Robot Frost as a Poet

Hello readers! I am going to write this blog as a part of a thinking activity assigned by Megha ma'am, department of English MKBU. In this blog I am going to write about Robot Frost and a short discussion of his famous poems' Tree at My Window' and 'Birches'. 

Born: March 26, 1874

Died: January 29, 1963

Occupation: Poet, playwright

Notable Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Congressional Gold Medal

Famous Poems:

• 'The Road Not Taken'
• 'Birches'
• 'Fire and Ice'
• 'Mending Wall'
• 'Home Burial'
• 'The Death of the Hired Man'
• 'Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening'
• 'Acquainted with the Night'
• 'Out, Out'
• 'Nothing Gold Can Stay'

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations. Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, where his father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., and his mother, Isabelle Moodie, had moved from Pennsylvania shortly after marrying. He became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1892 and, later, at Harvard University, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first published poem, “My Butterfly,” appeared on November 8, 1894 in the New York newspaper The Independent. On January 29, 1963, Frost died from complications related to prostate surgery. His ashes are interred in a family plot in Bennington, Vermont.

Frost was well-received by the literary world. In 1916, he published Frost's Mountain Interval, a collection of other works that he created while in England, including a tribute to Thomas. Frost met fellow poets Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two men who would affect his life in significant ways. Pound and Thomas were the first to review his work in a favorable light, as well as provide significant encouragement. Frost credited Thomas's long walks over the English landscape as the inspiration for one of his most famous poems, 'The Road Not Taken'.

In 1894, Frost had his first poem, "My Butterfly: an Elegy," published in The Independent, a weekly literary journal based in New York City. Two poems, "The Tuft of Flowers" and "The Trial by Existence," were published in 1906. In 1912, Frost and Elinor decided to sell the farm in New Hampshire and move the family to England, where they hoped there would be more publishers willing to take a chance on new poets.

Pulitzer Prizes and Awards:

During his lifetime, Frost received more than 40 honorary degrees. In 1924, Frost was awarded his first of four Pulitzer Prizes, for his book New Hampshire. He would subsequently win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937) and A Witness Tree (1943). In 1960, Congress awarded Frost the Congressional Gold Medal. In this blog I am going to write analysis of two famous poems by Robert Frost. 

Tree at My Window:

Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawn

Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,

And thing next most diffuse to cloud,

Not all your light tongues talking aloud Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed, 

And if you have seen me when I slept,

You have seen me when I was taken and swept And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,

Fate had her imagination about her,

Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.

Analysis:

Tree At My Window by Robert Frost is one of the well-known nature poems in the collection entitled West Running Brook, which was published in 1928. Frost is a great nature-poet but he is a nature-poet in his own right. He is not a follower of Wordsworth or other glow-worms in the romantic school. On the contrary, he is quite opposed to the Wordsworthian way of thinking about nature. Just next to the window of the poet's bedroom is a tree. At night the poet closes the window to shut out the cold. But the poet avoids drawing the curtain because he wants to have the tree constantly within the range of his vision. The poet is fascinated by the tree - he seems to have discovered bounds of affinity between himself and the tree. He sees the tree come under violent spells of movement because of the strong winds. 

In the first stanza of ‘Tree at My Window’, Frost begins by addressing the tree in tautological terms which almost recall a child’s song: ‘Tree at my window, window tree’. The last two lines add nothing to the meaning of the first four, but they set the blithe, relaxed tone that dominates the whole poem. In the second stanza, Frost continues to address the tree at his window as a ‘dream-head’ that rises out of the ground, its branches and leaves as ‘diffuse’, almost, as the wisps of a cloud. 

