Arts and Modern Society

1. Arts and Modern Society Poetry Review Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 1912

2. Outline

3. The Modern World • What is ‘Modern’? How many writers we have read so far are “Modern” writers? • Please see here • Modern Times: under the influence of capitalism, industrialism and some great thinkers (e.g. Darwin, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche) • The beauty of abstraction and mechanical reproduction, convenience  Cubism (立體派)  Kaleidoscopic visions • Literary Modernism: a great period of artistic invention and confirmation of “Art.” (e.g. as a religion or Art for Art’s sake) • Modern Fragmentation  postmodern Connectedness: The world gets smaller, time faster, life emptier, we—lonelier or more connected—by the flows of virus, capital, ecological changes, natural disaster and terrorist threats, etc.

4. "In a Station of the Metro“—Pound’s Experience Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and suddenly saw a beautiful face, then another, and another, and then a beautiful child's face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found in words, but there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of colour. It was just that--a "pattern" you mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word, the beginning, for me of a language in colour.(Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir) (video clip)

5. "In a Station of the Metro“—Pound’s Experience • He first wrote a 30-line poem, but was not satisfied with it. • 6 months later, he reduced the poem in half. 3. A haiku(俳句)-like poem (with special punctuation) The apparition of these faces in the crowd : Petals on a wet, black bough . Pound: “I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.” (source) Reference: HAIKU for PEOPLE

6. "In a Station of the Metro“—Questions • Note: 1) The Metro-- the name of the subway system in Paris. 2) This poem, Pound claimed, describes his experience of coming out of a subway car (see Pound's notes). • Images: The poem presents, instead of a story about this experience, two images, one in each line. Their meanings (meanings of each word and what they possibly represent) ? • Pattern: the relationship between the first line and the second line? • Theme: What is this poem suggesting about life in the modern world? Do you have similar images about the passengers at our MRT stations? • Note:imagism. In what ways is this poem an example of imagism?

7. "In a Station of the Metro“

8. "In a Station of the Metro“—My Analysis • Theme: In the mass transit system, where people come and go, the faces of the passengers are beautiful images like apparition and petals (on wet black boughs) • Images & Pattern: * There can be different interpretations!!! parallel

9. Imagism Pound set forth the basic tenets of Imagism: I. direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective; II. [economical use of words]: to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; and III. in regard to rhythm, to compose in sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome. Pound sought to capture a pure image, or what he described as "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." (March 1913 issue of Poetry) Reference: Marisa Pagnattaro, An overview of "In a Station of the Metro," in Poetry for Students, Gale, 1997.

10. Imagism: Another example William Carlos Williams so much dependsupon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the whitechickens.

11. The poem as an example of Imagism The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Three principles: • Just the image itself; • No excess of language; e.g. a). No verbs; apparition combines verb and noun; b) no conjunctions such as “are like”; • No traditional (monotonous) rhythm, but a melodic one. Note: a hypertext interpretation of the poem. http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/k/x/kxk30/Poetry/index.htm

12. The poem as an example of Imagism (2) Rhythm –for your reference: (source) This scanning may not be necessary, but it shows how irregular (like speaking) the poem is.

13. "Musée des Beaux Arts" • 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?

14. "Musée des Beaux Arts" 1 About suffering they were never wrong. 2 The Old Masters: how well they understood 3 Its human position; how it takes place 4 While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; 5 How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 6 For the miraculous birth, there always must be 7 Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating 8 On a pond at the edge of the wood; 9 They never forgot

15. "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 ploughmanmay 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.

16. Musee des beaux arts • 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 • Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus.

17. "Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The Massacre of the Innocents • Image source http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/mm/massacre.html by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),

18. "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),

19. "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),

20. The Census  at Bethlehem

21. "Musée des Beaux Art" • Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus

22. "Musée des Beaux Arts" • Theme: human suffering vs. daily activities ?? • daily activities: banal, trivial, and commonplace • Innocent: children’s play, animalistic survival, routine work of peasants, the sun shining, • Indifferent: expensive delicate ship • 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.

23. "Musée des Beaux Arts" • 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 air-raid of Hankow): Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 784

24. Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 786

25. 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 For your reference: “Landscape With The Fall of Icarus”by William Carlos Williams -- The matter-of-fact language -- no punctuation --Icarus is the actual focus.

