Since you mentioned Mr. Kurtz…

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s descriptions of Kurtz include the following: “a wandering and tormented thing”, someone whose words were like “phrases spoken in nightmares”, someone who “had no restraint, no faith”, whose “soul was mad”, someone who “struggled, struggled”.

Think back to the nightmare-like atmosphere that suffused Heart of Darkness, then read again the description of Rodya’s last dream (6 pages from the end of the novel, p. 547 P/V version, paragraph beginning “He lay in the hospital all through the end of Lent…” up through “…had heard their words or voices.”

Both Raskolnikov and Kurtz engage in interior battles between their better nature and their desire to “step over”, to be “supermen”. Crime and Punishment, however, ends with a powerful sense of hope and redemption, whereas Heart of Darkness ends with (naturally)…darkness.

How can we better understand Raskolnikov’s redemption through the tragedy of Kurtz? (As always, support your opinions.)

And this is it…our last blog entry of 2010-2011. See you Wednesday.

Final Discussion topics for Monday

These are the passages & issues we'll address tomorrow during class. YOU MUST have your text with you. If you don't, you will receive no credit for participation in the discuss. And of course YOU MUST participate if you wish participation credit.

For Thursday's class, bring your complete notes from C&P discussions ready to turn in. Our entire class time will be turned over to parody composition and rehearsal.

Suffering, sacrifice and redemption and the Christian symbolism of the novel

A. Early on references to Christ appear in the novel. One of the earliest is in Pulcheria’s letter to Rodya telling him about Dunya. After he reads the letter we get a window into his thoughts: p. 40, Part I, Ch. 4 “It’s hard to ascend Golgotha” and p. 41 “Can it be that she’s secretly tormented by remorse at having agreed to sacrifice her daughter for the sake of her son.”

B. When Rodya first goes to Sonya’s he asks her to read the story of Lazarus—why? p. 326-329, Part IV, Ch. 4. (She must believe in the next life—her only hope; he needs to believe in resurrection in THIS life.)

C. Both Sonya and Lizaveta assume the form of complete innocents who sacrifice and suffer for others and at the moment that Rodya tells Sonya of the murders, she even appears as Lizaveta—p. 410-411 Part five, Ch. 4: “Again, as soon as he said this, a former, familiar sensation suddenly turned his soul to ice…the same childlike smile.” (suffer the little children?)

D. P.420-421 pivotal discussion beginning with “Was it the old crone I killed? Through “your whole life” Part five, Ch. 4 two pages from the end.

The symbolism of crosses and the crossroads and the need to suffer until he learns to connect to his fellow man and love are underscored even more in the confession scene, p. 522-525 Part six, Ch. 8.

E. Note Raskolnikov has sinned not so much against God as against humanity and the earth—and so his redemption must be achieved with people, on earth.

F. Water and air also have symbolic significance:

p. 114-115 Part two, Ch. 2 - loses his right to beauty & clean air

Throughout he can’t breathe—note Porfiry keeps coming back to his need for air and to embrace suffering p. 460-461 Part six, Ch. 2

Svidrigailov hates water—“never in my life have I liked water…landscapes” p.504

G. Note his suffering in prison is of a different sort—he still has not accepted love and connection and cannot be redeemed and freed from suffering until he does.

· p. 544: “This alone he recognized as his crime ... new vision of life.”

· p. 545: “But, generally, he came to be surprised…different nations”

· p. 546: “As for him, he was disliked and avoided by everyone.”

· p. 546: “Still another question…Little mother”

H. Discuss the suddenness of his “conversion”—like a flash of light. P. 549

“He was risen and he knew it…“ p.550

Blood & Water—post group result here

Without getting too intellectually pretentious (save that for future dorm lounge discussions) we'll have a try at deciphering Dostoevsky's use of these two elements in the scheme of symbolism he developed for Crime & Punishment. I'll look over what you report, and get some ideas we can explore in our final week with Russian Lit. After that, its back to good old Will Shakespeare.

