Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' & Dickinson's Poetry: Study on Nature, Self, Religion, Sintesi del corso di Filosofia

Scarica Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' & Dickinson's Poetry: Study on Nature, Self, Religion e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Filosofia solo su Docsity! AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION ERA The American Civil War was a civil war fought between states supporting the federal union (the Union / the North) and states that voted to secede and form the Confederate State of America (the Confederacy / the South). The central cause of this war was the debate on the status of slavery, in fact on the eve of the Civil War 4 of 32 million Americans were black slaves. The war began under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, who was against slavery, which was the free workforce that carried on the southern economy, mostly based on plantations. The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when confederate General Lee surrendered to union General Grant. At the end of the war many of the infrastructures in the South were destroyed, especially its railroads, therefore the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people was freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction Era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves. Of particular interest is the persisting of the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. This was the bloodiest war in American history, indeed was among the earliest to employ industrial warfare and left between 620’000 and 750’000 soldiers dead. President Lincoln was assassinated five days after General Lee’s surrender. Yankees - North (blue uniform) Vs Rebels - South (grey uniform) By 1893 Chicago was the most technologically advanced city and hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition. After the Civil War the motto was 3Ps: progression, progress and prosperity. In 1869 the first transcontinental railroad was finished. During this period America saw a huge population growth: 1790 - 4milli; 1840 - 30milli and in the census of 1890 - 63milli. The growing economy started the phenomenon of corporate capitalism and created the figures of the great tycoons, who where seen as public models and became the examples of the myth of the self-mad man and of the American dream. THE GILDED AGE Was an era that occurred during the late XIX century and it was an era of rapid economic growth. As American wages grew much higher than this in Europe, especially for skilled workers and industrialization demanded an ever-increasing labor force, the period saw the influx of millions of European immigrants. Conversely, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequalities, as millions of immigrants poured into the United State, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious. Railroads were the industries with the major growth, together with the factory system, mining and finance increasing in importance. The political environment was good despite some corruption. WALT WHITMAN (1819 - 1892) Walter Whitman was an American poet, part of the transition from transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. He was a self-educated man whose education was built circulating libraries, theaters and operas. He also worked as a printer and then as a journalist and reporter. By the 1850s he sojourned in New Orleans and this was the turning point of his career and his life (he changed his attitude towards racism). He wrote in the preface of “Leaves of Grass” that, “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionally as he has absorbed it”. He believed that there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between poet and society. WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER • This poem can be summarized as the depiction of Whitman’s naturalistic vision of the world over an analytic one. • It is divided in two parts, composed by eight lines, each one is part of a single long sentence. The first four lines that compose the first part use the repetition of the word “when” creating an alliteration, in order to seem like a list of facts more than a part of a poem.This technique evokes a feeling of a passive type of education in which the audience passively listens to someone who is supposed to be well educated and know all the answers (the word “learn’d” highlights the gap between Whitman and academic education; it is very colloquial). The second half of the poem moves away from the simple to the point language used to describe the astronomer’s lesson. He uses more elegant and precise words. Furthermore the shift in tone at the end of the poem is commonly referred to as “the turn” in literary analysis and is meant to emphasize the poem’s meaning. In this case Whitman is communicating his preference towards learning about nature by being in nature and experiencing nature (like Emerson), and his interest in emotional participation in order to reach knowledge. • Dry language (1st part) vs Florid language (2nd part) • The poem consists in one stanza • The initial four clauses introduced by the word “when” increase in length (visual effect) and in rhythm, as to symbolize the boredom the speaker felt. (NB even the eye of the reader gets bored and frustrated by these list-kind lines). This sense of boredom, expressed by the words “tired and sick” needs to be solved with the words “rising and gliding”, that express movement and emotional distance. • The verb “wandering” expresses Whitman’s idea of learning as a continuos never-ending adventure. • The word “unaccountable” suggests that the dry material of the lecture isn’t enough to cover the mystery of the endless universe. The concept of authority isn’t the only way to learn. • The concept of the individual: it is expressed by the opposition between the individual who steps out and the crowd that passively listens. The individual wants to claim his own right to decide how to learn and to understand reality. • The individual is seen as a responsible and free agent that can find his link to knowledge and to the universe in solitude, but he’s still linked to the others. The idea of solitude is also expressed by the alliteration of the letter S. The solitude and the silence are used as a contrast to the noise made by the astronomer. (Emerson’s idea of solitude) • The concept of the cosmos: The universe has been divided in mere notions and sets by the learned astronomer, who tries to rationalize the experience of cosmos. LEAVES OF GRASS In 1855 Whitman finances the publication of 750 copies and the first notable thing is that the cover of the book has a visual impact and reminds to grass, leaves and nature. Another important thing is that he designed the cover, the binding and the pages, as to symbolize his insistence in understanding of literature, through words rooted in nature and language as abundant as grass. Whitman believed in the power of literature as a catalyzer of change, and the title itself suggests that literature is characterized by an organic and alive connotation. “Grass” has a very democratic quality because it grows everywhere and in every part of the world; it is also a symbol of regeneration and of the circular life. “Grass” is a universal symbol and everyone can have the experience of that. Grass is also the inter dimensional connection between life and death (when we die we became grass). “Leaves of Grass” went through 6 different editions, in fact it was actively and constantly modified. It remains a literary work in progress, because he never published a final version • GRASS and JOURNEY: represents a rejection of all hierarchies. Grass is compared to the journeywork of the stars in order to convey the meaning that the journey is fundamental for the experience. The notion of the journey inspired music and art (bit generation) and is fundamental in the American life. The road is the ultimate representation of life. This concept was not invented by Whitman but it is crucial in his philosophy and in his idea of America, described as a plain and public road. • Whitman was aware of the fact that wether the notion of AMERICA’S IDENTITY is based on the myth of the self-made man it presents pros and cons, because it conveys the idea of the winners and also of the losers, but he feels empathy for both. What is common when it comes to winners and losers is the spirit which led them through the battle (spirit, skills, good luck, bad luck). • DIVERSITY AND CONTRADICTIONS: the whole poem celebrates diversity and revolves around diversity and his capacity (writers’ capacity) to uncritically absorb at the same way all that diversity as it absorbes him. Whitman is able to find some common elements to all the diverse things he describes. Diversity makes America a unique experiment. He’s completely aware of all the contradictions written in this poem but it is not a problem for him because they mean multitude (out of many one). Contradiction and diversity are part of the human life and they are crucial in the life of a man or of a country because they ignite changes and development. • FAITH AND RELIGION: Whitman was very much aware of the existence of different possibilities for faith and religion (he was interested in eastern creeds and religions) but he doesn’t deny or accept one of the several faiths. He expresses his will to be omnicomprehensive even about religion and to reject every hierarchy because they all are an expression of faith. • THE ENDING, is not a true ending according to Whitman because it’s part of a never- ending process of life and death, and this is way he can claim that he’s deathless. These final lines provide us a sort of definition of what deathlessness is: organic regeneration of body and soul (there are some elements that refers to oriental religions and reincarnation). In the very last lines Whitman suggest the readers to be encouraged if they can’t fetch him, find him and understand him at fist keep. He wants the readers to search him actively, and not passively. He promises that he will wait for the reader somewhere. The notion of the “keep on trying” is completely American, is one of the core elements of he American dream. • From the VISUAL POINT OF VIEW: the free verse, the rhythm (punctuation, pause) is something radically