In the third stanza, we get a ‘turn’ of sorts, announced by that word ‘But’. There is some kinship between man and tree, between poet and nature: just as Frost has seen the tree ‘taken and tossed’ in the wind or in a storm, so the tree has ‘seen’ Frost tossing and turning as he sleeps at night. The final stanza sees Frost confirming this idea of his ‘window tree’ as a kindred spirit, with the tree concerned with ‘outer’ and Frost with ‘inner, weather’. This gives the impression of a casual, natural approach: although the poem is carefully structured, much as the window in the house in which Frost sits and writes was built according to a plan. Given the focus on the poet’s own inner mind in the final line of the poem, Frost probably also wants us to call to mind the idiom about ‘having one’s head in the clouds’, specially as we get ‘dream-head’ followed by 'cloud'.

'Tree at My Window’ is written in quatrains, rhymed abba. However, note how Frost doesn’t rigidly stick to full ‘rhyme’ throughout: in the first stanza, we get pararhyme, in the second we get full rhymes but some overlap between the a and b rhymes, and in the final stanza we get rhyme that spans multiple words. 

Conclusion:

Whenever Frost speaks to nature or of nature, we feel that he always has man in his mind - that he is looking at man from the corner of his eye and ultimately talking to man. Even in these poems, it seems that Frost describes the animal and vegetable nature in man and not attributing human nature to the animal and vegetable worlds, like the Romantics. Frost gives utmost importance to man.  

Birches:

CLICK HERE FOR READING THE POEM

The poem ‘Birches’ is one of Robert Frost’s most widely anthologised and studied poems. 'Birches' was first published in 1915. The poem was a part of a collection titled Mountain Interval. 'Birches' draws on Robert Frost’s childhood memories of swinging on birch trees as a boy. The poem revolves around the themes of the nature of Truth, the relation between fact and fiction, revisiting one’s childhood and the balance between life and art which must be maintained for a meaningful life. 

The poem begins like the poet is in a candid conversation. He describes that seeing birches bending to left and right makes him think of some boy who swings in them. The poet sees birches bending to left and right in the backdrop of “straighter and darker ” trees; he likes to believe it is the work of some country boy who must’ve indulged in swinging them. He knows it isn’t the work of a harmless boy. It’s the ice storms. Harsh, cold and ruthless. The boy and the ice storm both are explanations for the truth behind the state of the bent birches. One is the objective, fact based explanation which states that which is. The other is a subjective explanation based on fantasy which creates a possibility of that which can be. 

The poet minutely observes how the rising breeze cracks the glazed surface made over the birches by snow. They look like heaps of broken glass and their sharp sound of crashing makes one think as if the inner dome of heaven has fallen. A load of fallen ice on them brings them down to the withered bracken, a kind of fern growing on the ground. They remain bowed for so long without straightening themselves once. The speaker uses simple metaphorical imagery to illustrate the desire to escape life as it is. However, the idea of climbing a tree only to be set back down on the ground after reaching the top is also a metaphor for the desire to get away from the speaker’s own current existence while also knowing that this escape will not be permanent.

So, such a wish to get away for a while from the earth and come down to it is very similar to climbing on a birch tree whose snow-white trunk feels like climbing toward heaven. When the tree can’t bear him anymore, It feels very good to go up and come back again. It is the best alternative the poet can put forward in the face of life’s hardships and he says that one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Themes:

The Conflict Between Fantasy and Reality: 

In the speaker’s stream of consciousness, two voices diverge and chatter along in a parallel tension. The first voice is that of fantasy; it longs for the woodland birches to stand as symbols of personal meaning. It assumes the birch trees were bent by a boy at play. The second voice is that of reality; it understands the “Truth” that the birches were bent by a storm and that any illusions otherwise are an indulgence.

The Power of Memory: 

The speaker’s memories of childhood create a deeper layer of events and meanings in the narrative of the poem. The poet is immediately reminded of his own childhood days spent swinging upon and bending birch trees. Because those childhood memories are so laced with bliss, the speaker, now laden with the responsibilities and difficulties of adult life, sees in his past the image of heaven. Looking at the birch trees afresh, he wonders whether such heaven remains available to him.

Nostalgia:

The theme of nostalgia is strong in this poem. After seeing the birch trees bending down, the poet “likes to think” that it has been the mischief of some rural New England boys with whom it has been the custom to play with the trees in their recreational periods. The poet too has been extremely fond of this in his own childhood. In the later section of the poem, the poet expresses his desire to go back once again to his childhood to enjoy these little, silly pleasures. 