Colin: you'll like Macbeth. He dithers a bit, but plunges the knife early in Act II. By Shakespeare's standards, this also is a short five-acter.

J.D.

Apologies for the late post—from me & Svidri

Dear class: I'm sorry I forgot to put up the post right away. I hope it's just a matter of entering your results, because I'd still like to have a round table discussion based on what you discovered. You can place your own thoughts on Svidrigailov here, and the committee reports on the next post up.

Three AP essay questions.

Dear students: allow yourself no more than 60 minutes for the multiple choice exam. Then, if you have the stamina, try either two of the following questions in an 80 minute span, or all three in a 120 minute span. Use ink for your essays, because that's required for the actual exam.

J.D.

Question 1

(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)

The following two poems present animal-eye views of the world. Read each poem carefully. Then write an essay in

which you analyze the techniques used in the poems to characterize the speakers and convey differing views of the

world.

HAWK ROOSTING

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.

Inaction, no falsifying dream

Between my hooked head and hooked feet:

Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

5 The convenience of the high trees!

The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray

Are of advantage to me;

And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

10 It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly—

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

15 There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads—

The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct

Through the bones of the living.

20 No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began.

My eye has permitted no change.

I am going to keep things like this.

—Ted Hughes

From Lupercal, by Ted Hughes.

Faber & Faber Ltd., 1960.

GOLDEN RETRIEVALS

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention

seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh

joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

5 I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning

10 —tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

—Mark Doty

Copyright © 1998 by Mark Doty.

Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Question 2

(Suggested time — 40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)

Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey (1818) opens with the following passage. Read the passage carefully.

Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the literary techniques Austen uses to characterize Catherine Morland.

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland

in her infancy would have supposed her born to be

an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her

father and mother, her own person and disposition,

5 were all equally against her. Her father was a

clergyman, without being neglected or poor, and

a very respectable man, though his name was

Richard, and he had never been handsome. He

had a considerable independence besides two good

10 livings,1 and he was not in the least addicted to

locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman

of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what

is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had

three sons before Catherine was born; and, instead

15 of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as

anybody might expect, she still lived on—lived to

have six children more—to see them growing up

around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself.

A family of ten children will be always called a fine

20 family, where there are heads, and arms, and legs

enough for the number; but the Morlands had little

other right to the word, for they were in general very

plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life,

as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure,

25 a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and

strong features; so much for her person, and not less

unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was

fond of all boys’ play and greatly preferred cricket,

not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments

30 of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird,

or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for

a garden, and if she gathered flowers at all, it was

chiefly for the pleasure of mischief, at least so it was

conjectured from her always preferring those which

35 she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities;

her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never

could learn or understand anything before she was

taught, and sometimes not even then, for she was

often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother

40 was three months in teaching her only to repeat the

“Beggar’s Petition,” and, after all, her next sister Sally

could say it better than she did. Not that Catherine

was always stupid; by no means; she learnt the fable

of “The Hare and many Friends,” as quickly as any

45 girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn

music; and Catherine was sure she should like it,

for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old

forlorn spinnet,2 so at eight years old she began. She

learnt a year and could not bear it; and Mrs. Morland,

50 who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished

in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her

to leave off. The day which dismissed the musicmaster

was one of the happiest of Catherine’s life.

Her taste for drawing was not superior; though

55 whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter

from her mother, or seize upon any other odd piece

of paper, she did what she could in that way by

drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all

very much like one another. Writing and accounts

60 she was taught by her father; French by her mother.

Her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she

shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What

a strange unaccountable character! for with all these

symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had

65 neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom

stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind

to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny.

She was, moreover, noisy and wild, hated confinement

and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in

70 the world as rolling down the green slope at the back

of the house.

