

underpants, towels and shirts which weep

slow dirty tears (40-45).

Ordinary things, like clothes hanging out to dry, convey the hopelessness of Neruda’s poem with their dirty tears. These images reflect the social environment. Even though the speaker sees all that is wrong and reacts with anger to society’s inequity, he quickly forgets and continues walking. “Walking Around” ends with the same hopelessness with which it begins, leaving the reader with a dirty image of urban misery with no hope for change.

Works Cited

Cosgrove, Ciaran. “A Poetry of Unpompous Circumstance.” The Poetry Ireland Review, no. 18/19, 1987, pp. 10–25. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25576497. Accessed 19 July 2020.

Neruda, Pablo. “Walking Around.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1423-1424.

Puchner, Martin. “Pablo Neruda.”  The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1421-1422. 

 

Time

Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” begins with Lopakhin, a former peasant who is now a wealthy merchant, saying: “The train has come, thank God. What time is it?” (Chekhov 922). With this, he introduces the importance of time and change as central themes that are expressed through attention to patterns in nature, sleep, sleeplessness, life, death, and memory. The train, as a mover of things and people, is a symbol of change and progress. Emphasis on time is a reminder that change is inevitable, regardless of action or inaction. The train has come, and time moves on.

Lopakhin has a complicated relationship with time and change, as he is constantly aware of time as an opportunity, of time passing, and of not having enough time. He has a plan to help Liubov get out of debt by selling land, cutting down the orchard, and building vacation homes. Lopakhin feels the pressure of time to take advantage of this opportunity and is unable to understand Liubov’s inability to move forward. From her childhood nursery, she looks out at the white orchard and remembers, “Oh my childhood! My innocence!” (931). She is stuck, clinging to the past glory of her family’s status and wealth, and she remains stuck. Unable to let go or move forward, Liubov “keep[s] waiting for something to happen. It’s as if the house were about to fall down around our ears or something” (938). Despite Lopakhin’s reminders, Liubov does nothing to prevent the auction, and so Lopakhin seizes the opportunity for himself, buying the entire estate. Here he has a moment of sadness, telling Liubov: “you can’t ever go back to the past. Oh, if only we could change things, if only life were different, this unhappy, messy life…” (952). The character most closely connected to progress and change, has this moment of grief that interrupts his exhilaration as ownership of the orchard passes from the aristocracy, to a man whose family they enslaved. He has compassion for Liubov, even as he embraces his opportunities.

Representing the history of Russia, the orchard itself is an important symbol connected to the aristocracy, and each character has a connection to the orchard specifically related to their social and generational position. The play opens with Liubov returning via train to her family’s estate. It is spring, and the cherry trees are blooming. The play ends in the fall when the train takes everyone away from the orchard and the past, to confront their lives in a new era in Russian history. Time is especially pressing in the final act with worries of being late for the train, and references to endings and beginnings. Left behind, Firs dies with his memories in the empty house, a final symbol of change and of time passing. “The Cherry Orchard” ends with the sound of an ax.

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. “The Cherry Orchard.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 922-960.

Marti and Dario

Puchner describes Whitman as “affirmative, inclusive, energetic, defiant, and radically experimental” (646). His poetry defied conventions, embracing free verse for modern poetic expression. Marti and Dario, both influenced by Whitman, embraced a poetic awakening in their work. Raab asserts: “that Whitman grounded his verse in his American surroundings and that he presents the lyrical ‘I’ as symbiotically connected to the people, landscapes, scenes, or history out of which it emerges greatly appealed to Martí” (Raab 4). Dario adopts a similar approach in “To Roosevelt,” however, his poem is not grounded in ‘I’ as representative of Latin America, but in “you,” identifying Roosevelt as the United States.

Dario channels Whitman in his poetic address to President Roosevelt: “The voice that would reach you, Hunter, must speak / in Biblical tones, or in the poetry of Walt Whitman” (Dario 1-2). Mirroring Whitman’s imagery of landscapes, the body, and nature, he personifies the United States through Roosevelt’s image, as a godless, depraved hunter who is very different from Latin America: “You are the United States / future invader of our naïve America / with its Indian blood, an America / that still prays to Christ and still speaks Spanish” (5-8). Dario hears the U.S. shouting “like the roar of a lion” (Dario 22), drawing from Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” (Whitman 52, 4).  “To Roosevelt” offers a warning to the United States not to underestimate the rich, cultural history and faith of Latin Americans, while celebrating his own heritage.

Marti emulates Whitman’s lyric verse in “I Am an Honest Man.” Just as Whitman is everyman in “Song of Myself,” Marti embodies the spirit, art, and people of Cuba. Whitman begins, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” (1-2). Similarly, Marti wishes “To fling my verses from my soul. / I come from everywhere / and I am going toward everywhere” (4-6). Intensely emotional, Marti’s poem captures his love of his country through simple landscapes, “where the palm grows” (2), in the herbs and flowers of the land, in the mountains, and vineyards.

Signaling a shift in Latin American poetics, Marti and Dario capture elements of Whitman’s experimental new poetry, adopting images of nature and creating synergy between the people, history, and the land. The arts, especially poetry, become the connectors linking all the parts together.

