Dusting Off the Cobwebs, Rearranging the Shelves

It's been little over a year since my last post on this blog. But that's no matter. I've decided to start writing here again. Mostly just because I miss it an awful lot. A blog is one of the few places where a writer truly feels at home on the internet.

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)

A glimpse of a writer's life...

Can it really be a new year? Already?

I’ve been so busy these past several weeks that I’ve hardly had time to notice. But I am glad that it is a new year – all these beautiful blank days and weeks and months, like empty white pages begging to be filled with words.

What have I been up to these past several months? More things than I could possibly describe, so I’ll just try to write about the wonderful things; those are always the best to remember anyway.

I’ve read a bit of fiction – finally finished The Brother Karamazov by Dostoevsky (one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read), managed to make my way through Eliot’s Mill on the Floss (some rather fine writing, but overall a rather weak storyline), felt in the mood for a play and discovered a collection of Henrik Ibsen’s on my bookshelf (read A Doll’s House and was impressed but left with a feeling of dissatisfaction).

Since then, I’ve been looking for a good book to read that won’t leave me disappointed and just started The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, courtesy, once again, of my bookshelf. It’s amazing what I find there: all these beautiful leather-bound classics with gold-edged pages. So far, I am enjoying the novel immensely and, even though I usually wait until I am at least halfway through a book to recommend it, I have quite favorable opinions of this one.

But I did find one treasure that wasn’t on my bookshelf. I was in the library one day when I stumbled across Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor. I’m not a very big admirer of O’Connor’s stories, but I am an admirer of her skill. She was a very good writer. This book is full of non-fiction and has some very fine essays on the craft of writing, most inspiring and encouraging for any serious writer.

What does it mean to be a serious writer? I’ve been mulling over those words these past several months. O’Connor believed that fiction is an art form, that writing well is a gift. When asked why she wrote, she replied, “Because I’m good at it.” It may sound a bit prideful, but isn’t that why people usually pursue a certain field?

These past several months I decided that I must look on my writing as more than a mere hobby. I have always loved to write, but writing is not self-satisfying. Like any art form, it must be shared with an audience.

My parents have always encouraged me to find ways to reach a larger audience with my writing. I did publish a literary newsletter during my early high school years, but since then I haven’t written very much fiction (and only slightly more non-fiction). It must have been my British Literature class this past year, then, that really got me serious about writing. There is definitely something beneficial about having to write a well-thought-out essay every week and absolutely immerse yourself in good literature. My teacher was wonderful too – she was constantly trying to convince me to get some of my work published and very helpful in critiquing my writing.

Unfortunately, my success in the area of fiction has been rather small, though I have tried very hard to write several short-stories. My serious projects always end up unfinished, boring me before I get past the first page. Yet I find it very easy to write children’s fiction, things in the style of Edith Nesbit’s novels.

My younger brother will see me with my laptop and ask me to write him a story. We’ll sit down on the couch together and I’ll begin typing away. And there I am, with five pages of material in the time it would have taken me to write half a page of a serious short-story. It appears that though I love reading serious short-stories, God is leading me to write children’s fiction. And that is not necessarily disappointing. It really is wonderful to write for children.

As to non-fiction, well, here I really have had a bit of success. As I have previously said, my parents and teachers have been encouraging me to share my writing with a wider audience. This autumn I finally took my first daring steps. I had been researching scholarship opportunities and was quite amazed at the numerous essay competitions that I found. One of these was run by the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization. Their Voice of Democracy contest for high schoolers was originally a radio program sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters. Now it is simply an audio essay contest. The author must read his essay onto a CD and submit both the CD and essay to the VFW. Essays are judged not only on the writing, but also on the author’s speaking skills.

This year’s theme for the contest was “My Role in Honoring America’s Veterans.” As I began writing my essay, I fell in love with the topic. I have two grandfathers who are both American veterans (one served in World War Two) and it was wonderful to have a chance to honor them with my paper. Perhaps I’ll post it this Memorial Day.

Anyhow, my essay did very, very well. I won on the post, county, and district level and finally for the whole state. That means I get to represent New York for the Voice of Democracy in Washington, D.C. this March, tour the nation's capital, and possibly meet our president. There are even more prizes to win on the national level. Here is more information about the contest.