1 Incomes or endowments

2 Piano

Question 3

(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)

In some works of literature, childhood and adolescence are portrayed as times graced by innocence and a sense

of wonder; in other works, they are depicted as times of tribulation and terror. Focusing on a single novel or play,

explain how its representation of childhood or adolescence shapes the meaning of the work as a whole.

You may select a work from the list below or choose another appropriate novel or play of similar literary merit.

Avoid mere plot summary.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Black Boy

Bless Me, Ultima

The Bluest Eye

The Catcher in the Rye

Cat’s Eye

The Chosen

Great Expectations

A High Wind in Jamaica

The House on Mango Street

Jane Eyre

Kafka on the Shore

Little Women

Lord of the Flies

“Master Harold” . . . and the boys

The Member of the Wedding

My Ántonia

Native Speaker

Old School

Pocho

A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Red Badge of Courage

A River Runs Through It

Romeo and Juliet

Sula

To Kill a Mockingbird

To the Lighthouse

Tom Jones

The Turn of the Screw

Wide Sargasso Sea

Woman Warrior

Wuthering Heights

Post group reports here

Below are the instructions I gave the class this morning. Post your group findings here and we'll discuss them more fully next week (though we may be short some people due to AP exams).

Hope you got the 2004 multiple choice exam. To give you the full experience, I'm going to post three essay questions from a recent exam just after I publish this one.

Dostoevsky was aware of two structural elements that could shape his narrative

· fabula: the time sequence of action

· siuzhet: the artistic manipulation of the narrative

So Raskolnikov’s encounter with the pawnbroker, with Marmeladov, with the young girl on the street—the letter from his mother—the dream—the mention of Razumikhin—the daydream of an oasis—all have significance.

Today, in groups:

· Finish what we started with Raskolnikov. Gather and note evidence that serves to answer the question: “Who best represents the true Raskolnikov—the cynical one who rues his acts of kindness and care, the brutal Mikolka who beats the horse, the innocent child who kisses the beaten horse?”

· Examine Marmeladov and his “confession.” Develop a comprehensive catalog of the man’s character. Is he good or bad? Why and how does he fail? Why the elaborate speech and the details of his degradation? He seems to enjoy some aspects of it (note his prediction that Katerina will drag him by his hair: his anticipation of it and his reaction when it does happen). Does he wish to “crucify” himself? Looking ahead to his death, is there anything significant by way of siuzhet

· Examine Pulcheria’s letter to her son. What do we learn of her character and her relations with her son by its wording and expression? What is her real assessment of Luzhin, and by what means does she convey it? Rodion engages in a rambling soliloquy that expresses his ultimate reaction and policy. What are they?

· Why does he determine to visit Razumikhin only after “that” is finished?

· Why the nasty smile when he finishes the letter? How does his encounter with his sister and mother upon their first meeting in St. Petersburg echo his tears and his smirk?

· What is the significance of the “waking dream” of the oasis that precedes his feverish preparations for murder. He winds up late for the murder that, in part because of the overheard conversation, he believes is predestined. Why is he late? What does this “dream” signify.

A dream, a sleep & a bedroom

You'll recall we re-read the first two paragraphs of Part I, Ch. 3 describing Raskolnikov's "closet" or garret apartment, and also the section of I, 5 detailing his dream when he falls asleep on the grass of Vasilievsky Island.

I asked you to think like a psychologist. What state of mind is likely to arise from isolation in so wretched an environment as Rodya's closet? What multi-syllable word does the narrator attach to our protagonist? Why? what does it mean?

How would you interpret & diagnose Rodya's dream? Be comprehensive—consider the extreme amount of detail, the characterization of the horse and the driver (not to mention the driver's name), the role that the boy Rodya plays…

Now consider both passages from the standpoint of a sophisticated reader. Why did the writer Dostoevsky place them where he did? This is a psychological novel, among other things. What could Rodya's room symbolize? If the horse can be identified with Lizaveta, what does that dual identity signify for our protagonist, and where does it point for his ultimate awakening?