Works Cited

Dario, Ruben. “To Roosevelt.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 693-694.

Marti, Jose. “I Am an Honest Man.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 681-682.

Puchner, Martin. “Walt Whitman.”  The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 646-647. 

Raab, Josef. “El Gran Viejo: Walt Whitman in Latin America.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 3, no. 2, June 2001. doi:10.7771/1481-4374.1122.

Whitman, Walt. From “Song of Myself.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 648-653.

An Essay on Man

In An Essay on Man, Pope offers a theodicy, arguing a philosophical position of belief in a divinely ordered universe that allows for the existence of evil and seeming disorder in the world. Elements of Pope’s argument include the great chain theory, the limited perspective of human beings in comparison to divine perspective, and the arrogance of humanity to question God’s perfect creation. Pope’s approach is unconvincing because he fails to offer any real evidence to support his argument.

Pope references the 18^th century belief in the Great Chain of Being which places all elements of the universe in a hierarchical structure with God at the top of the chain. “Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed: / From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike, / Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike” (244-246). Any disruption to the chain, as ordered in God’s plan, is enough to destroy the entire system. Man, according to Pope, occupies the exact place in the chain that he is supposed to occupy. Any movement brings chaos.

Man’s perspective is limited, which Pope asserts is as it should be. “Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. / …His knowledge measured to his state and place; / His time a moment, and a point his space” (60, 71-72).  What man perceives as discordant and evil, from a divine point of view, exists as harmony and universal good. Man cannot see with God’s eye, but “hope springs eternal in the human breast” (95), and this limited perspective allows man to have hope for the future.

Invoking man’s arrogance and pride, Pope chides humanity for questioning the divine order, God’s perfect creation, or his place within that creation. The argument here is that God is perfect and “one truth is clear, Whatever is, is right” (294). Divinely ordered, the universe exists according to a plan that man is in no position to question.

Pope’s arguments that allow for evil and chaos in a divinely ordered universe are not convincing. Mosley suggests “Pope’s problem is that he wants to look at the entire universe, and so he performs his analysis metonymically and synecdotally, casting metaphors by looking at the human body and at storms, by looking at stars and passions, making all of these changes of scale analogous” (180). Pope’s approach is to “vindicate the ways of God to man” (16) but he is unable to accomplish this task. Arguments that rely heavily on man’s arrogance and limited perspective, in contrast to God’s perfection, fail to provide convincing evidence for theodicy.

Works Cited

Mosley, George. “Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man and Tribunalization.” Journal of the Georgia Philological Association, 2008, pp. 176–183.

Pope, Alexander. An Essay on Man. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 90-97.

de Navarre

Pierre Bayle argued that de Navarre is a queen who “grant[s] her protection to people persecuted for opinions which she believes to be false; to open a sanctuary to them; to preserve them from the flames prepared for them; to furnish them with a subsistence.” While Bayle’s statement may be true, our selected readings of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron neither support nor refute the claim.

With only a portion of the prologue and the eighth story for reference, Heptameron “deals above all with antagonism between the sexes, particularly concerning issues of marital fidelity and the status of women” (Puchner 1639). Parlamente, a noblewoman who probably represents de Navarre, asks Lady Oisille to suggest some form of entertainment for the group of five men and five women who are stuck at the Abbey, waiting for a bridge to be built across the river. Oisille is the oldest of the women, and Parlamente defers to her age and wisdom: “you have had much experience of life, and you now occupy the position of mother in regard to the rest of us women, and it surprises that you do not consider some pastime to alleviate the boredom and distress that we shall have to bear during our long stay here” (de Navarre 1640). Lady Oisille recommends copious Scripture reading and prayer, but the group prefers to keep that limited to mornings, so she suggests judging after open discussion. Parlamente tells the group to “concentrate on those which everybody can join in” (1641) in rebuttal to her husband’s desire for private activity. Hircan defers to Parlamente saying: “I accept her opinion as if it were my own” (1642). All the companions agree, and Parlamente tells them her idea. The prologue includes only pleasant interactions between the companions, giving the sense of congeniality and a democratic atmosphere. In presenting her idea, Parlamente begins name-dropping, mentioning the tales of Boccacio as a model for their activity. She also specifically mentions the King, Monseigneur the Dauphin, Madame the Dauphine, and herself, Madame Marguerite. All are in favor of the activity, and so story-telling begins the next day.

The eighth story is a tale of deception and marital infidelity. A husband’s attempt to cheat on his wife backfires, and he unwittingly “gives himself cuckold’s horns and [makes] himself look ridiculous for evermore” (1645). Banter among the company after hearing this story has some taking the side of the wife, others the husband, and Dagoucin professing an unrequited, unannounced, perfect love. Puchner asserts: “The courtly men and women who narrate and hear the stories are, to say the least, unafraid to disagree with each other about the tales’ significances, both in the frame and through their stories, which implicitly debate such issues as the just desserts for the philandering husband or the clever wife” (1639). Do these debates support de Navarre’s magnanimity and the protection she offered to those persecuted for their opinions, even when she disagreed? It is possible, but I think it is a stretch. While Heptameron does not deny Bayle’s claim, it does not actively support it.  