I am very excited and so thankful for this award! It's such a great honor. I am so amazed to see how God is working in my life, giving me this opportunity to share my writing with others, especially with the veterans of my VFW. Sadly, many Americans have forgotten these veterans' sacrifices, how their service protected our freedoms. Several veterans have told me that every time they hear my essay on the recording they are moved to tears. I have given the essay aloud in person and seen the audience so moved. It is an indescribable feeling that washes over you when you touch a person with your words. It makes me truly thankful to be a writer.

Flannery O’Connor wrote that God gifts some to be good writers and, because He has given us this gift, we must in turn glorify Him through our words. That is what it means, I think, to be a serious writer.

I have so much more to write about, but so little time now to write. Let me just end with this quote by Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur), a quote I heartily agree with.

I know what I should love to do - to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing - one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not.

Today in History - December 7th, 1941

Remembering Pearl Harbor

This Week in History : A Garden in Milan

[Meant to post this on the 28th, the anniversary of Augustine's death 1,577 years ago in 430. But since I haven't posted in so long, I suppose it'll be alright if I post it now instead.

I was browsing through old essays I had written for school and found this one I wrote several years back in the Schola Great Books II class. Wow, that seems like such a long time ago. =) It's a dramatization of Augustine's conversion.

If you haven't read any of Augustine's works, I highly recommend his Confessions. Augustine is one of the most important figures of the early Western Church and, while his theology wasn't always correct, his writing was extremely influential and helped strengthen the Christian church when the Roman Empire fell in 410.]

A Garden in Milan

I wished to speak to him, but I saw the tears rise to his eyes. He cast me a look full of sorrow and misery. The words I would have said choked in my throat.

Longing for solitude, he picked himself up and with trembling step, hurried off to a further corner of the garden.

I believe he thought I could not see him, but I could and I watched him intently. I knew what emotions racked his mind, for they racked mine as well, and I grew frightened for him.

He stumbled and threw himself down by a fig tree. The leaves danced fiercely in the harsh wind that had unexpectedly sprung up. He buried his face in his hands, weeping. I could see that from where I stood and I began to weep as well.

And then he spoke. At first, I could not catch the words, but as I listened closely, they became easier to understand. They pierced my heart and the tears fell more freely from my eyes.

“How long shall I go on saying ‘tomorrow, tomorrow’? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?” he cried.

I had already seen the turmoil in my friend’s soul moments before. It was just after our guest, Ponticianus, had left. This man had noticed a book containing Paul’s epistles lying on our table. He immediately became overjoyed at our interest in the Scriptures and related to us a story about Antony, an Egyptian monk, who had given up everything he had to follow Christ. These things filled us with amazement at the greatness of such a sacrifice, but I noticed that they seemed to tear my friend apart inside.

When Ponticianus left, my friend addressed me in feverish tones. Although I do not recall the words he used, I knew by the strange high tone in his voice and the horrible expression in his face that he could not yet give up his sinful practices.

He ran out into the garden and I followed. In his agony, he tore at his hair and beat his forehead with his hands. And then he had run off to the fig tree and I thought it best to leave him alone.

I watched and I waited.

Then suddenly another voice fell upon my ears, light and sing-song, the voice of a child. Whether it the voice of a girl or a boy I could not tell, and at first, I was afraid it should disturb my friend, for he had looked up and inclined his head as if listening. I listened too.

“Take it and read,” it sang. “Take it and read.”

What did this mean? I had never heard a child sing these words before in any game.

My friend rose to his feet and quickly approached where I stood.

“Augustine,” I began to say, but he did not hear me. He picked up the book of Paul’s epistles he had cast aside when he left me, opened it, and read for several seconds. I watched him earnestly. And then I felt that wind that had sprung up, suddenly die down.

The voice of the child stopped singing.

My friend looked at me, his features quite calm, his face full of an emotion I had never noticed there before.

“Oh, Alypius,” he began. And then he told me everything. He told me of the emotions that had welled up within him. And he told me something that filled me with an inexpressible happiness.

For during this little episode in a garden in Milan, we had both passed from darkness to light, from wicked heathen practices to Christianity.

“What did you read?” I asked.

He showed me and I read it. And I found in those verses an admonishment that stirred my soul, but gave me great strength.

He gently put his hand upon my shoulder and said, “Alypius, we must go tell my mother. Her prayers have been answered.”

