Great Works Fall 2013

The story takes place in the city of Shanghai during WWII when Japan occupied China.  The setting was in an isolated and secluded space. The city was “sealed off” because of air raids during the times. However, the sentiments of two major characters were “unsealed”. Actually, In the first place, I did not see the story as a phenomenal one because they (two strangers) could meet any time and anywhere. However, the environment and the background of the story gave meaning to this “normal encountering”. Everything seemed to be uncertain because of the war. And I think it was the uncertainty that allowed people to do something extraordinary, like taking a greater riskto do something that they normally would not do.

The story opened with the sentence, “ The tramcar drive drove his tram. “  And then described the tracks and how the tramcar stretched on an endless route.  I think the author tries to create a general mood of predicted regularity, and suggests the similarity between the endless and aimless track routewith ordinary lives that both characters have. Also, vast “emptiness” was displayed especially when the author described what passengers did, such as reading paper, receipts, business cards, or just reading signs on the street.  They author concluded that “they simply had to fill this terrifying emptiness—otherwise, their brains might start to work. “. Then after that, I feel that the author was interjecting comments about thinking by saying “ thinking is a painful business. “ Is that real? The city was sealed off, and people felt empty. They were forced to think about their lives. As a result, an ordinary accountant, Zongzhen, realized the meaninglessness of his routine: go to work in the morning and go home in the evening. As to Cuiyuan, it seemed like that she did not get respect from her colleagues and family members. If the city was not sealed off, I think probably Zongzhen and Cuiyuan’s reflectionwould not have occurred, and she would not have graded A for the student’s poor writing. Further, this romantic story would not have happened between these two ordinary people.  As a result,  “ everything that had happened while the city was sealed was a non-occurrence.”

Due to conflicts, I am not able to hold my regular office hours from 11-12 on Thursday Nov 14 and Monday Nov 18.

I will be available during these alternate times:

Thursday Nov 14: 4-5 pm

Monday Nov 18: 2-2:30 pm

Tuesday Nov 19: By appointment

Wednesday Nov 20: 11-12 (regularly scheduled office hour)

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentinian writer whose works often played with the limits of time and space, of fantasy and reality, thus creating alternate and parallel universes in which all outcomes transpire. This method of writing — where lines we assumed were definite are blurred and are, in fact, indefinite — is attributed to the magical realism movement cultivated by Latin American writers. This movement inspired the sci-fi genre of literature.

I’ve read another work by Borges in another English class, A Fauna of Mirror, an excerpt from his book “The Book of Imaginary Beings.” Within this excerpt, Borges details the struggle between what is real and what is fantasy, a literary characteristic associated with modern literature as we discussed in class. JL Borges’ entry, A Fauna of Mirrors, explores the concept of an alternate world that exists behind all mirrors, inhabited by a wide amount of unknown and strange creatures. “In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors.”

In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Borges plays with the line between real and fantasy as he explores the possibility of a novel with infinite endings, a novel that accounts for all moments in time, past-present-future, as well as accounting for all possible outcomes. In other words, whenever the characters come to a point at which more than one outcome is possible, both outcomes occur. This causes the narrative to branch out into multiple alternate universes.

In the beginning, I already question the narrator’s testimony as to whether it is ‘reality’ because firstly, it’s missing the first two pages and secondly, personal narrative is often tainted by perspective, making it in its own way a subjective, alternate reality. The story itself is its own labyrinth of time and history as it takes what is ‘real,’ WWII, and adds the mystical element of the Garden of Forking Paths. It is also an even larger labyrinth as the plot takes many strange, unexpected turns, leaving the reader following behind aimlessly, albeit dizzy and confused.

As the story progresses, we see that the narrator is faced with many different labyrinths. The first labyrinth he faces is resenting spying for the oppressive Germans but also wanting to impress them by showing them “the yellow man can save their army.” Another labyrinth is the literal one Yu Tsun encounters as he is traveling to Stephen Albert’s house as he must continue bearing left. When Yu Tsun finally gets to Albert’s house, Albert tells him about the book of Yu Tsun’s ancestor, a book which seemed to be a confusion of time but was actually a riddle where time was the answer. During this conversation, Albert himself expands on the idea of alternate realities as he explains in one reality, he could be dead and in another, he could be Yu Tsun’s enemy.

