jacks-engl322-commonplace-blog

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“When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be” by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,   That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Keats often writes on his own mortality and in this pieces addresses the subject rather directly. The speaker of the poem worries upon the chance that they might not live to see large amounts of literature pile up in their name, or that they will be able to create great works during their time alive. Worthy of note is the lack of religious tones found in poem however, as can be common when dealing with the topic of death. Having the poem end on the note that it does, being one of somber introspection, brings a very human sincerity to its message. This poem provides an interesting example of a discussion of death that does not include the afterlife.

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“This is my play’s last scene” by John Donne

This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race, Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace, My span's last inch, my minute's latest point; And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space; But my'ever-waking part shall see that face Whose fear already shakes my every joint. Then, as my soul to'heaven, her first seat, takes flight, And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell, So fall my sins, that all may have their right, To where they'are bred, and would press me, to hell. Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil, For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

In this Holy Sonnet by John Donne there is a plethora of his characteristic metaphors. In just the first four lines Donne crafts several metaphors for the position of being at the end of one’s life. While a good example from which to study Donne’s use of metaphor, this poem also can be used as an example of how metaphor can allow a normally unpalatable subject, such as death, to become much more easily processed. Many would find the concept of their own demise to be something rather somber but in this poem death is painted not as an end but as the next step to meeting God. Of course this process is also aided by repetition and the positioning of death next to the religious concept of existence after death.

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“The Love Poem” by Carol Ann Duffy

Till love exhausts itself, longs for the sleep of words -                                          my mistress' eyes - to lie on a white sheet, at rest in the language -                             let me count the ways - or shrink to a phrase like an epitaph -                                                                come live with me - or fall from its own high cloud as syllables in a pool of verse -                                    one hour with thee.

Till love gives in and speaks in the whisper of art -                                        dear heart, how like you this? - love's lips pursed to quotation marks kissing a line -                             look in thy heart and write - love's light fading, darkening, black as ink on a page -                                           there is a garden in her face.

Till love is all in the mind -                                                 O my America! my new-found land - or all in the pen in the writer's hand -                                      behold, thou art fair - not there, except in a poem, known by heart like a prayer, both near and far, near and far -                           the desire of the moth for the star.

This poem essentially consists of a myriad of references to classical love poems from various sources and time periods, with several poets from our own class, such as Donne and Sydney, surfacing. Through this collecting of love poetry Duffy crafts a critique on the genre as a whole, stating that so much talk and focus on love can leave it all in the mind and put more emphasis on expressing one’s love that the love itself. The way in which Duffy uses carefully selected lines from classical poems lends to the beauty of the poem and is an interesting use of classical allusion. 

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A Descent Into The Maelstrom by Edgar Allen Poe

Text

This short story by Poe details the story of a sole survivor of a shipwreck caused by a whirlpool. The story alludes to a certain genre of myth found in classical works, this being the tale of how a seer, mystic, prophet, etc. gains their ability to see into realms unknown to the rest of humanity. Poe does this by describing the narrator of the shipwreck tale as having aged dramatically following his near-death experience, which can be taken as referring characteristic loss a person must go through in order to gain this “extra sight” in myths. The narrator does not seem to comprehend this however. 

Another interesting note to make that lends credence to the idea that Poe is seeking to craft a story that walks outside the realm of strict logic is that the story contains a footnote to a nonexistent work by Archimedes. Aside from the inclusion of footnotes in narrative works being odd, the fact that the work itself does not exist appears to be a play with classical allusion in order to drive the reader to question the legitimacy of reading the story through a strictly logical lens. 

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Pulp Fiction Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Throughout Pulp Fiction, and prominently in the scene above, the character of Jules recites the same bible verse in a variety of contexts. In the scene above the verse is used to build tension and draw importance to the events. The use of classical allusion in this manner is widespread and not limited to this film nor to the material covered in our discussions in class, which makes it an interesting phenomenon. The obvious reason that artists include allusion to or direct quotation of classical sources is the source of legitimacy that is ascribed to the words of humanities ancestors. While of course much classical material is right to be regarded in this manner for a number of reasons, it is also interesting that the affect is the same regardless of the actual validity of the classical source being referenced. For instance, while the final few lines of the speech featured in Pulp Fiction are from the Bible the dramatic preamble to it is no where to be seen within its pages and yet, the scene still manages to create the same gravitas even when one has this knowledge.