I nodded and as I looked into his face, a face devoid of all doubt and fear, I knew in my heart that this man Augustine was destined to do great things for God.

A Memory of Moments

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST. Ah, but we die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since
then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and covenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

-T. S. Eliot, "The Cocktail Party"

Poem in October by Dylan Thomas

[This is one of those poems that makes you catch your breath -- it's beautifully rich with imagery. I took the pictures last October at Rockefeller State Park here in New York. Enjoy!]



It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
    And the mussel pooled and the heron
            Priested shore
        The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
        Myself to set foot
            That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

    My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
    Above the farms and the white horses
            And I rose
        In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
        Over the border
            And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

    A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
    Blackbirds and the sun of October
            Summery
        On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
        To the rain wringing
            Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

    Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
    With its horns through mist and the castle
            Brown as owls
        But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
        There could I marvel
            My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

    It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
    Streamed again a wonder of summer
            With apples
        Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
        Through the parables
            Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

    And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
    These were the woods the river and sea
            Where a boy
        In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
        And the mystery
            Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

    And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
    Joy of the long dead child sang burning
            In the sun.
        It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
        O may my heart's truth
            Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Today in History - 1066

I write these over on my xanga blog, but this one seemed particularly relevant to post over here.

Last year, my Brit Lit teacher informed my class that you can't possible love British Literature and not know what the 28th of September commemorates.

941 years ago today, in 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England, forever changing the English language and culture.
Here are several interesting links to learn more:

Wikipedia on the Norman Conquest

The Effect of the Norman Conquest on the English Language

And, of course, there is the Bayeaux tapestry! You can find several fascinating books on the tapestry, like Andrew Bridgeford's Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry. But there are also a huge amount of websites, like this one.

1066 was also the year of Halley's Comet and it made an appearance in the tapestry mentioned above:

The Latin words read "ISTI MIRANT STELLA."
That is, "These men wonder at the star."

It was seen as a good omen for William, but a bad omen for Harold II who died at the Battle of Hastings.

dead languages

Very sorry for not posting for so long. I will try and write more often over the next several months.

Do you know today (the 23rd) is the very first day of Autumn!

Happy Fall! :)

And to make this post a wee bit interesting --

I read an article this past week about how nearly half of the languages spoken today are in danger of extinction. A language actually dies about every two weeks.

Being the foreign language fan that I am (I'm currently studying Italian), this made me rather sad. You can find more info at National Geographic here and here.

Although, who said dead languages aren't cool and shouldn't be learned even if they are 'dead'? Latin, anyone?

I'm back!

Whew, now I have about a month to actually enjoy my summer. Haha, yes, I'm joking -- I have been enjoying it very much. But now I'll actually have time to read.

I will have some more essays up here soon, but right now I have to post this poem. It's amazing. Enjoy!

Marginalia
By
Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Cry, the Beloved Country

Yes, I've been away -- traveling around the country (I went to Texas!) and studying at an economics seminar for a week. I'm off again this Thursday to Pennsylvania, but you can read all about that over here.

Now, for all my fellow literary-lovers that have been dying for a blog post while I've been away, here is an essay on a book that is an absolute must-read. Very highly recommended by me. Watch out though -- there are several spoilers. If you don't need to be convinced by my essay to read the book, then read the book first and then come back and read my essay. :)

A Light Will Dawn: Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country is just as passionate and socially relevant today as it was when first published in 1948. A Zulu pastor, Stephen Kumalo, searches for his lost son in a South Africa turbulently divided by racial injustice. Ultimately, the story portrays Kumalo’s spiritual journey from naiveté to a deeper understanding of his world, from confused anger to abiding peace, from a wavering faith to complete trust in the actions of God.

The opening pages are integral to the rest of the story as they describe the beauty of natural South Africa. With rich green hills and thick matted grass, it is almost a picture of Eden. Indeed, Paton writes, “Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator” (33). Yet, the “hills break down…They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature. For they grow red and bare.” In relation to Kumalo, this latter description embodies his spiritual state at the beginning of the novel. His church is located in the desolate valley, not in the vast and wonderful hills. He enters the pages a broken and suffering old man. Though his character does change by the end of the book, it is not a radical transformation. In fact, he leaves the book, just as he entered, broken and suffering. Change does not happen overnight – it is a gradual process. It will take many years to renew the valley into the image of the glorious hills that surround it. It will also take Kumalo many years to change. Cry, the Beloved Country shows only the first small steps that he must take.