26. For your reference: Icarus Atop Empire State Building, 1931Photo by Lewis Hine Courtesy George Eastman House • Some other poems:http://www.eaglesweb.com/IMAGES/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)

27. The DanceWilliam Carlos Williams • This poem is a good example of "free verse.“ What patterns of sound can you find, i.e. rhyme, alliteration, assonance, etc.? How do the rhythm and sounds support the poem's meaning? • Why do you think the last line of the poem repeats the first line? • Describe the tone and mood of the painting by Bruegel that this poem is based on. How would you characterize the relationship of the poem to the painting? How are they similar and how are they different? (Which part of the painting is not dealt with in the poem?) • What does this poem suggest about the meanings of art?

28. The DanceWilliam Carlos Williams

29. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpg

30. Not in the Poem… • Three men arguing; one with a peacock feather hat (suggesting vanity) • A couple kissing

31. The DanceWilliam Carlos Williams • A free verse that uses internal rhymes (such as alliteration, assonance, consonance) to present the merry movements and sounds of the painting. • The last line of the poem brings the movement to a circle, suggesting the beginning of another circle. • The painting by Bruegel the elder: depict the merry peasant dance on a religious festival (a saint’s day). The peasants are fully indulged in their materialist pleasures so that they are oblivious of the religious background (the church, the virgin Mary picture) • The poem: only focuses on the sensual pleasure of the dance, suggesting that a poem can retain a moment of life as vividly as a painting, by adding music and movement to it.

32. Anecdote of the Jar (1923 p. 1043) Stevens, Wallace  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 ofbird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

33. Discussion Questions • 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?

34. Anecdote of the Jar • The jar -- symbolic of art or artifice, which provides an organization or interpretation of nature (or human world). • the jar vs. nature • Art: organizing, sense-making, but “dead” • Nature: living, active and on-going. • Sound Pattern: • mostly iambic tetrameter • occasional rhymes (where the jar is described)

35. Sound and Rhythm • 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.

36. “Vincent” by Don McLean • An sympathetic view with belief in his sanity and passion; • Vision of colors – • “Flaming flowers that brightly blaze Swirling clouds in violet haze”; • Lonely but sympathetic with ordinary people and their tortures: • “Portraits hung in empty halls Frameless heads on nameless wallsWith eyes that watch the world and can't forgetLike 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&translated=1

37. Conclusion • Modern Soceity – Beauty of Advanced Technology vs. Inequality & Human Sufferings (“In a Station of the Metro” “Harlem” and “Musee des beaux arts”) • Human Suffering/Aspiration and Art: Abstraction & Understanding of Human Position (“Musees des beaux arts”), Human Sympathy(“Vincent”)

38. Reference • Alexander Nemerov. “The Flight of Form: Auden, Bruegel, and theTurn to Abstraction in the 1940s.” Critical Inquiry / Summer 2005: 780-810. Literature Time Line

39. Poetry I: Identity and Daily Life Tone & Sound Pattern

40. Poetry II: Nature and Love Relations  Diction & Figurative Language

41. Imagery, Symbolism, Irony Poetry III: Society and Mortality

42. Poetry IV: Arts and Modern Society Rhyme, Rhythm and Symbol

43. Final Exam • Close Analysis 30% (each 10%) – the poems and the play • Short Essay Questions (each 15%) -- 30% • Essay Questions 40% (each 20%) • A. comparison • B. on the 3 endings of Pygmalion: what does the play mean if it ends at the end of Act 3, Act 5, and w/ the postscript?

44. 1( a le af fa ll s) one l iness For Fun!!! Poetry in different shapes and forms (1)See how different spatial arrangements make such a difference.1( a by cummings

45. "I like poetry. It feels like a puppy's fur. Poetry barks, jumps runs and smells like flowers and is soft. It looks black and white to me. Poetry makes me feel free like a bird. It makes me want to fly in the air." --Israel Hid algo Source http://www.writenet.org/writers_on_teaching/fwir_tcane.html THE POETRY PUPPY 1 like poetry it feels like a puppy's fur poetry barks jumps runs and smells like flowers and is soft it looks black and white to me poetry makes me feel free like a bird it makes me want to fly in the air --Israel Hidalgo For Fun!!! Poetry in different shapes and forms (1)See how different spatial arrangements make such a difference.

46. From Proof (theorem into Poem) Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September...

47. Enjoy Learning ! • Next time: a comedy composed mostly of a dialogue between a man and his fiancée. • Pay attention to their relations and the meaning of the “case.”