I'll hold essays and notes back until Tuesday

Students,

I’ve thought it over and decided to give all essays back Monday, and spend time with suggestions as well. I think I’ll keep them all so that I can note specific examples for you and make the period more worthwhile.

J.D.

“Dover Beach” & “Churchgoing”

We’ve been taking poems two at a time with a comparative essay in mind—each pair thematically linked. How about Matthew Arnold’s poem and Philip Larkin’s poem? Do they reflect the same outlook? What are they “about”? What do you think the tone of each poem is, and how does it influence interpretation?

And since we are listening especially for musical sounds (not all music is “beautiful”) and rhythm, consider those things as well as you answer these questions.

Work is due by Tuesday’s class.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

—Matthew Arnold

Questions

1. Vocabulary: strand (11), girdle (23), darkling (35). Identify the physical locale of the cliffs of Dover and their relation to the French coast; identify the Aegean and Sophocles.

2. As precisely as possible, define the implied scene: What is the speaker’s physical location? Whom is he addressing? What is the time of day and the state of the weather?

3. Discuss the visual and auditory images of the poem and their relation to illusion and reality?

4. The speaker is lamenting the decline of religious faith in his time. Is he himself a believer? Does he see any medicine for the world’s maladies?

5. Discuss in detail the imagery in the last three lines. Are the “armies” figurative or literal? What makes these lines so effective?

6. What term or terms would you choose to describe the overall tone of the poem?

Philip Larkin - Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches will fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation - marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built

This special shell? For, though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

1. Vocabulary: Hectoring (14), dubious (28), simples (30), accoutered (53), frowsty (53), blent (56). Large-scale (14) indicates a print size suited to oral reading; an Irish sixpence (17) was a small coin not legal tender in England, the scene of the poem; rood-lofts (41) are architectural features found in many early Christian churches; bibber and randy (42) are figurative, literally meaning “drunkard” and “lustful”; gown-and-bands (44) are ornate robes worn by church officials in religious ceremonies.

2. Like “Dover Beach” (first published in 1867), “Church Going” (1954) is concerned with belief and disbelief. In modern England the landscape is dotted with small churches, often charming in their combination of stone and badly in need of repair, and some are well tended by parishioners who keep them dusted and provide fresh flowers for the diminishing attendance at Sunday services. These churches invariably have by the entrance a book that visitors can sign as a record of their having been there and a collection box with a sign urging them to drop in a few coins for upkeep, repair, or restoration. In small towns and villages the church is often the chief or only building of architectural or historical interest, and tourist visitors may outnumber parishioners. To which of the three categories of churches mentioned here does Larkin’s poem refer?

3. What different denotations does the title contain?

4. IN what activity has the speaker been engaging when he stops to see the church? How is it revealed? Why does he stop? Is he a believer? How involved is he in inspecting this church building?

5. Compare the language used by the speakers in “Dover Beach” and Church Going”. Which speaker is more eloquent? Which is more informal and conversational? Without looking back at the texts, try to assign the following words to one poem or the other: moon-blanched, cycle-clips, darkling, hath, snigger, whiff, drear, brownish, tremulous, glimmering, frowsty, stuff. Then go back and check your success.

6. Define the tone of “Church Going” as precisely as possible. Compare this tone to that of “Dover Beach”.

Websites with good terms definitions

Here are two, both pretty complete—

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/complete_glossary.html#

http://gale.cengage.com/free_resources/glossary/

If you are still stumped on any of the terms, ask in class Wednesday. We're going to work at least in part on pattern and rhythm, so scan the intros to the chapters Rhythm & Meter (12) and Pattern (14) and the work will go better.

See you then!

More on "Spinster"

Dear class—I wrote this informal essay a couple of years ago while I was out on medical leave. Looking over your blog entries, I see that a number of you have hit some of the same themes I did. But this is a more comprehensive look, much longer than the typical blog entry.