For a broken man, it is difficult to begin this journey. At the opening of the story, Kumalo receives a letter, urging him to come to the faraway city of Johannesburg. His sister, Gertrude, who had journeyed there once and never returned, has been found, but is very sick. Kumalo, however, is afraid to go to the city to bring her back. Absalom, his son, had traveled to the city to search for Gertrude and never returned. Saving uselessly the money that his son would have used to go to college, Kumalo has built up a wall of lies around himself, thinking they will ease his suffering. Futilely, he tries to convince himself that his son will return, though he knows in his heart he never will. This deception only breeds anger that finally spills out in this scene.

We had a son, he said harshly. Zulus have many children, but we had only one son. He went to Johannesburg, and as you said—when people go to Johannesburg, they do not come back….My own son, my own sister, my own brother. They go away and they do not write any more. Perhaps it does not seem to them that we suffer. Perhaps they do not care for it. (39)

Kumalo does finally decide to journey to Johannesburg and, eventually, he is reunited with his sister, brother, and only son. These meetings are far from happy, however. His sister has become a prostitute. His brother is a hardened man (he has lost all faith in Christ and is embittered against the white men, using his powerful voice to speak out against them at political rallies). And, most tragically of all, his son has killed a man and is doomed to die.

Yet, these individual trials form the foundation upon which Kumalo is able to grow spiritually. The man his son killed was Arthur Jarvis, a white man who fought for the rights of the black people in Africa. Living in his isolated valley, Kumalo had little contact with white men. In the city, however, he is able to witness more clearly the struggles between the two races. Through the murder, he is able to meet Jarvis’ father who lives in the green hills. Though the two lived in such close proximity to each other, they never met or talked to each other before. It is as though Kumalo’s sight had been myopic, able to see only his own desolate valley. Yet, it is from the white men that restoration will come to his valley and peace to his soul. At the beginning of the novel, his friend, Msimangu, had told him, “The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief—and again I ask your pardon—that it cannot be mended again (56).” Kumalo does not fully understand this statement until he witness for himself the hostility in the city and the resentment of his brother. Later on, Msimangu clarifies his statement with the words, “I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men….desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it (71).”

Even though Absalom killed Jarvis’ son, the father reaches out (in the memory of Arthur who fought so hard for the rights of the black people) to help restore the valley. His grandson visits Kumalo and learns about the Africans’ plight. Jarvis then sends milk to the starving children and an agricultural demonstrator to teach the Africans how to farm. Slowly, Kumalo is able to see and understand Msimangu’s words as they become a reality. At first, Kumalo could not comprehend why he had to suffer so much. His heart was full of anger and hatred. If his son, however, had not killed Jarvis’ son, restoration would probably never have come to his valley. In the depths of his affliction, Kumalo had told Msimangu, “There is no prayer left in me. I am dumb here inside. I have no words at all” (105). At first, he could not see God’s perfect plan unfolding through these tragedies, but Msimangu encouraged him that “we are not forsaken” (123). As Kumalo looked around him, he suddenly realized that even in his suffering God was there. “Who gives, at this one hour, a friend to make darkness light before me?” he asked himself.

The novel ends with Kumalo waiting on a mountain on the day of his son’s execution. The anger that he felt over his suffering is gone. He now understands what it truly means in Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” God used his trials to bring restoration to his valley and peace to his soul. As Kumalo watches the sun rise in the east, he begins to understand more deeply about God’s plans for his own country. Though now it seems that Africa is filled with darkness and hostility,

The light will come there. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret. (312)

Just as Kumalo could not see the ends of his suffering when he was in the midst of it, so he cannot yet see how Africa will come out of its darkness. Yet he knows that it must. For, as Msimangu had told him, God will never forsake them.

Works Cited

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country. 1948. New York, NY. Scribner, 2003.

More Poetry - The Scholar's Vessel

[I wrote this earlier this year for Brit Lit when we were studying 'concrete poetry.' George Herbert was one of - if not the - masters of the form. Read his poems "The Altar" and "Easter Wings". This is such a cool form to write in. I'd love to read anyone else's attempts at it. :)]

And here's mine:

The Scholar’s Vessel

The
Sails of
My ship catch
The soft spring breeze,
And
I
Glide forward to strange lands and seas,
Bold to sail where ancient minds have pondered,
This ocean a book I freely wander...