new, and is reminiscent of a monologue. It feature reminds to the readers thoughts. - Many of his poems rely on rhythm and repetition in order to create a captivating incantation. Often, he begins several lines in a row with the same word or phrase (anaphoras) - Whitman filled his poems with long lists. Often a sentence is broken into many different clauses, and each clause describes some scene, person or object. These lists create a sense of expansiveness in the poem and a continuos overlap of different images in order to reflect the diversity of American landscapes and people. In “song of Myself” the speaker lists a multiplicity of adjectives to describe the complexity of the individual. Sequently, the speaker lists the different voices that speak through Whitman that also express his preoccupation with the outcasts. Lists are another device used to express democracy in action: in a list all items possess equal weight (no individual is more important than another). THEMES: - Democracy as a way of life - The cycle of growth and death - circularity of nature - The beauty of the human body - Equality in intellectual and physical (even sexual) learning - Grass as a symbol of America - Hands on experiences as a fundamental part of the learning process Furthermore, Whitman was against social restrictions and believed that an individual shouldn’t be ashamed of his nakedness, because the most effective way to experience the complexity of nature is through the contact with the skin. “I am how I am and I don’t feel shame…” - he is proud and not ashamed. EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) She led a reclusive, but normal life even thought she wasn’t married. In fact she came from a very wealthy family and he had the means to live without a husband. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father, Edward Dickinson was treasurer of Amherst College and he also served as a state representative and as a state senator. Her family was one of the most prominent families in Amherst. She attended Amherst Academy and at 18 she was educated well beyond the level achieved by most Americans: the Bible, the English classics, American contemporaries. She admired the female English writers, and she wanted to be recognized as a poet. Religion was an important part Dickinson’s education and particularly Unitarianism, with its notions of hell and the fear of damnation (in her poems she expresses a rebellious view of religion and rejects the notion of religion as the sole source of truth). In addition to this her perception of a tyrannical, arbitrary God came from the Unitarian and patriarchal environment in which she lived. A definition of Dickinson when it comes to her bound with the religious environment:”a daughter of the Puritans, albeit a disobedient daughter”. Emily Dickinson’s poems have no title and the titles correspond to the first line of each poem. When she was alive she had a very structured and clear notion of her poetic work and she collected all of her poems in fascicles, so she had a vision of what she was doing. The problem is that after her death, her first publishers Mabel Todd (her brother’s lover) and Thomas Higginson (they also helped to create the myth of Dickinson’s recluse life) dismembered the fascicles and they group the poems according to their own taste, so we have lost Dickinson original intention. By becoming herself a poet Emily defied and challenged the anti-artistic spirit which characterized late 18th and early 19th century New England religious households. Her mind chose rebellion, as we can see in the poem “some keep the Sabbath going to church”. The first volume of her work was published in 1890 (she died in 1886) in Boston by Mabel Todd and Higginson who ‘cleaned up’ punctuation (dashes) and capitalization in her poems, and divided her poems into four thematic groups: Life, Love, Nature, Time&Eternity. SELECTED POEMS SOME KEEP THE SABBATH GOING TO CHURCH - 1860 This is one of those many poems written by Dickinson which revolves around the role of poetry and artistic craft in her life and in which she claims her commitment to poetry. Here the parallel which is featuring the poem involves religion and the value of religion which our speaker includes into poetry. • THE FORM: we can notice an interesting capitalization of nouns which was used by Dickinson to emphasize subjects, and in this case the emphasis is primarily placed on words associated with religious field. Many of the capitalized words function as symbols but sometimes they correspond to metrically stressed words, but every time in every poem the value of capitalization is something that the reader has to solve. Another interesting element that emphasizes the visual impression of the poem is the use of the dash, and some of them where originally longer than others and they resonate as musical markings. All in all there is an interconnection between the visual elements and the oral elements. The wide use of religious terms reveals that our speaker and author was familiar with the religious environment but the tone and the approach to religion is rather irreverent and sardonic because she declares her independence