Transcript Document 7372126

Poetry 3: Nature and Art (2)
Rhyme and Rhythm (2)
Outline
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“Musée des beaux arts”
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Stevens, Wallace “Anecdote of
the Jar” (1923)
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“Vincent”
Review: Poetic Techniques?
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Tone – lyrical, ironic, assertive, tentative, etc.
Sound – sound pattern, rhyme, alliteration,
assonance, consonance, meter & stress (feet –iamb,
trochee, spondee, dactyl and anapest)
Form – stanza, line length, free verse and villanelle
Figurative speech – metaphor, simile, symbol,
personification, apostrophe
Others – irony, tense
Musee des beaux arts
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1.
2.
Three paintings:
The Census at Bethlehem, based on Luke
2:1-5
The Massacre of the Innocents --取材于
《馬太福音》；希律王派兵逐戶搜害幼孩
3.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The
Massacre of the Innocents
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Image source
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/
mm/massacre.html
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The
Massacre of the Innocents
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Images source:
http://bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innocents_soldats
.htm
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The
Massacre of the Innocents

Images source:
http://bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innocents_soldats
.htm
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
The Census at Bethlehem
"Musée des Beaux Art"
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Landscape with the
Fall of Icarus
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
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What are the examples of human suffering in the
poem? How are they set in contrast to the daily
activities of human beings or even animals? Of all
the examples of human/animal indifference, which
is the least appreciated?
For the speaker, these two kinds of events concur
and the "Old Masters" know it. What is the
speaker's attitude toward this concurrence, and
toward the Old Masters?
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
About suffering they were never wrong.
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or
just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood;
They never forgot
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
10 That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
11 Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
12 Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's
horse
13 Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
14 In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
15 Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
16 Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry.
17 But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
18 As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
19 Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
20 Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
21 Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Musee des beaux arts
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Three paintings:
1.
The Census at Bethlehem, based on Luke 2:1-5
The Massacre of the Innocents --取材于《馬太福
2.
音》；希律王派兵逐戶搜害幼孩
3.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
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Theme: human suffering vs. daily activities
1.
daily activities: banal, trivial, and commonplace
2. Innocent: children’s play, animalistic survival,
routine work of peasants, the sun shining,
3. Indifferent: expensive delicate ship
4. Sufferings: birth, martyrdom, failed youthful
aspiration.
Structure: from the general to one specific painting.
The 2nd stanza: Icarus -- simply a splash, a cry, a
pair of "white legs“ –mixed with the daily occurrences.
Language: deliberately unpoetic + hidden rhymes
Old Masters = the speaker.
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
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In Historical Contexts:
Ovid’s Metamorphosis – “Some fisher …stood stock
still in astonishment” – in Bruegel’s painting, they are
oblivious of Icarus.
Written in 1938 –before then, Auden went to China
and witness Sino-Japanese war (esp. Japanese airraid of Hankow):
Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 784
Journey to the War
qtd Nemerov 786
For your reference: “Landscape With
The Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
-- The matter-offact language
-- no
punctuation
--Icarus is the
actual focus.
For your reference:
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Some other poems:
http://www.eaglesweb.com/IMAGE
S/icarus.htm
-- “WAITING FOR ICARUS” – the
wife’s perspective
-- “TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK
HAS COME TO TRIUMPH” –
passion and idealism vs.
pragmatism
“Icarus” by Carolyn Leaf (an
animation at Intro2Lit)
Icarus Atop Empire State Building,
1931
Photo by Lewis Hine
Courtesy George Eastman House
Anecdote of the Jar (1923 p. 1043)
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Stevens, Wallace
Discussion Questions
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What is the “jar” symbolic of? Why is the
poem about its “anecdote”?
How is the jar opposed to nature? How do
the two respond to each other?
(e.g. 1st stanza: “round” vs. “slovenly”;
2nd stanza: “tall and of a port in air” vs. “sprawled
around”;
3rd stanza: “gray and bare” vs. “give of bird or
bush.”)
Anecdote of the Jar
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The jar -- symbolic of art, which provides an
organization or interpretation of nature (or
human world).
the jar vs. nature
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Art: organizing, sense-making, but “dead”
Nature: living, active and on-going.
Sound Pattern:
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mostly iambic tetrameter
occasional rhymes (where the jar is described)
Sound and Rhythm
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repetition: "round“; opening and closing lines
end with “Tennessee.”
The use of the other open vowels around the
word "round“ vs. “grey and bare” “bird and
bush” in the last quatrain.
“Vincent” by Don McLean
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An sympathetic view with belief in his sanity and
passion;
Vision of colors –
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“Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze”;
Lonely but sympathetic with ordinary people and
their tortures:
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“Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow “
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QiZQYPtI7c&tran
slated=1
Mr Tambourine Man
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… I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for
dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRzOBzVgBE
Mr Tambourine Man
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Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to
grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRzOBzVgBE
Trans. http://blog.roodo.com/honeypie/archives/6523255.html
Conclusion
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Nature – Human Communication with it in
different ways (“Earth” “Narrow Fellow” and
“Astronomer”)
Human Suffering/Aspiration and Art:
Abstraction & Understanding of Human Position
(“Musees des beaux arts”), Mixture of Fear, Grandeur
and Triviality (“Icarus”), Human Sympathy (“Vincent”)
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Art and Nature: “Anecdote of the Jar”
Journal Writing:
Main idea presented in your thesis
statement;
 Deal with at least two poems
—with quotes and close analysis of the
quotes;
 better offer some comparison of the
poems before you reach your conclusion.
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Journal Writing: Possible Topics
"We Real Cool“
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"I'm Nobody! Who are you?“
"A Noiseless Patient Spider“
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers“
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"Those Winter Sundays"
“My Mother and the Bed”
“Days” “Days” (for Philip Larkin)
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good 
Night”
“Sestina”
“Metaphor"
“Because I could not stop for Death “
“Earth”
”A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”
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"When I Heard the Learn'd
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Astronomer"
"Musee des Beaux Arts"
“Anecdote of the Jar”
Identity – young identities,
self protection, isolation and
exploration
Family – understanding and
memory of parents and their
care
Life and Death—rhythm
and repetition (ironic,
routine, open to
interpretation, sequence of
loss, a train with no return,
striving till the end)
Nature – forms of contact
Art – views of our positions
in life
How do we analyze a poem?
* All the elements should be examined in relation to its theme(s).
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers“
"Those Winter Sundays"
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
“My Mother and the Bed”
"We Real Cool“
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?“
"A Noiseless Patient Spider“
“Because I could not stop for Death “
“Sestina”
ALL
“Metaphor"
"Musee des Beaux Arts"
"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"
”A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”
“Anecdote of the Jar”
“Earth” “Days” “Days” (for Philip Larkin)
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sound—
meter/rhythm &
rhyme
syntax, use of
dashes
 tone,
 form –free
verse, vilanelle,
sestina
figurative
language:
metaphor,
symbol
 rhetoric (O)
Pattern of
contrast &
repetition;
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See you next time!!!
Reference
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Alexander Nemerov. “The Flight of Form:
Auden, Bruegel, and the
Turn to Abstraction in the 1940s.” Critical
Inquiry / Summer 2005: 780-810.