'Birches’ is written in blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. This means that there are ten syllables per line, with the syllables arranged into five metrical feet. Frost was fond of using blank verse in his poetry: since it is close to the rhythms of regular human speech in the English language, it reflects his homespun, colloquial style. In the poem the poet uses a comparative degree which we can see throughout the poem.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Words - 1,924

Images - 4

Videos - 1

Existentialism

Hello readers ! I write this blog as a part of thinking activity assigned by Dilip Barad sir, English Department MKBU. This blog is about Existentialism: Flipped Learning. In this task, we have to refer to the videos based on Existentialism and Flipped class and write our responses to the Questions. So firstly we will briefly discussed that what is existentialism?

Existentialism:

Existentialism is the philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Our individual purpose and meaning is not given to us by Gods, governments, teachers or other authorities. Irvin Yalom says that the four 'death, meaning, isolation, and freedom' these are the basis for the field existentialism. The roots of existentialism as a philosophy began with the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard was intensely interested in man's relationship with God, and its ultimate impossibility.

 

First video is about "What is existentialism?" In this video Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism; he refers to himself as an existentialist. Kierkegard is a first existentialist, he is also referred to as the first existentialist. Kierkegard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Sartre, Shestov, Heidegger, Hesse, Beuvoir - these are the most famous existentialists whose views are different from one another in some way. For all of them philosophical thinking and existing begin with each thinking subject. Individuality, passions and freedom are the three sides of thinking. In this video we also heard about religious belief and belief in God in questionable manner. Believing in God is philosophical suside for Kamus. Existentialism presents subjects like freedom,anguish, absurdity, passions, emotions - that's why It's mainly popular among young people.

In the next video we learn about the 'Myth of Sisyphus'. 'The Myth of Sisyphus' is a 1942 philosophical essay by Albert Camus. In French 'Le mythe de Sisyphe'. Camus says that "There is but one serious philosophical problem and that is suicide." He focuses on the suiside from begging for Camus suiside is the individual act.

 

Here in this video there is also an example of the movie 'Stay' in which we can see ‘suicide is divorce between man and this life’ 'Death is Mistress'. 

"I am taking the library at this point of calling the existential attitude philosophical suside".

                     -Albert Camus 

This video talks about Absurdism. The absurd is not in man and not in the world, it can only occur in the presence together. philosophical suicide and this problem come out from a total absence of hope, A continual rejection and conscious dissatisfaction. From this method people escaped from absurd life. This video also talked about rationality. If something happens wrong in life - religious people believe that there is reason behind it but for absurd people reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason. We also learn about Leap of faith and abstract leapers, taking the leap is easy and there is nothing dangerous in it.  

This video talks about the Dadaism movement. Fountain is one of Duchamp's most famous works and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth-century art. The original, which is lost, consisted of a standard urinal, usually presented on its back for exhibition purposes rather than upright, and was signed and dated 'R. Mutt 1917'. 

Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. This moment is against World War. The speaker tells us that Existentialism emerged after World War II. Dadaism is Creation is the primary goal of Dadaism. Some people connect Dadaism with Nihilism. Dadaism and Nihilism have nothing to do with each other, there is only one similarity that both are fed up with arbitrary values of life.

Existentialism as a gloomy philosophy:

In this video the speaker says that Existentialism is not a narcissist philosophy it talks about becoming who you are not love yourself. Existentialism is differ from Nihilism. Every human faces anxiety, despair and absurdity in life but they are free to choose their own path of living. 

Are Existentialism and Nihilism the same thing ?

"All suside have the responsibility of fighting against the temptations against suside".

             -Hermann Hesse

Kamus believes that rebellion is the only proper response to the absurdity of life and he wrote 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and 'The Rebel' Existentialism and Nihilism are totally different from each other. According to Kierkegard Nihilism is loss of individuality. For Nietzsche Nihilism means the highest values devalue themselves.