from such environment, suggesting that she has substituted one religion to another. Her attitude in the first two lines is extremely assertive, because she asserts that she acts differently from the other elements of her community; this very marked sense of the self is one of the elements which Dickinson shares with Whitman (differently because Whitman’s one is expansive and Dickinson’s self focuses on its inner struggles; furthermore Whitman’s self is in a tight relation with reality, while Dickinson’s self is limited by reality). The three stanzas of this poem revolve around the parallel between the sense of the familiar, generated in the contemporary readers by the words associated with religion, and the sense of disorientation because the speaker declares that she rejects the familiar in order to cultivate her own individual cult, that is evidently poetry, represented by the word “Wings”. Our speaker doesn’t celebrate the Sabbath going to church but she stays at home, so “home” is used as the antithesis to church. But even staying at home, while all the community is celebrating, she’s not alone because her company is the experience of nature through the image of the bobolink which functions as her chorister and her sexton. The song of the bobolink provides a reflection of the speaker’s own singing through poetry. Throughout the three stanzas the words, the elements and the actions associated with religion are substitute by words and elements related to nature, so our speaker offers an extremely valid alternative to the more common religious experience. We can find the last paradox in the third stanza, in which even the clergyman is substituted with God who directly preaches through our speaker. In the last stanza the tone is ironic, challenging and quite irreverent. We need to remember that she lived in a puritan environment in which there was a very strong sense of religion and a very strong feeling about the risk of damnation, but our speaker is absolutely aware that there’s a heaven and expresses the will to go on in her own way (“I’m going all along”). Her rebellious attitude is already evident in this poem, in fact she declares that she knows that she would have been damned and she’s totally aware about her choices but instead of conforming to a limiting religion she prefers to keep living with her wings on. Her wings can be a metaphor of the fact that she feels she’s already in heaven, because her poetry is more liberating than religion. Thought the notion of the wings our speaker declares that doesn’t need religion to be self-sufficient. Another interesting element is that the speaker is not aware about her final destination, but the important is going on. The “I” is omnipresent in Dickinson’s poetry as if she doesn’t necessarily want to be part of a specific and constructed community in which she feels constrained and limited, but she has a very strong sense and trust in herself, and wants to live out of these social constraints in order to valorize her artistic craft. In the second stanza Dickinson suggests that a married woman is forced to give up (“if ought she missed…”) some aspects and experiences of her past life (“…her new day,”). So marriage is a choice that implies the giving up of something else like amplitude (fullness), awe (wonder, amazement of knowledge or experiences), first prospective (the initial enthusiasm of marriage which dissolves into the routine). And all these experiences will lay unmentioned, unknown, unexpressed, undiscovered at the bottom of the sea (at the bottom of this woman soul). The last lines of this poem are pretty challenging, “but only to Himself—be known” : the depths of this woman’s soul will only be known to himself, but what should we make of this male figure? The only one who can know her depths is the husband himself. So, the last stanza remarks the idea that marriage erases a woman’s perception of herself or at least prevents a woman from knowing herself and experiencing life to the fullest by putting her life in the hands of her husband. Evidently the last two lines are characterized by an undertone of irony and that’s part of Dickinson’s ambiguity, because we don’t exactly know if she thought that a husband can completely know the fathoms (the depths) of his wife’s soul. The ironic effect is created by this sort of religious undertone. The sea imagery is also present in “Wild nights - Wild nights” but in a different way: in this poem the sea is used as a symbol of the darkness in which some aspects of the life of a married woman are left, while in “Wild nights - Wild nights” is as symbol of disruptive passion. Also from the point of view of the choice of the pronouns which suggest the presence of the woman, we can notice that even if in the first and second stanzas the woman is present through the pronoun “She”, in the last stanza this presence totally disappears. So the poem ends without the figure of a woman, but with a male and rather patriarchal figure. In conclusion we can say that also in terms of structure the mechanism of disappearing of the woman figure is imitated by Dickinson with words. AFTER GREAT PAIN, A FORMAL FEELING COMES — - 1862 The