Yeats’s “The Stolen Child”
The song we listened to in class was Loreena McKennitt’s interpretation of “Stolen Child”, as it appeared on her album Elemental. It provides a good sense of the poem’s mood as well as the (slight) changes in tone.
Some of you asked questions about changelings that I was unable to answer. The folklore of changelings varies greatly and, though predominant in Europe, countries have very different explanations for them. Wikipedia provides an overview that will give you some idea.
Some more information can be found here.
I also came across an essay analysing the poem in quite some detail. It is a bit long, but very much worth reading (and it makes me think that it is really too bad that “The Stolen Child” exceeds the IOC-appropriate length).
The images I’m embedding here are “pressed fairies”. (Another book with interesting fairy drawings is this one. Click on the “Look in side this book” option on Amazon, as it allows you to see some images. I happen to have this book in Austria, and it has some fantastic drawings of both naughty & nice supernatural creatures, as well as information about their ‘mythological background’.)
Literary Morsels: Gogol / Dead Souls
I am presently reading Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a 19th century Russian writer. I discovered Gogol in a sort roundabout way, first reading a novel called The Namesake, by the contemporary Indian writer Jhumpa Lahiri, in which one of the characters is named after Gogol (hence the ‘namesake’).* Intrigued, I got hold of a short story mentioned in The Namesake and then came across Dead Souls in our school library.
Dead Souls is a book of its time – wordy, with the author inserting himself into the pages (and not in Auster’s postmodern manner), dealing with class issues and infused with an overall dark and dreary mood. And yet, it is spellbinding in its own way. Besides, what understanding can one have of literature without having read at least some of the great Russian novelists (Dostoyevski, Chekov, Tolstoy, Pushkin….)?
I want to share these lines, which contain a rather elegant simile followed by an increasingly gruesome image, from Dead Souls:
[Chichikov] was soon made aware of this, however, by a violent jolt, caused by the log paving, compared to which the cobblestones of a town are a delight. These logs jump up and down like piano keys, and the incautious traveller will be rewarded with a bump on the back of his head, or a bruise on this forehead, or – most painful of all – he may even bite off the tip of his tongue.
More on Russian literature:
Russian Literature on Wikipedia
Brief History of Russian Literature
If you want to truly challenge yourself, try Vladimir Nabokov, a 20th century Russian author (who wrote primarily in English), whose work is as infamous (Lolita) as it is outstanding (Pale Fire).
For getting a sense of that “Russian mood” so characteristic of the great Russian novels and probably the Russian people themselves, I highly recommend the film The Return – just don’t expect to emerge cheerful.
* The Namesake was made into a film, for those of you who want to watch rather than read. (I say: do both!)
Heaney’s “Death of a Naturalist”
Click on the link to access the .pdf file:
The Lost Art of Reading Aloud
In this NYT opinion article, Verlyn Klinkenborg reflects on the “Lost Art of Reading Aloud”.
I believe there is great value in reading aloud. When you read aloud and read well, you can better grasp what you are reading. The beauty of words comes through. The intensity of feelings portrayed really takes hold of you. Certain literary devices – particularly auditory ones like alliteration, repetition, rhyme or rhythm – are immediately evident. And often reading aloud is a very social activity.
I remember my father reading to my sister and me – “The BFG” is one work that comes to mind. I recall my fifth grade teacher at Taipei American School using the hour after lunch to read “Matilda”. And I remember, as an IB student, reading certain books aloud with friends. I still feel chills running down my spine when recalling the time that two of my classmates and I read the play The Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman late at night in the middle of our school’s soccer field. We used flashlights to see the words on the page and were scared stiff, as our own surroundings (somewhere in the remoteness of New Mexico, with all human life around us seemingly non-existent) so well evoked the terror of the play: in Death and the Maiden a woman, captured as a political prisoner and raped multiple times by members of an unidentified dictatorship in Latin America, encounters one of her rapists after the regime has fallen. The situation is reversed, as she now takes him prisoner in an isolated country house and forces him confess his crimes to her unwitting husband.
Any “reading aloud” experiences you have to share? Any value you see in reading aloud?
Resources for Writing and Citation
A good quick checklist with basic writing rules:
Online Resource for MLA style citation
…though this document does a better job at explaining parenthetical citations than the Capital Community College page (the info is there also, but involves more navigating around the webpage).