In this video we learn more deeply about the movement Existentialism like who started the moment and also the brief history of this moment. Existentialism asks the question of existence: why am I here? What is life? Existentialism sees life from religiously, scientifically and philosophically and raises questions about human existence. 

"Existence precedes Essence"

          -Sartre

The speaker also talks about the famous quote of Sartre. For Sartre humans are fundamentally different from things like cars, watches or phones.

This video explains the meaning of Existentialism to 5 year old childs. Here we could find the definition of existentialism with the reference of Nietzsche and his 'Ubermensch'. Nietzsche's Existentialism talked about that human being is everything, there is no need for any supernatural power to govern life. Like God is dead so human beings can make their own rules and be like superman or ubermensch.

Existentialism is a rebellious way of thinking about life. This video is based on the personal experience of speaker himself. He likes existentialism because it appeals to our mind, heart and soul. He shares that if one keeps on looking at things rationally then life takes away the magic of things. He says that there are many ways to understand life like Phenomenology, Buddhism and Humanistic psychology and also Christianity and scientific cosmology. He also give some suggestions for how to apply existential attitude in our daily life. Ask questions, live a life passionately always remember that you are human - you are born in an amazing univers. Existentialism is a way of life and understanding life deeply.

In This video speaker talks about Essentialism. video starts with one question that 'What gives your life meaning? Plato and Aristotle believed that everything has an essence including us and they believed that our essences exist in us before we're even born. Existentialism is not similar with Atheism. Plenty of existentialists are atheist but some are theists like Kierkegaard. After WWII Existentialism was defined as Freedom. There is no meaning of life but meaning is given by us to our life.

After learning from this videos some questions are raising in my mind...

1) How has the myth of Sisyphus been interpreted in literature and philosophy? What is the message of the myth of Sisyphus?

2) How does existentialism apply to religion? How does existentialism deal with the concept of God and religion?

3) Can existentialism provide a guide for living a meaningful life or is it a philosophy of despair

4) How can we apply an existential attitude in our day to day life? 

5) How does the idea of philosophical suicide presents in the play 'Waiting for Godot'?

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Words - 1,182

'Tradition and Individual Talent'

Hello readers! I write this blog as a part of an activity assigned by Dilip Barad sir, English Department, MKBU. In this blog I am going to write about T.S. Eliot and new criticism and I also discussed one of his essays 'Tradition and Individual Talent'.

Born: 26 September 1888

Died: 4 January 1965

Occupation: Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Critic, Publisher

Literary period: 20th century

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Smith Academy in St. Louis and then the Milton Academy in Massachusetts, as his family was originally from New England. Eliot began courses at Harvard University in 1906, graduating three years later with a Bachelor of Arts degree. At Harvard, he was greatly influenced by professors renowned in poetry, philosophy and literary criticism, and the rest of his literary career would be shaped by all three. After graduating, Eliot served as a philosophy assistant at Harvard for a year, and then left for France and the Sorbonne to study philosophy. 

From 1911 to 1914, Eliot was back at Harvard, where he deepened his knowledge by reading Indian philosophy and studying Sanskrit. He finished his advanced degree at Harvard while in Europe, but due to the onset of World War I, he never went back to Harvard to take the final oral exam for his Ph.D. He soon married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and took a job in London, England, as a school teacher. Not long after, he became a bank clerk, a position he would hold until 1925. 

New Criticism:

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds,... for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

                              –T.S Eliot 

Name given to a style of criticism advocated by a group of academics writing in the first half of the 20th century. Like Formalist critics, New Critics focused their attention on the variety and degree of certain literary devices, specifically metaphor, irony, tension, and paradox. The New Critics emphasized “close reading” as a way to engage with a text, and paid close attention to the interactions between form and meaning. New Criticism assumes that a text is an isolated entity that can be understood through the tools and techniques of close reading. The task of the New Critic is to show the way a reader can take the myriad and apparently discordant elements of a text and reconcile or resolve them into a harmonious, thematic whole. In sum, the objective is to unify the text or rather to recognize the inherent but obscured unity therein. Today, although New Criticism has few champions, in many respects it remains an approach to literature from which other critical modes depart or against which they militate. 