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Your love Is My Drug by Kesha

Lyrics and Audio

In this anthem to love Kesha likens feelings of love to the effects of being addicted to a street drug. This is an especially modern take on love due to the mention of drugs which would have been considered taboo for many poets or musicians in the past, especially so for those aiming to release their craft for mainstream appeal. Cultural changes in views of love aside, this piece is also interesting to look at in comparison to Sir Phillip Sydney’s “Who will in fairest book of nature know” which describes the overtaking of one’s vices due to their desire for another. In the line “Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty” Sydney paints this overtaking of vices as wholly positive, stripping away one’s vices for a wholesome and sweet love. In Kesha’s song however, these lines are found:

I'm addicted it's a crisis My friends think I've gone crazy My judgment's getting kinda hazy My steeze is gonna be affected If I keep it up like a lovesick crackhead

Opposite to Sydney’s poem, this song paints love as being addicting and as having withdrawal-like symptoms. In comparing these two pieces placed hundreds of years apart it is interesting to find such similarity in manner of subject, but yet so much difference in the delivery of said subject.

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Who will in fairest book of nature know by Sir Phillip Sydney

Who will in fairest book of nature know, 

How virtue may best lodged in beauty be,

Let him but learn of love to read in thee

Stella, those fair lines which true beauty show. 

There shall he find all vices’ overthrow;

Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty 

Of reason, from whose light, the night birds fly;

That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so. 

And not content to be perfection’s heir 

Thyself, dust strive all minds what way to move,

Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.

So while they beauty drives my heart to love, 

As fast they virtue bends that love to good: 

“But ah,” desire still cries, “give me some food.”

Another work by Sydney in his series of poems focusing on the speaker’s desire for “Stella” this poem deviates from the poem discussed in class in that the focus is placed upon the subject of description rather than upon the speaker’s own internal emotions.This makes for a love poem that feels much more standard as it consists of mainly flattery. Interesting to see is the line “There shall he find all vices’ overthrow” which feels much like an early rendition of the modern tendency to liken love to a drug or addiction of sorts. Another line of note is the final, in which the speaker’s desire is personified and cries out to be fed -- no doubt with affection from the object of their desire. This construct in the final line brings up the speaker’s emotions for a brief moment, so that the poem is not completely devoid of the speaker’s internal emotions.

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Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash (Song)

Lyrics and Audio

This iconic song deals with a common theme found our class material and in love songs, this being the tying of love to that which is painful. We find it in our class material in Sydney’s “Astrophel and Stella” although in this poem the pain is offered up to the object of his desire in the hopes it may bring them joy. In “Ring of Fire” of fire however, this pain just exists as the focus of the piece rather than being of use. This is of interest as the idea of love bringing pain in the modern era is quite common, but rarely in the modern era is this pain described as being for anything other than to be expressed or experienced. Another observation to make is how Cash uses the metaphor of fire whereas perhaps the this metaphor would have been too akin to the fires of hell to be used in the seventeenth-century without changing the cultural understanding of the words.

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Sophocles. “Oedipus the King”. Greek Tragedies 1. Trans. Greene, David. Eds. Lattimore, Richmond et al. 3rd ed., The University of Chicago Press, 2013, Chicago.

TEIRESIAS:

I have said

What I came here to say not fearing your countenance: there is no way you can hurt me.

I tell you, king, this man, this murderer

(whom you have long decrared you are in search of,

Indicting him in threatening proclamation as murderer of Laius)—he is here.

In name he is a stranger among citizens

But soon he will be shown to be homegrown,

True native Theban, and he’ll have no joy

Of the discovery: blindness for sight

And beggary for riches his exchange,

He shall go journeying to a foreign country

Tapping his way before him with a stick.

He shall be proved father and brother both

To his own children in his house; to her

That gave him birth, a son and husband both;

A fellow sower in his father's bed

With that same father that he murdered.

Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me

Mistaken, say I have no skill ni prophecy. (449-462)

Throughout Sophocles play Oedipus the King the entire audience knows of Oedipus’ misdeeds, which are murdering his father and marrying his mother, which makes for an immense amount of tension as the King slowly begins to learn of his own wrongs and finds that he must punish himself for them. There is never shown to be anything Oedipus can do to avoid his fate despite the fairly sizeable precautions both his parents and Oedipus himself have taken. Damned as a child, Oedipus makes his way through life unwittingly fulfilling the prophecy he has taken great pains to avoid. This take on fate is interesting as it can be shown to be somewhat similar to the religious thought of the seventeenth-century. The ideology of predestination is quite similar to the fate of Oedipus in that there is nothing one can do to change whether one will be damned or saved. Interesting to see in Oedipus however, is this idea at its most extreme. By most accounts, Oedipus has been a good father, warrior, and leader to his people but at the same time has nearly caused their ruin without knowing it and even when he discovers this he still serves his people by casting himself out in hopes of removing the plague that has befallen his city. Thus this play deals with the interesting conundrum as to what happens when those that are strong and good people are damned.