Works Cited

de Navarre, Marguerite. From The Heptameron.  The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1640-1647. 

Puchner, Martin. “Marguerite de Navarre.”  The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1637-1639. 

Sunjata

Today’s wedding ceremonies include traditional rituals that have been handed down through the centuries. The origins of many of these rituals were to ward off or confuse evil spirits, establish the bride as property of her new husband, or to bring good luck and fertility. Armenian wedding rituals and symbols that have endured include the bride and groom warding off evil spirits by breaking plates before entering their new home (Nerguizian). An old French tradition included the bride, groom, and bridal party cleaning up the mess after the reception. This meant putting all leftover food into a chamber pot, which the couple was then forced to consume to give them energy for their marital activities. Considering basic issues of sanitation, this French tradition is a bit horrifying. Today, it has morphed into chocolates and champagne, without the chamber pot.

The thirteenth century West African epic, “Sunjata,” includes a wedding ceremony and original bride-escorting song. Sogolon’s story is filled with magic and mystery, as is appropriate for the mother of a mythic hero. Because she was exposed to magic at too young an age, Sogolon is deformed and ugly. Her head is bald, feet twisted, eye injured, and Sogolon has a humpback. This same exposure to magic that causes her ugliness will make Sunjata a hero: “There will be something special at her breast, / Because it will have all the dalilu” (362-363). But first, Sogolon must be married, and escorted to her new home and husband by her co-wives. The women sing and carry Sogolon because her twisted feet kick up dust. They sing “Do not put us in the dust” (762), suggesting that Sogolon not leave them behind. When her headscarf falls off, they sing “Our heron-head has come this year” (781). This insult angers Sogolon, who answers “Well, I have arrived” (788). The sisters put their heads in and out of the doorway two times, “The third time, they send the bride in to her husband. / That’s how it all started” (797-798). The epic creates a wedding tradition through Sogolon’s presentation to her new husband, complete with a bride-escorting song. 

Works Cited

Nerguizian, Micaela. “Hopa! Rituals and Symbols of an Armenian Wedding.” Smithsonian. festival.si.edu/blog/rituals-symbols-armenian-wedding-celebration. Accessed 14 June 2020.

“Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1514-1576. 

 

Bashō

Visual writing is embedded in haiku poetry, communicating something more than is expressed with words alone. It requires the reader to engage with the images, bringing prior knowledge to the poem to make meaning. This YouTube video represents one individual’s suggestion for pairing Japanese artwork with Bashō’s poetry. Beginning with a map of Bashō’s Trail and including twenty-three images and ten poems representing the poet’s journey through the Northeast, the video demonstrates that the strength of haiku lies in the images evoked in simple poetic lines.

Beginning with a map, the collage of images and poems takes the viewer on a journey. A painting with a sliver of moon with red maple leaves on tree branches suggests it is autumn, and the image of an old man with a bamboo walking stick represents Bashō as he starts his journey. Along the way he meets common people such as merchants with wares to sell, and travelers like himself. The first haiku appears after a painting of a woman combing her hair: “Wrapping rice dumplings in bamboo leaves / With one hand she fingers / The hair over her forehead” (Bashō). Juxtaposition of the painting and poem implies meaning, and viewers are asked to make the connections between the picture and words. Tarallo writes: “between all images and words exists a potentially meaningful relationship… What may amplify this relationship is when the visual qualities of word and image are harmonized. The unity of their visual qualities and their conceptual magnetism create a fertile poetic message” (453). The video maker is suggesting a connection between the painting and the poem, asking viewers to make these connections as well, and to imagine the woman in the painting as the woman in Bashō’s poem.

The journey continues with a montage of nature paintings depicting rivers, trees, mountains, and villagers. According to Ueda, “a haiku poet does not use nature images to express his emotion; he lets natural objects express their feelings” (427). Bashō’s poems recall history while expressing the inevitable cycle of life and death. The video maker’s selection of poems and images work together, hiking the countryside in the fall of both the year and the poet’s life. Towards the end of the video both images and words address old age directly: “this autumn - / old age I feel / In the birds, the clouds” (Bashō). The haiku is sandwiched between wintery pictures of snowy mountains, and an old man crossing a bridge, with the full moon between the trees. Pairing the images and poems in this way, harmonizing the qualities of words and images, shares the video maker’s vision of the strong images suggested in Bashō’s deceptively simple lines. The maker takes viewers on a journey through Japanese poetry and art, imagining the connections between the two.

Works Cited

“Matsuo Bashō.” YouTube, uploaded by RaulSantiagoSebazco, 9 April 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvzgR3A9_I

Tarallo, Donald. “The Poetic Dimension: Reading Words and Reading Images.” Design Principles & Practice: An International Journal, vol. 5, no. 6, June 2011, pp. 451–458. doi:10.18848/1833-1874/CGP/v05i06/38241.

Ueda, Makoto. “Bashō and the Poetics of ‘Haiku.’” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 21, no. 4, 1963, pp. 423–431. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/427098. Accessed 8 June 2020.