If you have any questions, ask!
A Pattern in “Digging”
This is from the senior blog, but it points to an intriguing pattern present in Heaney’s “Digging”. Take a look at it. We’ll discuss it in class next week, hopefully before you go to camp.
Paper 2 Questions
The Paper 2 due date is being moved to May 11th – somehow I thought it was due next Friday, but apparently it was for the Monday before that, which of course does not quite work. Sorry about the mess-up!
Paper 2 Questions (choose only one)
1) Adventure and vivid action are often used to sustain a reader’s interest. Explore the ways in which at least two writers have used such means or substituted others to keep the reader reading. (Nov. 08 SL exam)
2) Conversations and interchanges can take place in literature both internally (in side a speaker’s head) and externally (with other beings). Discuss the ways in which at least two writers in your study have used conversations and interchanges to enrich their texts. (Nov. 08 SL exam)
3) Say what the titles of some individual works you have studied indicated to you at the outset. In what ways were your first impressions reinforced or altered as you read and explored each work? (May 01 HL)
You may use any work we have studied to answer the essay question (with the exception of poetry).
Don’t forget to include an outline!
)Meter / Rhyme Exercise: Solutions
“The Lady of Shalott”
“The Lady of Shalott” by Lord Alfred Tennyson has a rhyme scheme and a switching meter.
This poem has been a very popular subject for artists. The Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse has several interpretations, based on different lines of the poem. Loreena McKennitt, a Canadian musician with a Celtic style, put the poem to music.
“The Raven”
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpieces is “The Raven”. Do read more of Poe if you get the chance. He was one of the earliest practitioners of the short story and is considered the creator of detective-fiction. He represents the American Romantic movement, specifically the Gothic genre. Poe was an amazing writer who weighed every single word he used. He also had an extremely impressive vocabulary. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is one of my absolute favourites of his. Getting back on topic, here is some information on the style of “The Raven”.
“Kubla Khan”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English Romantic poet, and “Kubla Khan” is one of his most (in)famous pieces. I don’t have information on the meter, but the link contains details on how this poem was composed. Coleridge’s “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” is also worth reading, particularly if you can get hold of the gorgeous edition illustrated by Gustave Doré.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Here is a link to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot (most known for: “The Wasteland”). An interpretation is offered here.
Excerpts from Macbeth
The scene with the witches, which is in fact the opening scene of the entire play, is written in iambic tetrameter. In Macbeth this meter is specific for the “Weïrd Sisters” (as the witches are also known as) and distinguishes them as supernatural creatures.
The second scene is in iambic pentameter which is used for all other characters in the play (with the exception of the porter, who speaks in prose, and Lady Macbeth in a single scene). The changing meters are important. As said, the witches’ meter marks them as different from the human beings in the play, whereas the contrast between all other characters and the porter is the result of class: the porter is low-class (thus speaks in prose), all other characters are part of the nobility (thus speak in iambic pentameter). This is true for other Shakespeare plays as well. Lady Macbeth’s single scene in prose also serves a purpose: it signals that she no longer is her former self and, riddled by her conscience, is completely out of her mind.
Literary Morsels: Recommended Reads
It’s Saturday morning and I am about to head out for a run, but am having some coffee first (it is supposed to increase performance so I use it on days of my long runs). While I am sipping freshly made Britt espresso, I thought I would post you some reading recommendations (simply because I am an obsessive multi-tasker and cannot just be drinking coffee).
Last night I went to bed early to catch up on sleep, but then could not sleep. So I started reading for a while and delved into Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, which I had just picked up from the Lincoln School library that very day. This rather wacky novel from 2002 tells the story of a young American Jew who travels to the Ukraine to research his roots. It is told from multiple perspectives and using different writing styles (most hilarious: the voice of Alexander Perchov, a young Ukrainian who acts as the protagonist’s translator and has “premium English”). It is a modern, quick-paced and not too difficult book that I think most of you would enjoy. It was also made into a film starring Elijah Wood (Frodo (-: ), which I haven’t seen yet but has a promising trailer. In fact, this is how I first heard of Everything Is Illuminated, only later discovering that it was also a book. My hunch is that this is one of the few times where novel and film are equally good… I will keep reading and hopefully track down the film as well, and then let you know my final verdict.