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“Dark Souls 3 Story ► The Nameless King's Betrayal” by VaatiVidya

This YouTube video explains a side story found within the video game Dark Souls 3 that has some very interesting themes in regards to fate. Each of the children of Gwyn, a god-like figure in the game, were born to a singular purpose that they were destined to serve. The focus of the video is on the one child that disobeyed his father's intentions for him, this being the Nameless King. Being the only child of Gwyn to fully reject their fate, it is interesting to see how the story treats this deviation from the pre-ordained. In context with our focus on seventeenth-century literature, there are a few parallels to be made between the Nameless King in this story and lucifer in the Bible. Albeit loosely, these two figures are connected through their very creation being tied to their servitude to a higher power of sorts. More strongly however, these two figures are connected through a rejection of their fated duties in favour of joining something aligned against their masters. The way that the dragon hunters in Dark Souls seem to be fated to join forces with the creatures they hunt is an interesting treatment of destiny that almost feels akin to the fated falls of Lucifer, or that of Adam and Eve, which is of high influence in much of the devotional poetry our class has analyzed.

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“She’s Thunderstorms” by Arctic Monkeys (Song)

Lyrics and Audio

This song comes off of the Arctic Monkeys 2011 album entitled “Suck It and See,” and it’s main focus is the comparison of the subject to a thunderstorm, along with some other allusions to atypical symbols of beauty. The Thunderstorm metaphor is, obviously, front and centre and serves to set the tone for the song. The song illustrates the woman it describes with an undertone of violent beauty, rather than the classical idealized passive beauty most commonly used for descriptions of the feminine. In verse 2 the speaker delivers these lines:

She's been loop-the-looping around my mind

Her motorcycle boots give me this kind of

Acrobatic blood concertina

Cheating heartbeat, rapid fire (verse 2)

There are several atypical metaphors contained within this verse. “Loop-the looping,”Acrobatic,” and “rapid fire” all give a connotation of recklessness not part of the classical descriptions of women. This reckless and subtly violent mode of metaphor reads much like a modern-day depiction of the clean wantonness that Herrick writes about in the seventeenth-century. Much like many things in the modern era, the need for cleanliness and order is not emphasized like in Herrick’s work, and can therefore be seen as a sort of evolution of the idea.

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“From Eden” by Hozier (Song)

This song comes from Hozier’s debut album and while the entire album is full of allusions to classical material, perhaps none are as obvious as “From Eden.” The song plays with the story of Eden from the bible in an unexpected way. The melody behind and delivery of the lyrics bring a very wholesome and youthful feeling to the surface upon a first, or cursory, listening.However, as one delves into the lyrics of the song, it is quickly apparent that the way in whichHozier is using the Eden myth is not what is anticipated. With the line “I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door” it is revealed the speaker of the song is Lucifer in his serpent form from the Eden myth. What is found then is not an innocent pre-fall style love song, but rather the story of a being meant to resemble all that is to be reviled coming upon something intensely wholesome and innocent and then feeling a sense of longing for it. The speaker ruminates on they perceive all that is good in the world is gone and, more specifically, how the subject reminds them of a previous version of themselves. This is why the speaker refers to their subject as tragic, because Lucifer was once the most innocent and full of love before his own fall. All of this complexity and hidden darkness makes for a very interesting twisting of classical material and can be taken as an example of the continuing tradition of adapting and twisting classic myths.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

Poem

Keats’ beautiful take on the fragility of human life when compared to the immortal nature of art is delivered in an excellent example of metaphor. In this poem Keats describes an urn the speaker is viewing and compares the scenes that have been immortalized on its sides to his own life and life in general. In addition to metaphor this poem also deals with classical allusion to a culture frequently referenced in the seventeenth-century literature being discussed in class, this being Ancient Greek and Roman culture. With Keats coming long after the time of the writers discussed in class, this work and be viewed as sort-of an evolution of the metaphors and allusions seen in them. 