The genesis of New Criticism can be found in the early years of the 20th century in the work of the British philosopher I. A. Richards and his student William Empson. Another important figure in the beginnings of New Criticism was the American writer and critic T. S. Eliot. Later practitioners and proponents include John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Reni Wellek, and William Wimsatt. In many ways New Criticism runs in temporal parallel to the American modern period. Eliot inspired and informed the movement of New Criticism. The New Critics resemble Eliot in their close analysis of particular passages and poems.

'Tradition and Individual Talent':

'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919) is an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published in The Egoist and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Sacred Wood" (1920-22). The essay is also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays". This essay is described by David Lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in the English of the 20th century. The essay is divided into three main sections -

1) The first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition

2) The second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry

3) In the third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.

1) How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition? Do you agree with it?

T.S. Eliot is the most influential poet and critic in the Modern Age. He tries to define "tradition" in his revolutionary essay, 'Tradition and Individual Talent'. He thinks that tradition depends on the complete realization of historical sense. Tradition involves a historical sense which enables a poet to perceive the importance of past and present. In the essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He also signifies the importance of the tradition. Tradition, according to Eliot, is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. According to Eliot tradition is a living culture which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in shaping the present.

Eliot’s view of tradition is not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past is followed by the presence and succession of a line. Historical sense makes a writer traditional. A man of historical sense feels that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer down to his own day including the literature of his own country forms one continuous literary tradition. Eliot says that in English literature and criticism, the word, 'tradition' is scarcely used. We often apply the word for its absence in order to express our grief. In this respect, Eliot says, "In English writing, we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploying its absence.We cannot make a reference to 'the tradition' or to 'a tradition'. We often employ the adjective form of the word. We say that the poetry of so-and-so is 'traditional' or even 'too traditional.

According to Eliot , if a poet or a writer imbues the element of the past, there is an imitation of the past but he justifies that the imitation is “not the slavish imitation” of the past or the existing work of art before. He argues that the strict blinding of imitation of the past is not tradition and hence “Novelty is better than repetition”. He tries to suggest that a poet does not slavishly imitate the past but there is something new which is born out of that imitation. Hence, there will be a new novelty in the piece of work of art which he implies is “individual talent”. 

In addition to this, Eliot suggests that a poet can obtain a “tradition” by understanding the past and he calls it as a “historical sense” which is not merely an imitation of the past but of its presence in the present. It not involves the “pastness of the past but of its presence” and the literary circles of the whole European literature produced from “Homer” to the present and the poet creates his own new work in the present with not just a mere imitation of the past but by understanding the past to obtain the “tradition”. So, Eliot's concept of 'Tradition' is favorable and acceptable.

2) How would you like to explain Eliot's theory of depersonalization? You can explain with the help of chemical reaction in presence of catalyst agent, Platinum.

So3+ H2o— (Platinum) H2So4

In this essay Eliot opposes the Romantic conception by advancing his theory of impersonality in art and opines that the artistic process is a process of depersonalization and that the artist will surrender himself totally to the creative work. He compares the poet to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, in which the reactants are feelings and emotions that are synthesized to create an artistic image that captures and relays these same feelings and emotions.

Eliot particularly objected to the great Romantics as well as Victorians who exaggerated the need to express human personality and subjective feeling and he says, "The progress of an artist is a continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." Eliot holds that the poet and the poem are two separate things and "that the feelings or the emotion, or vision, resulting from the poem is something different from the feeling or emotion or vision in the mind of the poet." Eliot points out the relation of the poem to its author; and says that the poem has no relation to the poet. There is detached or alienation between the poet and his poem. According to Eliot, the art's emotion is different from personal emotion. A successful artist is he, who can generalize emotion in the reader's one while he himself seemed to be unaffected by any emotion. On the other hand he should be depersonalized in experience he describes in the poem. 

