I wanted to share this beautiful graphic novel (graphic poem?) edition of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. You can tell that the artist has invested a good deal of time in making his interpretation clear visually. Eliot’s writing here is so imagistic that it seems made for such treatment. I know I got a lot out of reading the poem in this version.

Julian Peters, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

If you like this one, you might poke around on his site. He’s also illustrated Keats and some WWI poetry, among others.

Title page

For Thursday’s class, we’ll be entering the twentieth century, beginning with the poetry of World War I. First, watch this short video to refresh your memory about the war. Even if you’re familiar, watch for the argument made here about WWI, literature, and disillusionment.

Be sure to read the poems listed on the syllabus for Thursday (both the ones in our course pack and those I handed out on Tuesday—that handout is posted on this blog, as well, if you’ve misplaced yours).

Finally, please bring to class the short midterm check-in sheet from the back of your exam. The democracy lab assignment IS NOT due on Thursday, but I’ll fill you in about that (including the new due date) in class.

With the faint echoes of the cheering outside for the New York City Marathon, I entered the Greek and Roman section of the Met. I love walking into each different section of the Met, because I believe the building itself truly sets up the entire experience of appreciating the art. When you walk into the Greek and Roman section, you’re stunned by the high ceilings in the first hallway. The light is beaming down on a collection of white marble statues. It’s enchanting and overwhelmingly beautiful. Sometimes I get lost in the scene of the Met as a whole. Art strategically placed and artists plopping down left and right to try and capture the exact angle they want for their sketch. There’s also a lot of smaller ‘bodies’ of water in the Met, so you always hear the sound of trickling water resonating throughout the hushed murmur of tourists in awe.

When I was finally able to get past the influx of sensational stimulations, I headed to the side rooms, in which rows and rows of Greek urns, vases, plates and bowls were on display. To be quite honest, I’m wondering in what format did Keats’ see his grecian urn or elgin marbles? Especially in terms of the grecian urn, he tends to describe the urn as something that transcends humanity. He’s enamored by both pieces of art, and takes special care to describe his observation of these objects. As I moved passed the rows and rows of urns, it was almost too distracting. I couldn’t focus on just one urn, because there were twenty other epic scenes to the left and to the right of it. Each one had a story to tell, but I think that story was less poignant as a little piece of a giant collection.

I then sought out something that was close to what Keats must have seen when observing the elgin marbles. The collection of statues in the Met is predominantly Roman. Most of the statues are placed in open rooms with a lot of lighting, and the spacing is much more beneficial for observation. I will admit that my “spirit is too weak” every time I see one of those statues in the perfect lighting. The amount of detail is incredible, and the emotional expressions of the pieces are staggering.
I love any excuse to get lost in the Met, and this light-gray Sunday was no exception. Again, I’m still wondering what Keats’ encounters were like, beyond just his emotions about time and about the art pieces. I think that your surroundings are an essential piece of your experience with art. For example, going to see Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” at the MoMA is a much different experience than waking up every morning to see a copy of that painting on a canvas in my room. While I was walking through, I wondered who Keats’ had around him when observing these artworks or where he saw them. Guess we’ll never truly know.

When visiting the MET this past week, I was blown away! I had visited many times when I was younger, as I went to public school here in the city, and the MET was always a popular class trip. Yet I hadn’t been to the museum in so long that I forgot how wonderful the pieces are, and how large of a selection there is! While I did visit the Greek vases and the Egyptian statuaries, pieces we directly discussed in class, I truly enjoyed the section dedicated to British and European paintings. One piece that truly caught my eye was “The Penitent Magdalen” by the artist Georges de La Tour, painted in the 1600s. It intrigued me not only because of the beauty of the painting, but because of how much it resembles “The Lady of Shalott” paintings that we viewed in class from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of the late 1800s. The symbolism of both are quite similar, with the presence of mirrors, candles burnt or burning, and the reflection of these candles within the mirrors. In addition to this, Magdalen holding the skull reflects her contemplation of mortality; an issue that the Lady of Shalott had herself, as she realized she must not die in seclusion, and would rather die on her own terms in order to truly experience life. In Tennyson’s poem, his famous line by the Lady of Shalott herself, “I am half sick of shadows” (71) can also be related to “The Penitent Magdalen”. The label of the painting explains that Mary Magdalen was a witness of Christ, one who had been a sinner, a courtesan, who had renounced her life of sin upon meeting Christ. She then decided to dedicate the remainder of her life to contemplation and penance – a means of absolving herself of her sins. In this way, both Magdalen and the Lady of Shalott are tired of living in shadows – whether that is Magdalen’s perceived life of sin, or the Lady’s perceived life of seclusion. Yet, in both moments of these paintings, these woman appear to be experiencing the same seclusion, whether forced or brought upon themselves, as they contemplate their mortality and the significance of their decisions.

