Transcript Robert Burns: “A Red Red Rose”

Getting inside a poem
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Think about Whitehead’s general model of education,
as mental and emotional development.
There are three stages:
First, romance—or arousing your interest in the
subject
Next comes precision—or getting a grasp on the
details, some of which might not be clear at first;
Then comes generalization—or seeing how an idea
can be applied to other things.
According to Whitehead, this leads to further
development, in the same general pattern.
AN EXAMPLE: Robert Burns’ song, “A Red Red Rose”
Robert Burns
(25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)
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a Scottish poet and a lyricist.
He is widely regarded as the
national poet of Scotland,
and is celebrated worldwide.
He is the best known of the
poets who have written in
the Scots language, although
much of his writing is also in
English and a "light" Scots
dialect, accessible to an
audience beyond Scotland.
He also wrote in standard
English, and in these pieces,
his political or civil
commentary is often at its
most blunt.
"My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose“
1794
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"My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" is
a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns
based on traditional sources. The song
is also referred to by the title My Love is
Like A Red, Red Rose or Red, Red Rose
and is often published as a poem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUs5dHFksw
Bob Dylan
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Bob Dylan has named his own
greatest inspiration as the Scottish
poet Robert Burns.
The American singer-songwriter
was asked to say which lyric or
verse has had the biggest effect on
his life.
He selected the 1794 song A Red,
Red Rose, which is often published
as a poem, penned by the man
regarded as Scotland's national
poet.
According to some experts it was
based on a song Burns heard a girl
singing.
The poet himself, a pioneer of the
Romantic movement, referred to it
as a 'simple old Scots song which I
had picked up in the country'.
Robert Burns: “A Red Red Rose”
Modernized Spelling:
A Red, Red Rose By Robert Burns
O my love’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my love’s like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
As fair art though, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till all the seas go dry.
Till all the seas go dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt with the sun;
O I will love thee still, my dear
While the sands of life shall run
And fare-thee well, my only Love!
And fare-thee well, awhile!
And I will come again, my; Love,
Though it were ten thousand miles.
O my love’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my love’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.
A Red, Red Rose
O my luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
O I will luve thee still, my dear
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand miles.
O my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
--Robert Burns
First, the themes
The main theme: an expression of love, a praise of the
lover . . .
My love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June
The secondary theme: a poem about parting. Their love
will last though they are separated
And fare-thee well, my only Love!
And fare-thee well, awhile!
And I will come again, my; Love,
Though it were ten thousand miles.
But now for PRECISION
How does the poem work?
It starts with a METAPHOR (technically, a
SIMILE, A is like B). There are many kinds
of metaphors, but basically all metaphors
POINT OUT A RELATION BETWEEN TWO
(or more) THINGS.
One way to make a diagram is to create two
columns, with the related things at the top,
and below each item, make a list of
qualities or attributes that both things have.
A (related to) B
A: My LOVE
.
B: Red, Red Rose
.
(qualities)
(qualities)
fresh
fresh
beautiful
beautiful
sweet
sweet
pleasant smell
pleasant smell
human
vegetative
face, hands, body
thorns
long life
fades in 10 days
conscious
no brain
gender?
fertilized by bees?
...
...
When .the
. . poem says, “My Love is like a red, red
. . .rose,” does that mean, for
example
Love has THORNS?
My Love is a plant?
My Love is fertilized by bees?
My love has no brain?
Is the comparison APPOSITE
(Does it FIT)?
Note that the last examples all seem like jokes,
but that is only because in metaphors, we
usually select the attributes things have in
metaphors.
When the qualities or attributes match or fit, we
say that the comparison is APPOSITE. It
means, the comparison is well placed.
But in some cases, there is IRONY. Anyone
who has been in love knows that in a certain
sense, Love does have THORNS, it can be
BRAINLESS.
Metaphors as a form of reasoning
Any time we relate one thing to another, we are
using a kind of relational thinking that is
fundamental to our ability to think.
2 + 2 = 4 for example, has the same
underlying logical form as A is B.
But in ordinary language (and poetry), the
terms are selected so that we can expand
and specify what we mean very economically.
“My Love is like a red red rose” gives us a way
to add precision to what we feel about love:
all it requires is that you think about LOVE
and ROSES in intimate detail.
Metaphors as doorways
to other connections
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We know that “My love is like a red red rose” is
meant to praise love (or your lover), not to claim that
love is brainless, or that your girlfriend is a vegetable
with thorns all over her limbs. But even seeing these
ironic possibilities enriches how you think about love.
We could do the same with other examples, like:
“The Hero was like a Lion” (does he lay around all
day and tear apart antelopes in the evening? Or do
we mean that he is brave and fearless?)
The problem of ambiguity & intention
When we think precisely, we recognize things about the
world that we might not have noticed. Look again at
Burns’ poem: it’s not just a poem praising his
beautiful love: he’s leaving her, going on a long trip,
and he hopes that their love will last, though he goes
“ten thousand miles”. There’s a lot here to think
about. And on this second theme, Love being like a
rose doesn’t help much with deciding how long love
lasts.
BUT DON’T RUN WILD and suppose that the poem
means whatever you may happen to think about
love.
The first metaphor is the start of a sequence.
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Look at the second couplet:
“My love is like a melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.”
This is how LITERARY REASONING goes.
The first metaphor (Love – Rose) is related to the second
metaphor (Love-Melody).
This requires us to compare not two things, but two relations:
In what way is the relation between my love and a red rose, like
the relation between my love and a melody played in tune?
You can see at once that this can get complicated, but it shows
how we can understand poems by letting them take us through
a sequence of thoughts.
In this sequence, comparison goes from something more
concrete (rose) to something more abstract (melody);
Generalization
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When we get the idea, or understanding what a poem
means, it includes all of the things it refers to.
IN reading a poem, if you are tempted to say, “this poem
means X,” you have gone wrong. Instead, ask, “How
do I understand what the poem says and shows? How
have my thoughts about certain themes expanded?”
In LITERARY REASONING, the generalization is NOT like
a definition or a rule or a simpler statement. It is in the
result: you understand the world more precisely. You
see other places where the same relation can be seen.
You recognize more subtlety, more connections.
Going back, after analysis,
to read the poem again
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In the BURNS poem, if we go back and read it straight through,
we can see that it is not just a way to make love vivid: it is a
little drama. There is a lot going on, a lot at stake. The speaker
is leaving on a long trip. He wants to say to his love not only
how much he loves her, and how sweet she is, but that the love
is deeper than appearances: You don’t see a melody in tune.
But love, real love, the speaker is saying, is like that
But you also see that there is some worry: why did he write this
lovely poem for her? Isn’t it partly so she won’t be like the rose
(brainless) and forget him in 10 days? Isn’t it so she won’t hurt
him with love’s thorns?