Eliot brings the analogy of chemical reaction to explain the process of depersonalization. In this respect he has drawn a scientific analogy. He says that a poet should serve the sold of platinum which makes sulfuric acid. He says, "When the two gaseous oxygen and Sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a filament of Platinum. They form Sulfurous acid. The combination takes place only when the Platinum is present; nevertheless, the newly formed acid contains no trace of Platinum, and the Platinum itself is apparently unaffected and has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of Platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself but also completely separate in his will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates. Eliot also compares the poet's mind to a receptacle in which are stored numberless feelings, emotion, images, phases etc… which remain there in an unorganized and chaotic form till, "all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together." Thus poetry is organization rather than inspiration. And the greatness of a poem does not depend upon the greatness or the intensity of the emotions, but upon the intensity of the process of poetic composition.

It is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. He emphasizes the same theory of impersonality in art. The emotion of art is impersonal. It has its life in the poem and not in the history of poets. So, honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. Eliot's theory of depersonalization has been criticized by critics like Ransom and Yvor Winters. So, according to Eliot the poet's biography is not very important but the structure of the poem and its evocative powers are important. 

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Words - 1,794

Images - 2

Videos - 1

Trends and Movements

Hy readers! This blog is a part of an activity assigned by yesha ma'am. In this blog I am going to write about the movement of the 20th century. Expressionism, Surrealism, and Dadaism, these are famous moments of the 20th century.

"Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history."

        – Jacques Yves Cousteau

20th Century:

The 20th century began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000. The 20th century was dominated by significant events that defined the modern era: sixth mass extinction, Spanish flu pandemic, World War I and World War II, nuclear weapons, nuclear power and space exploration, nationalism and decolonization, the Cold War and post-Cold War conflicts, and technological advances. These reshaped the political and social structure of the globe. The century saw a major shift in the way that many people lived, with changes in politics, ideology, economics, society, culture, science, technology, and medicine. The 20th century may have seen more technological and scientific progress than all the other centuries combined since the dawn of civilization.  

Literary Movements:

The 20th century saw a new era of visual artists who challenged the precedent art styles. Beauty and aesthetics gave way to abstraction, expression and symbolism. Literary modernism, or modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction. Modernist writers were influenced by such thinkers as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, amongst others, who raised questions about the rationality of the human mind. These are the famous moments of the 20th century 

• Fauvism (1905-1908)
• Expressionism (1905-1920)
• Cubism (1907-1914)
• Futurism (1909-1914)
• Dadaism (1915-1924)
• Surrealism (1924-1966)
• Abstract Expressionism (1943-1965)
• Pop Art (1950s-70s)
• Minimalism (1960s-70s)
• Postmodernism (1980s-current)

Expressionism:

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Expressionist artists developed a powerful mode of social criticism in their serpentine figural renderings and bold colors. As a part of class activity we the students of the Department of English, MKBU try to make an art on Expressionism on view bord. Here I share the photo of our activity. 

In this picture you can see the various artistic paintings which are drawn by our class. Different faces with expression and also different things you find in this art. Here is a face which looks like a devil and also like a good person and he is playing musical instrument. It presents the psychology of human beings. It was another interpretation that it considers politicians who give big promises but they don't work on it. Known artists: Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky,

Dadaism:

Dada was developed during World War I in Zurich as an avant-garde, anti-art movement. It rejected and mocked the capitalist and nationalistic cultural climate of World War I, focusing instead on the irrational, nonsensical and absurd with strong anti-bourgeois overtones. The movement spread throughout Europe and the United States, echoing far-left radical thought and the overall discontentment with the violence of wartime. Here is my video on Dadaism. I tried to make a Dada poem in this video.