You can also find two lectures from Yale professor Amy Hungerford on Academic Earth, a fantastic site that offers university lectures online:
Lecture 1: Everything Is Illuminated
Lecture 2: Everything Is Illuminated
I am off running!
Be Treated!
Newly launched (but still a work in progress): Avalovara. I have added a permanent link in the PAGES column on the side.
Literary Morsels: “At the River”
Today I was skimming through some New Yorker magazines that I had taken out of the library and came across an amazingly lyrical simile in a poem. I want to share it with you, and, with this, start a new series of posts (“Literary Morsels”), in which I will provide excerpts of or links to pieces of writing that I deem interesting – whether that means beautiful, provoking or horrifying.
So here is the first literary gem:
“More and more that summer we understood
that something was going to happen to us
that would change us.
And the group, all of us who used to meet this way,
the group would shatter, like a shell that falls away
so the bird can emerge.
Only of course it would be two birds emerging, pairs of birds.”
This shattering egg shell simile is a wonderful example of how the best of writers do not use clichés, but make language their own. Those of you interested in creative writing take note of this, strive for this. It is this kind of originality that touches your readers and distinguishes you from Sunday writers.
From: “At the River” by Louise Glück (click link to read the whole poem)
Odas elementales / Elementary Odes
Below are some websites featuring poetry by the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda. I am including links both to websites in Spanish, as well as in English – after all, you all read Spanish and to read in translation when you read the original is philistine.
So, read on:
Odas elementales: 10 odes, in Spanish
Más odas elementales: another collection of odes, in Spanish
Elementary Odes: 10 odes, in English
Poetry by Pablo Neruda, including some odes: poems, in English
For purchase (just as an example):
50 Odes (Amazon)
Why I am posting these? You shall figure it out soon enough!
Follow-Up on Waltz with Bashir
It seems that Waltz with Bashir has not yet been released on DVD. This is a pity, as I would have really liked to watch it with you. I will keep checking – keep your fingers crossed that it will available within the next few weeks. I doubt it (I couldn’t even find a release date indicated anywhere), but you never know!
You can find the trailer for the film here (check it out, it’s pretty neat!)… and also read The New York Times movie review of the film. A second article is also available. If you are interested in film-making, here are some words from Ari Folman explaining the process.
There is also the graphic novel, which the film was based on.
The Israeli Perspective: Vals Im Bashir
You may have heard of the film Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir), as it was recently nominated for the Foreign Film Oscar. Ari Folman, an Israeli film director, “interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term service in that conflict” (imdb). You may find more information about the film at the previous link, as well as at the official webpage of Waltz with Bashir.
I am trying to get hold of the film so that we might watch it in class to get another perspective of the Siege. I am not sure if it is available in Costa Rica, but do keep a lookout for it when you go to your local video store.
The Siege of Beirut: Background, Photographs and Videos
Memory for Forgetfulness remembers (or perhaps forgets) a single day during the Siege of Beirut in 1982. This siege lasted from the 6th of June until August. I have collected some information about this siege and Lebanese history in general that should give you some insight into that event.
WARNING: Some of the photographs are GRAPHIC and not for the faint-hearted.
War and Rebirth: A photographic look at Beirut
Beirut and Lebanon War Photos: From 2006 Siege of Beirut
Beirut and Lebanon War Photos: From the 1982 and the 2006 Siege of Beirut
VIDEO
Siege of Beirut (1982)
Siege of Beirut (2006)
DOCUMENTS
Article on the Siege of Beirut (1982): 15 pages.
Cedars of Lebanon: Information about the symbol on the Lebanese flag
Information about Lebanon from the CIA World Factbook: Includes history, geography, people, etc.
Qahwa
The recipe below is taken (verbatim) from this website: http://www.habeeb.com/lebanese.recipes.html
Lebanese Coffee [ Qahwa or or 'ahweh ]
2 1/2 cups water
Sugar to taste (I usually use 2 tablespoons)
1/4 cup (dry measure) Lebanese coffee Additional one or more teaspoons make stronger coffee. My favorite coffee brand is the famous Najjar brand, available plain or with Cardamom
Bring water to a boil in a rakweh (a tall narrow pot tapered at the top, used only for making coffee).