A few notes: the poem has a rhyme scheme of abcbac that is consistent in each of its five sections. But most of the rhymes are of the “slant” variety (see below). The meter is variable; most prominent is “trimeter”’—three accented feet in a line. But the poet in general indulges in as many beats per line as suits her.

The title, “Spinster,” as many of you note, is a word that in law designates a woman who has not married. In general it signifies a woman who has remained unmarried beyond the “usual age.” We can confidently say that “this particular girl” has set herself on that course.

My take on Sylvia Plath’s “Spinster”

This is, to me, a funny poem about an imperious, rigid girl who decides she prefers a sort of wintry order, as she sees it, to spring and all it traditionally stands for: love, music, “burgeoning” growth of new life (look that word “burgeoning” up, and you’ll see why it’s perfect), renewal, fertility, etc., etc.

Now I’d never read this poem before Mrs. Minor chose it from the newest collection. But the first thing I want to sense about it, besides the experience that it contains or relates, is its tone. So I read it through several times, which even done carefully takes just a few minutes. And I find the tone to be rather mocking. The speaker is not peddling her subject’s philosophy—she’s creating an ironic portrait that somehow gives us and her particular enjoyment.

So how about this “particular girl”? She’s not looking for romance; others are looking for romance from her—a whole string of them is hinted at by “latest suitor.” Suitors are those who go down on one knee to ask for the hand of their adored one. But this “particular” girl (and that word has at least two meanings: one out of a group of girls, or a girl who insists that everything around her must be correct in every detail) finds something disconcerting in the “irregular babel” of birdsong and the leaves’ litter (nice a-litter-ation, eh?). When arrogant humans attempted to construct a “Tower of Babel” to reach the heavens, the Biblical God sent the language of the builders into confusion to thwart their ambition. Maybe this arrogant girl simply fails to understand the birdsong that is the one of the primary languages of spring, as she rejects everything about the season that she doesn’t understand or finds disorderly, or is afraid of.

(By the way: I don’t know how she’d feel about the order of this poem, because its rhythm is often irregular; most regular, perhaps, in the section in which “she longed for winter then!” There’s a rhyme pattern, but the rhymes are often of the type known as “slant”, or inexact rhymes: “wits” & “idiots” is an example of that; so is “weather” and “either” in the last section. But we haven’t gotten to pattern yet.)

Going through the poem a few times more, I notice that our girl is a queenly sort of person on “a ceremonious April walk” who “judged petals in disarray” and compares the season of spring to a slob (“sloven”). She’s afraid of the unpredictability of spring, which could unsettle her “five wits” (a very old, even medieval expression covering common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory) and thus reverse her standing in her own royal court from queen to jester (a “vulgar” one who wears “motley”). Such an idiot can “Reel giddy in bedlam spring” and make quite a fool of her/himself.

“Bedlam”, I find, is a word that denotes a scene of mad confusion and comes from the insane asylum in old London known as “Bedlam.” The allusions to ancient or medieval things somehow reinforces the image I get of a queen in royal surroundings with courtiers in attendance and a jester, or professional fool, on call at his station at foot of the throne. Within the order of her universe are her five wits, which she keeps in check lest they get out of control—especially imagination and fantasy. Those are too free-flowing and adventurous. And how did I learn about the five wits? I looked the term up until I found what I sort of remembered from my own reading.

That brings me to her suitor. I think suitor is a good word for him, because he’s a wannabe on his way out, and Bedlam might just be the place for the likes of him. He’s the jester, idiot sort. I like Hari’s Raghavan’s idea of a dog, even if he got stuck on the literal notion of one. This guy is sawing the air with romantic enthusiasm as he gestures and talks and bounds along and off the path like a happy dog—doing everything but pee on the bushes before he puts his pair of muddy paws on her shoulders and gives her a couple of doggy licks on her puss. But the particular girl doesn’t appreciate the dog-boy’s Keatsian appreciation of nature and love together in bloom. To her it’s all ”a rank wilderness of fern and flower.”