This poem is created with the cutting of newspaper. This Poetry is based on 'Dadaism'. There is no meaning to this poem. We can just give our interpretations of this poem. That's why there is no meaning but on the other hand it has a number of meanings as per our interpretations. So , we can consider this poem as a Dadaist Poem. Known artists: Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp, Hannah Höch, Tristan Tzara

Surrealism:

This movement is highly influenced by Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, Surrealism sought expression through the exploration of the unconscious mind. Its imagery was characterized by unsettling, dreamlike settings with juxtaposing and often deformed subject matter. Having developed from the avant-garde Dada movement, Surrealism began in Europe and expanded throughout the western world as a cultural, artistic and literary movement. 

Here is my drawing on Surrealism. In this I portray a modern man. There is one animal but it looks like human beings and another one looks like a ghost and also like a burning candle which symbolizes the situation of humans - they also work hard in search of peace but humans face difficulties in their life. In this painting I mingled both of the figures like the human head and the animal's body. It can't be possible in our real life but both of the figures are real. Humans are double faced people. They look like humans but sometimes we see that they are more harmful than animals. Humans and animals both are present in our life but both cannot be mingled like this. That's why my drawing is Surrealistic. Known artists: André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, Rene Magritte

These are examples of the modern moment. You are free to give your interpretation on this art in comment. Through the art artists explored extreme and varying themes in the years before and after World War I. Those same themes were revisited in the aftermath of World War II, creating an interesting parallel. We also see that it's a bit difficult to understand, that's why 20th century literature is known as 'Esoteric Literature'.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Words - 900

 

W. B. Yeats

Hy readers! This blog is a part of an activity assigned by Dilip Barad sir English Department, MKBU. In this blog I am going to write about the poems of W.B Yeats 'The Scholars' and 'Among School Children'

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was born in Sandymount, Dublin in 1865 and raised in Co. Sligo, London, and Dublin. He is the greatest poet of Ireland. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. William Butler Yeats was an instrumental part of the "Irish Literary Revival" that redefined Irish writing and it is impossible to imagine 20th century Irish literature without him. Throughout his long career, Yeats influenced countless generations of dramatists and poets, including American writer Ezra Pound. Here we discussed 'The Scholars' and 'Among School Children' written by W.B.Yeats 

'The Scholars' By William Butler Yeats

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,

Old, learned, respectable bald heads

Edit and annotate the lines

That young men, tossing on their beds,

Rhymed out in love’s despair

To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;

All wear the carpet with their shoes;

All think what other people think;

All know the man their neighbour knows.

Lord, what would they say

Did their Catullus walk that way?

Analysis:

'The Scholars' was written between 1914 and April 1915 and is included in the 1919 collection The Wild Swans at Coole. This little piece of poetry is split into two stanzas with equal number of lines. Bald heads are the scholars, whose scholarly conducts have been ridiculed in this poem. They are 'forgetful of their sins'. Whatever wrongs they do are forgotten by them because, ironically, they are 'bald' by amassing knowledge by deep and long study. 

In the poem “The Scholars” by Yeats, the image of old, dull and boring “professors” is presented as they spend most of their time studying the exciting and passionate poems written by the young poets. The poem begins with what we call a metonymy, or the use of a part to refer to the whole.In the second phrase of the first line, we see that the bald heads are not heads themselves but real and complete persons. Now we realize that the speaker is bitterly criticizing forgetful old men. In the next line he says that the old and learned bald heads are 'respectable', and for the moment we get a feeling that he is regarding old, bald heads with respect. Also, the line “all think what other people think” highlights the fact that the poems are so deeply implanted into their soul and “the scholars” spend so much time reviewing the poems that they begin to think the same way, with no new or creative interpretations, and that they have forgotten the true meaning which lays behind the pens of the poets. 

The couplet in the poem suggests two different interpretations for the study of literature. The study of literature may lead the people to the path of becoming dull and boring just like the scholars described by Yeats. Though there is also another suggestion, where the studying of literature may enhance the reflection of scholars to be less repetitive, and to be inspired by the young poets with their passion and enthusiasm. 'The Scholars' has carried a distasteful tone throughout the poem together with sarcasm. There are both direct and indirect criticisms of the old scholars. 