GMH

I posted an essay on here several months ago about Matthew Arnold and his atheistic worldview in "Dover Beach." Then, I decided to re-write the essay for another class, pitting Arnold's nihilistic philosophy against Gerard Manley Hopkins' Christian one. You can read the original essay here. Below are several of the paragraphs I added (this is mostly an excuse to ramble over Hopkins and post some of his wonderful poetry):

Unlike Arnold, Hopkins begins his poem “God’s Grandeur” with the line “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” (1), immediately affirming the presence of a Creator. Of this presence he writes, “It will flame out like shining from shook foil” and “it gathers to a greatness” (2-3). Like Arnold, however, Hopkins had also experienced uncertainty and doubt concerning religion. Yet, he overcame this, converting to Catholicism in 1866 and going on to become a Jesuit priest. This sudden conversion made him focus entirely on his Christian vocation. He destroyed all the poems he had previously written and abandoned writing for almost seven years. It was not until after the urging of religious leaders that he decided to embark on poetry once again. It is well that he did, for Hopkins’ writings provide a strong contrast to the nihilistic philosophy of his day, offering the other side of the argument: the argument for a God and His existence in the world.

In “God’s Grandeur,” Hopkins describes poets like Arnold and asks, “Why do men then now not reck his rod?” (4). If there is a god and everyone knows that he exists (even Arnold admitted a knowledge of religion), would it not be in their best interest to obey him? He argues further that men like Arnold are living in a delusion of their own making. “And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; / And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil / Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod” (6-8). Yet, man cannot kill God so easily. Even though man may attempt to destroy Him by destroying the nature He has created (many abuses of nature occurred during the Victorian era perhaps as consequences of the Industrial Revolution), “nature is never spent” (9). There is still hope for man because God does exist and “the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings” (13-14).

During his lifetime, Arnold refused to call himself an atheist, hiding in the supposed comforts of agnosticism, believing in neither the existence nor the nonexistence of God. Yet, he rejected religion as superficial, blinding to true reality. “Dover Beach” may, in fact, be his only writing that conceded religion was an answer to chaos in the world: it was deceptive, but it did offer relief and a feigned security. Yet, Arnold insisted on freeing himself from this self-delusion and wallowing in the despair and darkness of the real world. Nevertheless, Hopkins argues that Arnold has actually thrown away reality for the self-delusion. In the Epistle to the Romans in the Bible, Paul wrote that sinful men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans, I.18). Further, “they [become] futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts [are] darkened. Professing to be wise, they [become] fools” (I.21-22). Arnold believed a world of happiness and peace must be a delusion and embraced what he thought was a reality of misery and horror. Indeed, to the unbeliever it is their reality – a “darkling plain” where fools will fight to reject God and hide from the light and truth. It is this light and truth that Hopkins still offers them in “God’s Grandeur.” For “though the last lights off the black West went / Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs” (“God’s Grandeur”, 13-14).

And here's some of that wonderful poetry I promised. :) Hopkins used a technique called 'sprung rhythm.' The Victorian Web describes it as term for a complex and very technically involved system of metrics which he derived partly from his knowledge of Welsh poetry. It is opposed specifically to "running" or "common" rhythm, and provides for feet of lengths varying from one syllable to four, with either "rising" or "falling" rhythm.



God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush ;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing ;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue ; that blue is all in a rush
With richness ; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy ?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Go here for more:

http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/hopkins.htm

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hopkins/gmhov.html

Conviction

Every time I visit the Schola Tutorials homepage, I am convicted. Mr. Callihan, my Great Books tutor, has this excellent quote posted:

"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."

--C. S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time", The Weight of Glory

Amen to that.

The Deep Heart's Core

The Theme of Alienation in 20th Century Irish Literature

Read "The Dead" here and "Lake Isle of Innisfree" here.


The twentieth century saw a new modernist strain in literature. Among its various characteristics, Modernism emphasized the alienation of certain individuals within an industrialized, urban world. While unique in certain aspects, this feature was merely an extension of its predecessor Romanticism. This earlier philosophy had developed the idea of the noble savage – how man is sinless at birth, but gradually the industrialized world corrupts him. Only in Nature can man remain perfect. In “The Dead,” James Joyce explores the effects of urbanization upon an individual; conversely, William Butler Yeats in his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” contrasts how a return to Nature can essentially purify and restore peace to a person’s soul.