Take pot off burner. Add coffee and sugar and stir.
Place back on burner and bring to a boil again. Watch very carefully, otherwise it would foam and rapidly boil over. Remove from heat and let stand a few seconds. Repeat three or four times.
To drink: Use a Lebanese coffee cup or an equivalent,such as a demitasse.
Skim some of the foam and place in each cup. Let coffee stand for 5 minutes to allow the grounds to settle to the bottom of the pot. Gently pour coffee into the cups.
Warning: Lebanese coffee, like its Turkish sibling, is triple-strong. You can easily feel the caffeine kick into effect.
Variations:
1. Add sugar at the beginning then bring to boil.
2. Optional: use 1/3 cup coffee for stronger taste
3. If you are not sure whether you would like the cardamom taste, buy plain coffee grind and add two or three peeled cardamom seeds in the pot and boil with the water.
Introduction to Mahmoud Darwish
As we are commencing with Memory for Forgetfulness, I thought I would share some links with you, starting with the introduction to Mahmoud Darwish’s official webpage. You can access the English Index of the site by clicking here. This is a posthumous site, as Darwish died last year in August. Here is another interesting website on the poet.
Other than the memoir of Darwish that we are reading, the author has done a lot of other writing. You can find a large selection of his poems here.
Links: Japanese Culture
Marriage: Japan vs. the West
Nightwork: This is one ethnography I read for Gender & Culture class at university. The work deals with the so-called “hostess-clubs” where men, often as part of a larger group from the same workplace, go and spend time with their colleagues (including their boss), while being entertained by “hostesses”. No sex takes place, but the atmosphere is sexually charged – there is a lot of “dirty talk”, sexual teasing, etc. Reading over the editorial reviews of the work should give you a glimpse of this cultural element.
The Concept of “Saving Face”
Social Concept of “Face”… These concepts of “face”, and “saving / losing face” are common in various Asian cultures (Japan, China, etc.) as well as in Arabic countries, although they way these are handled may differ slightly.
Preface from “A Writer’s Mind” (Michael Adams)
Quoting from the above book:
“As a writer who has lovingly labored over essays and novels, I know what all writers know, but, like fortune-cookie wisdom, it’s almost embarrassingly too succinct to be true: Desire Is Writing’s Best Teacher. Not mechanics, not principles, not rules, not books. Simply, the desire to get it right – perfectly right. The desire to make the sound and rhythm of your words coincide with their sense leads to the discipline necessary to make prose exact and effective.
“I being with this rather sober paragraph because as a teacher of writing for over a decade, I know you’d much rather take a pill, inject a serum, or endure a brain transplant than summon the discipline and spend the time required to write effective prose. But I also know, and empathetically I might add, that there never will be a quick way to learn to write any more than there can be shortcuts to learning to play the violin. No magic want. No TWENTIETH CENTURY PREPACKAGED FREEZE-DRIED DROP-IN-BOILING-WATER AND PRESTO! ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WRITING IN THREE MINUTES! ANd yet, if you do not possess this desire, if you are not consumed with passion for words as Galileo was for his stars, are you doomed to the dungeon of Frustration and Insecurity? Not necessarily. For although without genuine desire you probably won’t ever be accepting the Pulitzer Prize, you still can somewhat painlessly learn to write competently – and competence is no meager accomplishment in an age of general indifference to the rightness of the written word.
“Learning to write efficient and effective prose is difficult because you need to know two things at once: what it is you wish to say and how to say it. It does you no good to have a good thought in you if you do not how to effectively put it into words; and just because you are clever with words doesn’t mean you have anything worthwhile to say. To overcome this obstacle, you need to acquire the right mental habits, the ones that help you find what it is you want to say and how to should go about saying it. I suggest three steps:
I. Learn the principles that govern clarity, grace, and freshness
[...]
II. Read carefully
[...]
III. Learn to write feeling, write seeing, write reasoning” (Adams, no pagination)
…more to come soon!
Bibliography
Adams, Michael. The Writer’s Mind. Making Writing Make Sense. Lanham: University Press of America, 1993.
The Blackbird of Glanmore – Text and Audio
Here is a digital version of the poem “The Blackbird of Glanmore” if you are one of the people missing it from the IOC poetry booklet.