The idea of many different realities existing in time is EXTREMELY unnerving to me because it means that at this moment, I could be doing something completely different, somewhere else in the world, even looking different, and yet these several ‘me’s’ have no knowledge of the other ‘me’s’. Instead, they go about their day living in what they think is the one and only actual reality when really, they are all actual realities. It’s so creepy! It questions everything we’ve come to know and accept as truth; that time is definite and chronological, and that once we make a decision, the option of another outcome ceases to exist.

I found a quote from Borges that perfectly sums up the way he views time – it’s something we have some authority over, and yet it is something completely beyond our control. The fact that time could encompass both those things — or rather that we could relate to time in two such opposing ways simultaneously — is so ‘Borgean’ in its essence:  “Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”

This poem is one of Neruda’s earlier works on love, before he began to explore other genres such as poverty and politics.

The poem begins with the declarative statement “Tonight I can write the saddest lines”, which is repeated throughout the poem. Neruda doesn’t tell us why he feels this way for a few more lines, with three simple, but powerful words “I loved her”.  A theme of distance begins to evolve, with Neruda  contemplating the natural world and how it reminds him of his love, for example he used to hold her “under the endless sky”.

I was drawn to the contradictions in some of his thoughts, which I feel really emphasize the turmoil and complicity he was experiencing (going from “I loved her” to “sometime I love her”). You really get the sense that he was in a state of inner tension and both him and his lover went through a roller-coaster of emotions.

The lines “To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her” stood out to me because they are so simple yet so powerful. Every word is a monosyllable, nothing fancy or flowery; yet the sense of loss and loneliness is so clear. This is reiterated by the “immense night” which became “still more immense without her” – again he refers back to the night which he did in the beginning and the distance it creates.  This deep sense of loss causes the speaker to write down his thoughts  (“the verse falls to the soul like dew to pasture”). Here we learn what the speaker does to deal with his loss and writing is his only response.  This may prove as evidence as to why he keeps repeating the line “Tonight I can write the saddest lines”. I get the sense that the speaker is writing down his thoughts as a kind of therapy to deal with his loss and finally accept it.

Towards the end of the poem, the speaker points out the sameness of the nature yet how he and his lover have changed. He tells himself that he no longer loves her and then says that maybe he does love her. To me, this means the speaker is in the early stages of dealing with heartbreak, he hasn’t fully accepted it is over – almost as if the wounds are still too fresh.

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long”  is quite a chilling line and especially coming from Neruda at the young age of 20, it shows his maturity and insight as a young poet. In such simplistic language he evokes a deep sense of heartbreak and you can’t help but feel sorry for the speaker.

Themes that I found in the poem include memory and reminiscence, love and passion, heartbreak and loneliness. Neruda uses personification (“the night wind revolves in the sky and sings”, “my voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing”), repeated symbols (night…sky), and the repetition of words/phrases.

I think that the overall purpose or essence of the poem is the painful exercise of forgetting a love and the range of emotions/thoughts/stages one goes through during the process until one can finally accept that it is over. But as Neruda said “forgetting is so long”.

This title literally sums up a large portion of what this text is all about. The central point that Woolf is emphasizing is that the women of the time flat out needed a room of their own, a privilege that men had without a doubt. A place where they could gather their thoughts and not be so distracted by everything else happening in the world. They never had the opportunity to let their mind wonder to write or create art. Figuratively Woolf also uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues. These included privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women during that time.

Something that really intrigued me was on page 353 when she talks about how “women do not write books about men.” Meanwhile men of all different classes and of different intelligences have all got to say their two cents and publish a book on their opinion of women. I never thought of this or even realized it and it had me stumped. Reading this I couldn’t help but feel that the reasoning of this was that men wanted to observe women as if they were some kind of lab rat and they were the scientist who needed to uncover some unknown truth or phenomena about them. As if what men had to say about women was so much more accurate and important than what women had to say about themselves.

When Woolf goes to create and  talk about a woman named Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary twin sister of William Shakespeare, it stirred so much emotional in me. It got me upset.. not upset in that I pitied Judith, but upset in the way that its so sad to think that no matter how talented she could have been or how hard she could have tried for an equal chance that it just never would have happened. She could have had the same talent of her brother  and it would have gone completely unknown. It makes me wonder how much more great literature and works of art we could have had today if those women were given a fair chance to express those talents.