Famed for his complex character studies and utilization of the stream-of-consciousness technique, Joyce is one of the most famous writers of the Modernist era and of Ireland. His collection of short stories, The Dubliners, displays his immense talent. “The Dead” is the last story in this collection and perhaps the most famous and the most powerful. The main character is a young married man, Gabriel, who struggles with his identity as an Irishman during that country’s political upheavals. At a dinner party, one of the guests invites him to visit the Aran Isles on the west coast of Ireland. Gabriel protests that he would rather go to France or Germany and then admits in an outburst of passion, “To tell you the truth….I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!” (2515). His disgust for his homeland, however, stems from his disconnection with his Irish heritage, rather than a true dissatisfaction with the country. Indeed, his answer was provoked after the dinner guest had exclaimed, “And haven’t you your own land to visit….that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?” (2515). Later on, Gabriel continues to evince his anger over the loss of his heritage by declaring in his speech,

But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day” (2523).

The Irish heritage primarily centered on the importance of the land, for the Irish had always been farmers. By living in the city of Dublin, Gabriel is alienated from the real Ireland of lush green fields and rolling hills. His schooling has drowned him in the intellectual and philosophical thought of his age, but has given him nothing of his own culture to hold onto. The tension grows when one of the guests begins to sing an old Irish song, awakening strange passions within Gabriel. He knows that the song has some sort of symbolic meaning, but he cannot quite discern what it is. After returning home, his wife begins to tell him of a boy she had known long ago who used to sing the same song to her: a country boy who died of love for her. As he listens to his wife’s story, he suddenly realizes that he has never truly loved her before – he realizes the wall that seems to stand between him and her, between him and the old Ireland.

His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling (2534).

The country boy symbolizes the purity of Nature, the purity of the true, old Ireland. Gabriel is the new Ireland, oppressed by British rule and raising children who know only of the present urbanization. This last quote shows that Gabriel has no identity in this urban world and no one ever can. Only in that old Ireland could the qualities of humanity and kindly humor exist; only in that old Ireland could he have truly loved his wife as the country boy did.

Romanticism probably influenced Yeats more than it did Joyce. Indeed, Yeats drew his poetic inspiration from Shelley and Blake, even editing several of Blake’s poems. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (Innisfree is a small island in western Ireland) almost seems like a tribute to these earlier writers with its idyllic atmosphere. It describes a person in either a town or city, yearning to “arise and go /…to Innisfree” (1). The person of the poem is not alienated from Nature like Gabriel, however, but rather he is alienated from the city where he lives. The reason why he decides to return to Nature is because he cannot escape from it.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core (9-12).

Gabriel was faced with a similar dilemma in “The Dead.” He also was constantly haunted by this sound “in the deep heart’s core” but he decided that there was no solution to his problem. Gradually, this old world of Nature would fade away and people would be left hopeless and in despair. Yeats, however, still shares a glimmer of hope. Nature is not destroyed and there are still places that will welcome the solitary traveler, places like Innisfree and Gabriel’s Aran Isles. Just as Gabriel had drawn the conclusion that only in the old Ireland could he have truly loved his wife, so the speaker in this poem declares that he can only find peace in Innisfree, “for peace comes dropping slow, / Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings” (5-6). But his peace is truly tangible for his Innisfree exists whereas Gabriel’s old Ireland did not.

The word ‘alienation’ often has bad connotations, but the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it simply as “a withdrawing of a person's affections from an object or position of former attachment.” Romanticism showed that there were two types of alienation in mankind, one that was bad and the other good, and no middle ground in between. The Modernists delved even more deeply into these themes, oftentimes reaching very different conclusions as Joyce and Yeats did. To many, the past was lost and irrecoverable. Like Gabriel, they could only picture themselves as shadowy ghosts living in a world merely the faint outline of its lost glory. But others, like Yeats, still rejoiced in the hope that was offered to them – for the beauty and peace of Nature could never fade as long as it abided in the “deep heart’s core.”

Works Cited

Joyce, James. “The Dead.” 1914. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006, pgs. 2507-2534.

Yeat, William Butler. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” 1890. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006, pg. 2391.