central theme of this poem is an exploration of what psychological and emotional pain is, and according to the biographers such an exploration was a consequence of a particular trauma that Dickinson had experienced herself. From the very first lines we can clearly grasp the main theme of the three stanzas, that is the nature of pain and particularly the aftermath of pain on an individual’s soul, so pain is described as an emotional and psychological experience which shatters the constructs one’s perception of self. The author is not interested in defining the cause of such pain, suggesting the idea that each of us, as readers, can relate to such experience. In this poem we don’t have a lyrical eye or a speaker who expresses his/her experience of pain, and such experience is represented through the single body parts which make up an individual (the nerves, the heart, the feet). The individual is fragmented, suggesting that the experience of pain causes the fragmentation of one’s identity, of one’s sense of self. The first stanza suggests that the individual whose spirit and soul are completely shattered is witnessing his/her inner death, to the point that the nerves attend the funeral of the soul, and the idea of “a formal feeling” is associated with the idea of “ceremonious”. The heart is stiff, because somehow the experience of grief has frozen the ability of the individual to feel again, and this stiff heart questions wether God bore the cross of suffering or him (loss of identity). The second question (“yesterday or centuries before”) refers to one of the aspects of pain and grief, which is the lost of spatial awareness which also coincides with chronological, spatial and physical disorientation. In the second stanza the individual and the soul are completely fragmented and the parts of this body experience the feeling of a “quartz contentment” which can be associated with the loss of the capacity to feel emotions and with an emotional emptiness and stasis. In the third stanza “,if outlived,” is extremely relevant because when it comes to the experience of mental grief an individual may not survive it. It could be a matter of physical death, it could mean a sort of psychological death, but Dickinson is here suggesting an extremely troubling possibility, the possibility that we may not be able to survive pain. It is clear though that if we outlive pain, we will always remember that feeling, and the process of surviving and remembering is conveyed through the image of people who survive the experience of freeze to death. Another interesting interpretation is the similarity between experiencing pain and freezing to death, as described in the last line of this poem: first, chill (coldness), then stupor (state of reduced sensibility to be numb), then the letting go, if we have survived to this, the ability to separate yourself from the traumatic experience and thus the ability to embark the path of recovery. ONE NEED NOT TO BE A CHAMBER TO BE HAUNTED - 1862 This poem revolves around the theme of the duality of the self, and we can find a common element between Dickinson and Whitman, which is their commitment to the idea of the self, even if they explore it in radically different ways: Whitman’s self is an all-absorbing self, clearly expressing an extrovert attitude toward reality and the world, while Dickinson’s self is fragmented, vulnerable and somehow limited by reality and its contains (this poem conveys such idea). In this poem Dickinson uses once again architectural imagery, like in “I dwell in possibility” she uses the image of a house in order to express the complexity of this metaphorical house that is the human mind. The all poem develops through the parallel between the gothic notion of a hunted house (here Dickinson shows that she’s particularly aware of the gothic theme because she mentions particular elements that are associated with the gothic atmosphere) our brain. In a similar way to what Edgar Allan Poe suggested, she highlights the fact that the most terrifying horrors should be looked for and thus found within ourselves, within our brains and souls, and thus echoing Poe’s notion that the terror is part of human beings. The first stanza opens with a very general approach to the identity of the main character and also to the addressee of this poem, because “One” can be anyone, even the reader. Then goes on challenging our own notion of what we should be scared of: we don’t need a chamber or a house which is hunted to be terrified or scared, because there’s another place which is not architectural and physical within which terror and horror actually resides, which is the brain. “the brain has corridors surpassing material place.” Here Dickinson suggests that our brain is much more complicated than physical places, so we must be more preoccupied with our inner horror instead of that of a hunted house. In the second stanza, the use of the word “external” associated with “ghost” suggest that that there may exist internal ghosts, inhabiting our brain (which are more dangerous). Another interesting world association is “Whiter host”, in the last line of the second stanza, used in order to convey the