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“The Lamb” and “The Tyger” by William Blake

In these twin poems by Blake, a symbolic picture of two approaches to belief can be found. Simply put, the speaker in “The Lamb” very innocently accepts God as having made everything and everything is good while the speaker in“The Tyger” is much more inquisitive and asks if the same entity that made the gentle lamb made the fearsome tiger. While certainly not the same vein of religious inquiry and feelings of doubt and belief found in the seventeenth-century literature we study in class, the nature of the two can be linked in a way. Questioning religion and aspects of one’s relationship with their god has a tradition in poetry and these two poems add to this history.

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“Chorus Sacerdotum” from Mustapha by Baron Brooke Fulke Greville (1554-1628)

O wearisome condition of humanity!

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick, commanded to be sound.

What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?

Passion and reason, self-division cause.

Is it the mark or majesty of power

To make offenses that it may forgive?

Nature herself doth her own self deflower

To hate those errors she herself doth give.

For how should man think that he may not do,

For how should man think that he may not do,

If nature did not fail and punish, too?

Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,

Only commands things difficult and hard,

Forbids us all things which it knows is lust,

Makes easy pains, unpossible reward.

If nature did not take delight in blood,

She would have made more easy ways to good.

We that are bound by vows and by promotion,

With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,

To teach belief in good and still devotion,

To preach of heaven’s of heaven’s wonders and delights;

Yet when each of us in his own heart looks

He finds the God there, far unlike his books.

Throughout the lines of this poem the speaker grapples with contradictions they find in some lines of religious thought. The primary problem the speaker has is the notion that humanity be punished for sins that have been placed in them by God. This notion being put forth by the speaker is concisely summed up in the poem’s third line: “Created sick, commanded to be sound” (Greville 3). The speaker puts the blame of sin upon God rather than humanity by challenging the validity of both the creation of sin and punishment coming from the same source. Late in the poem the focus shifts from this grievance to what the speaker sets up as the source of their pain in this matter, which the speaker says are the methods of religion at the time. The author lived around the same time as John Donne, who is covered extensively in class, and thus lived during a time characterized by protestantism and a hard movement away from most Catholic teachings. Thus the speaker’s answer to the questions they set up lies in preaching methods and the blame is put on “...pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,” which were being done away with at the time. In the final line the speaker addresses their own doubt and states that the way towards a true connection to God, and thus answers, is through a more protestant method of approaching faith.

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“Waterloo” by ABBA (Song)

Lyrics

In this 1974 pop song the speaker tells of her trying, and failing, to hold off the romantic advances of the one who seeks her. The metaphor used throughout the song to portray this situation is that her falling in love is her “Waterloo”. Waterloo being a reference to the famous military defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte that would end his military career. The rather violent metaphor for falling in love as being defeated in battle is interesting and holds parallels to some aspects of the Petrarchan elevated lover, or “cruel mistress” archetype seen so often in the 17thcentury literature being discussed in class. This archetype is characterized by a constant refusal to give in to the wooing of those who seek to engage them romantically, much like a refusal to surrender that the song picks up on. While in “Waterloo” the speaker gives in to this wooing, it is characterized as a defeat, the overcoming of the hard front of the cruel mistress by the wooer.The voice of the song bemoans this defeat akin to the way many men have “sighed” and complained about being hopelessly in love unrequited which helps to draw the connection between the song and 17th-century literature. While not necessarily the message or tone the band had in mind while composing the song, the connections are interesting to think about.

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Dark Souls 3, Published by From Software, 2016

The conceit of the Dark Souls universe as portrayed in the series of video games is that the player character is an incredibly lowly being, both in a sense of class and physical might, who seeks to link the first flame in order to continue the current age of fire. The first flame is a metaphor for the current ecosystem of being and its continued burning cements this system.Dark Souls 3 begins very close to the dying of the flame as a bell tolls to awaken the character, metaphorically called the ash of the flame, as a failsafe to avoid the dying of the flame. The reason the flame has become so close to going out is because the lords whose responsibility it is to protect the flame have shirked their duties in favour of letting the world die out, thus ending the cycle of re-linking the first flame. Therefore Dark Souls 3 sets the player character up as being a metaphorical representation of fate, in this story the fate being that the world will not stagnate into darkness and that something must happen that will allow existence to begin anew.Interestingly enough, the game allows you to choose whether or not to attempt to complete your duty including choosing to extinguish the flame. Whichever you choose however the ending is the same, the world will fade and cede to the next in the never-ending cycle of ignition and extinction. This reflects much of the ideas on fate, that what is fated cannot be avoided, which has been a staple in mythic literature in many cultures and through many eras. It is interesting to see a modern source that gives the one that interacts with it what seems like choice and have it amount to nothing other than what has been fated.