“The Penitent Magdalen” by Georges de La Tour, seen in the MET

“Lady Lilith” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dozens of 6tth century vases live at the Metropolitan Museum Greek & Roman Wing. Your early steps reveal Athenian pride; images of athletes and musicians are introduced as icons of the Athenian culture. The main hallway holds the largest vases in terms of mass but for artistic content they are lacking depth. Javoline, diskus and wrestling athletes are frozen in their respectable stances the same can be said for musicians. Unique instruments are intriguing but the basic imagery does not seam to represent the aspect of competition Athenians valued (as per the museum descriptions).

The opportunity for ekphrais (as we know from class is a poem inspired by work of art) is evident once a turn to the rooms on the right is made. This is where Keats would be comfortable; hundreds of unique objects each offering negative capability, especially the object in this picture.

This jug contains a moment of intimidation. The musician (some of this is from an analysis from the Met Museum app, as item #830) he is about to play his instrument and sing out lyric, he floats alone in appropriate symmetry.  The robe has movement as well as details in face and anatomy. His hand is also in an action stage or at least it’s certainly not at ease. Juxtaposed, the opposing side has a Judge with similar body mass and position balance. Competition was highly valued in Athenian culture (as we learned in the hallway) this vase holds emotion from the competitors point of view in a completion. Judgment here has a powerful influence on the emotion.

Young man singing and playing the kithara

Rear Side Judgement

Chris Hennessy

Following up on our conversation about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” I wanted to share with you this important recent discovery. Long thought lost, the earliest poems by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper—an African-American woman writer writing before the Civil war—were just found and authenticated by a researcher.

If you’re interested in African-American literature, women’s writing, or early nineteenth-century poetry, I encourage you to check out this link, which generously provides scans of Watkins Harper’s collection (scroll down to the bottom). You may see commonalities with Barrett Browning’s work, but it’s mostly important, I think, to consider the actual voice of one of EBB’s African-American contemporaries alongside her assumption (even appropriation) of that voice.

The story of the poems’ recovery also provides a good lesson. A graduate student, having read in secondary sources that this collection of poems was lost, decided to check an archive’s library catalog just in case—and the poems were there! In other words, many distinguished scholars had somehow missed what was hiding in plain sight. A good reminder that, even if you’re starting out, you can make significant advances in scholarship.

“My spirit is too weak; mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagined pinnacle and  steep

Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die…”

-John Keats (Lines 1-4)

According to the passage on the sublime, in the Oxford English Dictionary, the sublime is described as “‘things in nature’ that affect the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur'” (66). Edmund Burke described the sublime as something that causes profound emotion due to its vast, gloomy, or threatening nature. He said it is an experience that is overwhelming, sometimes terrifying, but still delightful. He thought the reason the sublime moved one so deeply was because it is tied to the idea of pain, which encourages self-preservation.

Keats poem, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” embodies the idea of the sublime because his experience on seeing what he himself describes as “Grecian grandeur,” invokes all the feelings necessary to be characterized as such. His first lines tells how he feels after seeing the marbles. They have a harrowing affect on him; Keats writes that his spirit is weak after viewing them and that he is keenly aware of his mortality. He feels threatened, saying that they tell him he must die. Through the line “so do these wonders a most dizzying pain,” we see that the experience brings him pain -completely on par with Burke’s theory- but that he fights against this pain and the thought of death; “Such dim-conceived glories of the brain/Bring round the heart an indescribable feud.” Keats is awed and terrified by these “wonders.” The marbles’ grandeur is overwhelming on both his mind and heart, inducing fear of his demise, and so fights he against the thought of death, the idea of which is painful and like a physical weight on him.