idea that our interior ghost has an interdependent relation with us, since we are its hosts, and thus is at the same time part of us and feeds on us. So in a sense here Dickinson grasps one of the most troubling elements associated with the idea of the duality of the self, a duality which is often associated with psychological illnesses. The third stanza begins with the anaphora “far safer” in order to create a sort of emotional climax, and goes on presenting a gothic scene of chase through an abbey. The stanza closes with a warning, which is that is more scary the confrontation with our inner demons than running away from some sort of ghostly presence. Notable the use of the two adjectives “moonless” and “lonesome”, commonly used in typical gothic settings, are here associated with the encounter that every individual has with his/her inner self. The transfer of the idea of terror is emphasized by the use of these two adjectives: the experience of the encounter with our self is a lonely one and sometimes can take us to very dark places. In the fourth stanza the poet continues with the meditation of the power of our inner consciousness, so again it goes on identifying our enemy as a hiding presence which resides within ourselves. And we should be more scared of this than of an assassin hiding in our apartment. The image of trying to protect us from terror and fear continues in the last stanza because “the prudent carries a revolver” so he/she could defend himself/herself, and “he bolts the door”, so he/ she locks himself/herself inside, and here the house is seen as a safe place because we can isolate ourselves from the outer world. In the last two lines the poem takes an ironic turn because the individual who tries to build a fortress to defend himself/herself from exterior danger doesn’t realize that what should be really frightening is actually standing next to him/her, if not inside him/her. So what Dickinson is suggesting is that the word hunted should apply to every individual, because the real hunting takes place within us and not inside houses or chambers. In conclusion, similarly to “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“ here Dickinson reveals a tremendous degree of psychological insight into one’s mind, and we can also see how, in contrast with Whitman, Dickinson is interested in exploring the inner self and the way in which the self reacts to the external reality but keeping the self the core of exploration. THERE’S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT, - 1861 This is probably one of her most studied poems and one of the most difficult and not fully understand ones. This poem is about an extremely ambiguos meditation. In this poem’s stanzas we can finde a peculiar pattern: the first two lines of the stanzas focus on the visual perception, and the last two lines focus on the perception of hearing sound. But in the last stanza Dickinson reverses the pattern. In the first stanza, the positive connotation of a sunbeam is reversed in this poem, comparing it to the oppressive weight of the music played in the church. In the second stanza the feeling which is conveyed is heavy spiritual pain and suffering, and there is a very melancholic mood reminiscent of a deep sense of death and of an ending, but it also gives us “internal difference”, like the feeling of inner dissonance, of a tension, of a void. Through this particular description Dickinson probably wanted to convey the image of ending winter day. The kind of mood generated by such a trivial detail (slanted ray of light) ignites a self-reflective mechanism experienced by the observer, which is associated with a feeling of death, of how fragile and vulnerable our lives, or at least the observer life is. In the third stanza the word “Air” stands for heaven, like as if this feeling is sent from above and is reminiscent to our mortality. In comparison to the first stanza, in the last lines of the last stanza the emphasis is placed on the perception of sounds: “the landscape listens / Shadows —hold their breath”. Here, the shadows symbolize the shadows of dead human beings. These lines generate a sense freezing reality, of stasis, of immobility. The last two lines of the poem deal with sight, so this feeling goes away it can be compared to the distance which is perceived on the look of death. This feeling of distance could be created by the sight of dead people or could be created by the feeling of having escaped death. In conclusion, Dickinson paradoxically associates a ray of light, which is usually a positive element to the mood of death; the mood of death is experienced by our observer through the observation of an apparently trivial natural phenomenon. Interestingly Dickinson suggests that the source of this feeling and sunlight, is the sky. Luckily enough for our observer this is a fleeting experience and as soon as it goes away he/she experiences a feeling of relief, because of the distance established between the perception of one’s vulnerability and fragility and the presence of death. So, once again, Emily Dickinson tries to make something abstract like this melancholic and gloomy mood, very tangible and concrete.