Those of you doing the blog option should have your blogs up and running by now in order to meet the requirement of having sustained the blog for 6 weeks by Dec. 6.

Send me your blog address ASAP. I will link to all individual student blogs from this class blog. I want to start following your blogs and referencing them in class, and you should want to try to get followers addicted to your site.

Originally, I wanted to create a blog as my final project. However, after reading “The Slave Girl,” a short story by 1961 Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric, I decided that I would be more interested in translating it from Serbo-Croatian language. The story focuses on a young girl being sold as a slave to an Ottoman Turk, who decides to take her destiny into her own hands.

I think that the first thing I should do is read the text several times in it’s original language, in order to fully grasp the meaning of it and gain a better understand at what tone and message the author wanted to portray to the reader. After that, I will read the translation that has already been completed while thinking about my own choice of words, and perhaps think about what I might do differently from the already-made translation.

A lot of focus in my analytical essay will probably be on the choices given to translators, and how those choices can make or break the finished work. That being said, I believe the biggest problem for me will be finding appropriate words to translate phrases that might be nearly hard to literally translate into English.

I would like to do a timeline for my final project

I’d specifically like to analyze the nexus between great works of literature within the overall context of a periods intellectual development. An example off the top of my head would be to place the works of Tolstoy within the overall context of russian intellectual development leading up to the Russian revolution. Why is Tolstoy important? Who influenced him? Who else did he influence? What were the concurrent literary, philosophical, cultural, and historical events that not only influenced him, but provided the context his work was grounded in. I’d preferably focus on the 19th century, but I haven’t made up my yet regarding a specific date.

I envision the timeline as more of a narrative rather than a tool to pin an event to a year. I want to tell a story regarding the development of literature within the overall intellectual development of the time. The timeline itself would work as a visual aid.

I would like to propose the blog option.
What I was thinking is this: what first comes to my mind when I here the word ‘blog’ is gossip. Gossip, keeping up appearances, and not stepping out of the norm (or stepping out of the norm and being ostracized for it) has come up in a lot of the literature we have covered – from Tartuffe to Goblin Market to Diary of a Mad Man. This is what I want to explore for my project. The aesthetic of the blog would therefore be really tacky and crass – think Perez Hilton meets TMZ. I’d not just comment on the works, but the authors themselves. It would be slightly satirical, but each post would have a clear analysis on this idea of gossip/keeping up appearances relating to the text or author and how  gossip affects characters’ choices or story lines and plot development. What do you guys think?

I’d like to propose a video project inspired by Bartleby’s repeating line of, “I would prefer not to.” This project will be a compilation of answers to the question, “What would you prefer?” by a random sample of people from New York City. To be honest, I’m excited to do it because I don’t really know what type of answers I will get. I know that it may confuse some people seeing as I will give no background or premise before asking the question. They will have the option of answering it in any context they choose. It can be work, school, religion, or life related in general. It can be specific, ideological, theoretical, or extremely literal. It doesn’t matter, I just want them to prefer something.

It may seem vague but reading Melville’s Bartleby The Scrivener had me grappling with the idea of power by choice or agency. People are subjected to following guidelines, requirements, or orders in everyday life that they are not used to “preferring” or “choosing” freely regarding their own daily decisions. Some people have ideas, opinions, etc that are always suppressed because they don’t believe it can happen or that they have a choice at all.

Think of Bartleby’s co-workers and their reactions to Bartleby when he DID prefer or DID choose. They were astounded, as if they did not realize that an employee can have an opinion or a choice.

So this would be a social experiment asking people (…almost forcing people) to put aside other factors for a second and think about what they would prefer. About anything.

I will conduct this “video project experiment” in the manner that Fifty People One Question do theirs. I plant to visit tourist places, Williamsburg (Bk), the Theater district, Jackson Heights (Queens), Baruch, parks, and of course, Wall Street.

I will, however, draw a conclusion based on how the experiment goes in order to narrow my focus and weave a more solid thesis. I’m open to any suggestions about any aspect of this project (:

Thanks!