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I can’t help but picture this particular girl doing what’s known as “playing Hamlet” (she could be an English major, after all, and she does like black!), putting on airs of sophisticated disillusionment while she mutters haughtily to herself:

Fie on’t! ah fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

Uh uh. Not for her. She’s a sharp-edged perfect snowflake, with a taste for “ice and rock”. That third section is a marvel of hard-edged, astringent words and phrases (Scrupulously austere, frosty discipline, exact—these are words that could give you paper cuts, and wow would those cuts ever smart in that ice-cold air!). And as I said, this one section really stands out for its greater order of rhythm, especially if read aloud after the second, which contains such unruly, rambling lines as “Observed her lover’s gestures unbalance the air” and “Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.” In fact, section one was pacing along in pretty good order until line four threw everything literally and figuratively off-balance: “Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck”.

She’s shaken by the sheer uncontained fertility of it all. And so she withdraws “neatly” (in what other way could she withdraw?). She’s the sort of princess who enchants herself within her own chosen castle, surrounded by thorns (“barricade of barb and check”) with a moat full of sharks and the drawbridge up at all times (okay, some of this is my imagery, but I think it fits). The adjectives “mutinous” and “insurgent” are appropriate for our queenly girl who will maintain the picturesque (nicely framed, of course) order of her life at all costs, including love. No revolt by an excitable, overly romantic young man could possibly succeed in dethroning this snow queen to bring the unrestricted freedom of love and the rest of that burgeoning stuff into her realm.

As far as symbols go, I think I previously noted what spring often stands for (without losing its identity as a season). That symbol she rejects, and substitutes clean and orderly winder for spring’s rank and gross confusion (thanks, O Prince of Denmark. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. No bird “babel” for you). Winter as a paradigm of order and discipline is more of a personal symbol for our heroine. Others might see winter as symbolic of death and also of disorder—storms and wild weather that could rip a roof off, or send the queen skidding down an icy path. The house of the final section we could take as a metaphor for her chosen isolation from the impetuous and uncontrollable change that spring symbolizes..

The cool thing is that something so compact and brief as this little poem can contain so much in it that magnifies and extends the little black and white symbols on paper that we call words.

All I’m doing is looking at the “how” before I decide (if I ever do such a thing) the “what” of the poem. How did Hari imagine that dog? Well, now I understand a little better, and for me how Sylvia Plath planted the seed that made the dog grow in Hari’s brain makes the poem better and more vivid than it was before.

(By the way, Hari: you really need to see a doctor sometime soon.)

Exploring the connotations and multiple denotations, noting the echoes thrown off by the allusions—these things bring me to greater comprehension. So—believe it or not—I’ve had a lot of fun writing this loose little essay.

J.D.

My Last Duchess

Tone is the big issue with this poem. For your blog comment, concentrate on the questions 2 through 4 and question 6 in Sound & Sense. If you are on the right track with them, you are on the right track with this poem.

With this and with "Spinster", I'm looking in particular to see how well you identify and interpret irony.

Have a wonderful break!

J.D.

My Last Duchess¹

Ferrara²:

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will't please you sit and look at her? I said 5

“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps 15

Frà Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps

Over my Lady's wrist too much,” or “Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, 25

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace — all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but thanked

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 35

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,--

E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without 45

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master's known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Notes

1. The poem as originally published was entitled "I. Italy," the companion piece to "II. France" (later entitled "Count Gismond") under the general title "Italy and France." The dramatic monologue is a byproduct of Browning's research for Sordello, during which he read about Alfonso II d'Este, fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533-1597; ruled 1559-1597), the patron of the writer Tasso.

2. The place is the ducal palace in the Italian city-state of Ferrara; the time is the Renaissance.