You can find a link to an audio recording of Seamus Heany reading the poem (as well as another audio recording related to Yeats) on the Senior A1 webpage.
Resources on Writing
One way to improve your writing is simply to be proactive about it. This is relatively easy nowadays, for you can access all kinds of information easily and quickly on the internet. If you are struggling with a particular issue, one option you always have is to google it and find what kind of advice is out there. Type in “integrating quotations” or “writing effective topic sentences” and then check out some of the links you get. Often universities will have online writing resource centres with extensive materials that you can access freely. Take advantage of these!
Here are some general sites on academic writing that you can start with:
Characteristics of Good Writing
Advice on Academic Writing (University of Toronto)
Writing the Academic Paper (University of Dartmouth)
The Writer’s Complex (Empire State College)
Medical Narratives
The Doctor’s Wife is a novel that falls under a genre sometimes classified as “medical narratives”. Increasingly often, universities offer courses for medical students that include the study of literary, as I already noted in this post.
Here you may read some more information about the development of medical narratives (paralled with the emergence of the novel and changes in the medical profession):
Medical Essay
Mid-Term Break: Symbolism of Poppies
The information below is taken from the following source:
“Poppy.” New World Encyclopedia. 2 Apr 2008, 14:33 UTC. 18 Feb 2009, 23:36 <http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Poppy?oldid=682401>.
Poppies have a long history in human civilization. They were already grown as ornamental plants since 5,000 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. They were found in Egyptian tombs. In Greek mythology, the poppy was associated with Demeter, goddess of fertility and agriculture. People believed they would get a bountiful crop if poppies grew in their field, hence the name “corn poppy.” In this case, the name ‘corn’ was derived from korn, the Greek word for “grain.” Poppies today are sold as cut flowers in flower arrangements, especially the Iceland poppy, and commonly have a prominent place in gardens, borders, or in meadow plantings. They are probably one of the most popular wildflowers. Poppy is widely consumed as food in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe. The sugared, milled mature seeds are eaten with pasta, or they are boiled with milk and used as filling or topping on various kinds of sweet pastry. Poppy seeds are widely used in Bengali cuisine. In the course of history, poppies have always been attributed as having important medicinal properties. The alkaloid rhoeadine is derived from the flowers of the corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas). This is used as mild sedative. The milky sap present in the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) contains several narcotic alkaloids.
Opium is a narcotic formed from the latex released by lacerating (or “scoring”) the immature seed pods of opium poppies (Papaver somniferum). It contains up to 16 percent morphine, an opiate alkaloid, which is most frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The resin also includes non-narcotic alkaloids, such as papaverine and noscapine. Cultivation of opium poppies for food, anesthesia, and ritual purposes dates back to at least the Neolithic Age. The Sumerian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Persian and Arab Empires each made widespread use of opium, which was the most potent form of pain relief then available, allowing ancient surgeons to perform prolonged surgical procedures.
Poppies have long been used as a symbol of both sleep and death: sleep because of the opium extracted from them, and death because of their (commonly) blood-red color. In Greco-Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead (Baum and Hearn 1973). Poppies are used as emblems on tombstones to symbolize eternal sleep. This aspect was used, fictionally, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to create magical poppy fields, dangerous because they caused those who passed through them to sleep forever (Baum and Hearn, 1973).
A second meaning for the depiction and use of poppies in Greco-Roman myths is the symbolism of the bright scarlet color as signifying the promise of resurrection after death (Graves 1990).
The poppy of wartime remembrance is the red corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas. This poppy is a common weed in Europe and is found in many locations, including Flanders Fields. This is because the corn poppy was one of the only plants that grew on the battlefield. It thrives in disturbed soil, which was abundant on the battlefield due to intensive bombing. During the few weeks the plant blossomed, the battlefield was colored blood red, not just from the red flower that grew in great numbers but also from the actual blood of the dead soldiers and civilians that lay scattered and unattended on the otherwise barren battlegrounds. Thus the red poppy became a symbol for the deceased World War I soldiers. In many Commonwealth countries, artificial, paper versions of this poppy are worn to commemorate the sacrifice of veterans and civilians in World War I and other wars, during the weeks preceding Remembrance Day on November 11.
