Selected Poetry: Keats and Wordsworth

I like poetry. I honestly do. There is a strange connection between the physical representation of words, rhymes, syntax, and so on, and the abstract feelings that are universal to all humans; joy, sorrow, passion, desire, madness. Poetry, as opposed to prose, involves a very personal and ceremonious communication of our world. The poet meticulously chooses each word. The brevity of this genre of literature provokes us to reflect and to introspect; to unplug from whatever we are wired to; to hit the pause button. Poetry, hopefully, inspires us. By kindling new feelings or introducing new perspectives, poetry provides us an opportunity to reevaluate ourselves and the world we live in.

Maybe if everyone read poetry, life would be pretty good.

But enough of my abstract musings. I like two of Keats poems: "When I have fears that I may cease to be" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

"When I have fears," if I remember correctly, was actually on the passage analysis section of the 2008 AP English Literature test. I don't recall what I wrote, but reading this several years later, the poem's last lines still stand out to me:

 Of the wide world I stand alone and think,

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 

Keats eloquently describes the impermanence of our world. In the first part of the poem, he describes all of his worldly ambitions as a poet and as a lover, but ultimately ends with these final two depressing lines.

The fear of death, I think, can be conversely described as an anxiety about freedom. Keats laments the fact that time limits his ability to reach a full potential; mortality is a deplorable human condition. Can there be hope, can there be freedom, when humans are unable to achieve what they can before they die? I do not think that this is a depressing question at all, rather it's entirely relevant to our knowledge of what defines us as humans. To turn the question around: what will we do, what choices will we make, to maximize our potential given this limited amount of time?

On a separate note, the last lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" are perhaps Keat's most famous:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'; that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

There are numerous interpretations of these last two lines. I honestly think that these last two lines are annoyingly cryptic partly because Romantic poetry never intended to be concrete or straightforward. Instead of reading too much into what it means, I think it can be agreed that all other interpretations are just as valid as any other. One interpretation could be that Beauty is the same as Truth, and the implication is that we should stop dwelling on the Truth aspect; if we live life happy, then Truth can be understood and attained. Or another interpretation would be that Beauty and Truth are the same, but the pursuit itself of Truth limits our understanding of Beauty--which is in fact precisely the opposite of what Keats is demonstrating by describing the Beauty of the Grecian Urn. Or perhaps we can apply the same reading we did to "When I have fears," that Beauty is impermanent, and so Truth becomes superficial and irrelevant. Thus in a postmodern sense, although Keats posits that Truth and Beauty are impermanent and superficial, the events depicted on the urn are frozen in time, permanent and worthy of poetic reflection.

Reading poetry is an immensely private activity, but at the same time, poetry contains universal themes and issues everyone can relate to. Each person views the poem through his or her own narrative lens, while the poem itself is in fact representative of the poet's narrative lens--hence its element of novelty comes from being a lens within a lens. However, the poet's lens is rigid and unchanging, while our personal narrative lens are always in flux as long as we are conscious. At any rate, poetry lets us discover shared human perspectives through the poet's narrative voice, and with each new reading, we invariably gain deeper insight into our reasons for being.

Tatler/Spectator Selections

Quite frankly, I am unsure what to make of this reading.

These selections are similar to Montaigne's Essays because of their ridiculous amount of interest in mundane topics (On Polite Conversations, Criticism, Good Taste, Rakes, etc.). However, I suppose that Steele and Addison use these mundane topics as proxies for understanding human nature; as the introduction describes them, "The papers probe human nature not to reveal its bedrock depravity but to expose a common core of reason, sense, and sentiment" (pg. 44).

Occasionally,  their attempt at being honest (like Montaigne) made me question their motives. For instance, in Addison's discourse on Criticism, he posits, "A true Critick ought to dwell rather upon Excellencies than Imperfections" (381). A few paragraphs later he states that in his next paper on Milton's Paradise Lost, "I shall just point at the Imperfections, without endeavouring to enflame them with Ridicule" (382). This seems blatantly contradictory because he implies that he will make a petty critique, as opposed to a 'True' critique, by pointing out the "Imperfections" of Milton's writing.