'Among School Children' By William Butler Yeats.

CLICK HERE FOR READ POEM 'AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN '

William Butler Yeats published 'Among School Children' in his famous 1928 collection of poems, The Tower. In the poem, the speaker's visit to one such school prompts him to reflect on old age, youth, beauty, and change. Although old age brings a decline from the beauty and freshness of youth. The poem begins in the first person.

According to W.H. Hudson,

"Yeats has a knack of raising occasional poetry to the level of profound poetry of universal appeal and significance. ‘Among School Children’ can be cited as an example."

'Among School Children’ is written in the Italian verse form called ottava rima, rhymed abababcc. In the first Stanza the poet tells that he is on a visit to a female Convent School, located in Waterford. It is an all-girls school where students ranging from four to seven. In 1926, a committee was appointed in order to find out the situation of the Irish education system at that time. As a Senator, Yeats visited this school, administered by nuns and according to the Montessori method. The poet further shares that he went through all the classrooms and asked various questions. An aged and generous nun, wearing a white dress was guiding him everywhere and answering his questions. Children were taking lessons in mathematics, music, sewing, and cutting. They were also taking knowledge of history and reading books. Children are taught to stay clean and tidy in everything they do. 

The second stanza of 'Among School Children' tells that the poet is thinking about his love, Maud Gonne. She was a lady who was known for her elegance and prettiness just like Leda. Leda was the mother of Helen for whom the Trojan war fought. The poet is an old man now and thought about Maud Gonne who would also be an old lady now. He is thinking about their private conversation during his young days and is reminded of an incident that Gonne told him. A teacher insulted her and she felt this tragedy was an unforgettable one. 

In the third stanza, the poet has jumped back to the real world in the classroom that he is visiting as a Senator from the world of fantasy. The purpose of looking at these girls’ faces was so that he could find Maud Gonne amongst these faces. As he thinks so, an idea struck his mind that even such powerful ladies like Gonne or Helen were like these normal children in their childhood. Helen was the daughter of Leda and Zeus, who came in the form of Swan. He felt as if this girl in front of him is Maud Gonne as she was. The fourth stanza begins with Maud still firmly in Yeats’s consciousness but now it is “Her present image”. Yeats had also been married for nine years by this time, but that did not stop him wondering about what might have been had Maud accepted him. She is now “hollow of cheek”, and Yeats imagines an image from a Renaissance painting.

In the fifth stanza Yeats’s thoughts veer completely away from Maud and focus instead on his own mother, who would have been “youthful” at the time of his own birth in 1865. He wonders what she would have thought had she been able to see how her son had turned out. Would she have regarded him as adequate “compensation” for the pain of childbirth and all the inconveniences of bringing him up? Yeats leaves the question unanswered. The sixth stanza leaps back even further to wonder about the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, all of whom had theories about education. However, the point of this stanza is to draw a parallel between the poet’s own scarecrow-like appearance and that of his forebears as educators, all of whom would turn into “Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird”. He seems to be saying that perhaps he should not regard his role as being unimportant and that “scarecrows” can still make a difference.

In the seventh stanza Yeats draws parallels between the religious devotions of the nuns who run the school and the devotion that the mothers of the children have towards their offspring. He makes the point that the children are every bit as worthy of worship as the images of marble or bronze. They are the receptacles of a holy presence and symbols of “heavenly glory”. The eighth stanza leads on from the seventh and serves to pose questions rather than supply answers. Yeats uses images of blossoming and dancing to symbolize the life that is burgeoning in the children and which is being nurtured physically by the children’s mothers and intellectually by the nuns. 

'Among School Children' is a poem that repays re-reading, because there is a lot of meaning that can be gleaned from it and which is not apparent at first glance. It incorporates elements of myth and symbolism, combined with personal thoughts and memories. It is a complex poem that was subtly and skilfully crafted by a master of his art who knew exactly what he was doing.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Words - 1,438

Images - 2

Videos - 2