At the same time, however, such inconsistencies are reminiscent of Montaigne's frankness. That is, Addison chooses to write a raw, unedited version of his thoughts and opinions. Thus staying true to the periodical's ambition of describing things as is, of treading the fine line between objective news-reporting  and  'libelous scandalmongering" (41).

Having said that, I am quite convinced that the Tatler and Spectator could be accurately described as: painfully insipid 18th-century transcripts of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show.

Wouldn't you agree?

"Twelfth Night, or What You Will" by Shakespeare

Alas! Butler upsets #1 seed Pittsburgh, Libya is getting bombed, Japan is recovering from a massive tsunamiquake, and phooey, spring break is over.

My deepest condolences and sympathy for all those who cannot find peace.

On the bright side, though, our gracious Lithum instructor has replaced Cervantes' ridiculously gargantuan Don Quixote with Shakespeare's Twelfth Night; the added bonus--it's written originally in English.

In fact, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is a comedy--a double bonus! No more dead bodies and dark portrayals of humanity's capacity for evil. If I remember correctly, we discussed in class at some point about the purpose of comedies. The Comedy, as opposed to the Tragedy, is not only described by its comic and humor, but also by its ability to produce constructive chaos.

In other words, the chaos of jests and bawdy scenes help drive the plot forward while introducing the more 'serious' themes of truth, justice, love, gender roles, and so on.

So, in Twelfth Night, I found this chaos to be centered around the theme of deception. More specifically, I found the chaos of this deception best represented in the gender confusion of Viola. She dresses like a boy and gains the trust of Count Orsino, thus forming a close relationship with the Count (and one that is faintly homoerotic). Using the guise and alias of Cesario, Viola inadvertently causes Olivia to fall in love with her/him. Finally, Viola's long lost twin, Sebastian, in an incredulous twist of events encounters Olivia, who mistakes him for Cesario. The confusion engendered by this gender inversion drives Malvolio to act unlike himself, which raises questions around the futility of human ambitions.

Of the many human ambitions, love has been a timeless pursuit and perhaps the most powerful and mind-boggling of human emotions. Malvolio, the "puritan," abandons his strict and conservative background for "dressing in cross-garter," wearing obnoxious "yellow stockings," and "smiling" manically in his comic and futile pursuit of Olivia's love. He doesn't realize that Maria deceives him by forging Olivia's handwriting, and nonetheless highlights the hilarity of the madness that love can inspire.

Orsino's abrupt and prompt decision to make Viola his mistress shows powerful sway of love even in light of her duplicity and deception. In fact, while Viola pretends to be Cesario, Orsino already treats him/her very fondly, and even says "That say thou art a man: Diana's lip | Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe | Is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound, | And all is semblative a woman's part" (I. 4). Despite Viola's nifty guise, Orsino already seems to be falling in love with her. When he commands Cesario to "Unfold the passion of my love" and "Surprise her [Olivia] with the discourse of my dear faith" (I. 4), his intense passion is directed at Cesario so that Cesario could deliver such passion to Olivia; needless to say, this passionate love could subtly have been directed at the messenger Cesario/Viola herself. Count Orsino finally offers his hand to Viola at the play's conclusion, but his promptness reveals that he is not merely in love with Olivia, but perhaps seeks love for its own sake--love as its own end. Viola's deception and attempt at veiling her identity, then, appears futile and fruitless in comparison to the wild and uncontrollable force of love.

Moreover there is Feste the Fool, whose official purpose is to trick and deceive his audience, which hopefully elicits laughter. In a later part, Feste adds a new dimension to his role as lead Deceptor by dressing as Sir Topas the curate to meet with the imprisoned Malvolio, and to cure him of his madness. A strange double inversion is created when Feste, who is officially supposed to be foolish, assumes the persona of a serious member of the clergy.
 
These are just a few points about the narrative play between the themes of deception and love. They are common human themes, and common narrative themes, but I hope some of these ideas will be of interest and insight to you.

 [Malvolio gets pwned]

"King Lear" by Shakespeare

"Essays" by Michel de Montaigne