Great Works of Literature II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJEIAGULmPQ

This is a video from youtube shows us how Gertrude Stein reads her poem “If I Had Told Him a Completed Portrait of Picasso.” Oh wow. I don’t know what to say. I don’t understand it a lot. It seems to me she is really good with words, that she can play with the same words repetitively to express her ideas.

Someone posted his comment under the video:”At a time where life had become confusing and disjointed: wars and loss, and when it had become repetitive and unfulfilling: Fordism and assembly lines… At this time did Gertrude Stein write in a fashion that is confusing, disjointed, repetitive and unfulfilling. Every time you expect her to finish a sentence or a thought, it becomes repeated and more difficult to accept with the rest of that already spoken.  ” That’s how I feel when i was reading the poem. There’s always something missing from the senctence that would completed the thought. The words are put together but the meanings are disconnected.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Stein-Gertrude_If-I-Told-Him_1923.html

This is some information on how this poem was written. Now i seem to understand the connection between Stein, Nepoleon and Picasso and the word “resemblance.” She was trying to compare Picasso’s creativity to Nepaleon’s genius.

“The diary of a Madman” is like the diary of everyone now.  In my opinion, the author is just being the voice to the people on a matter. The madman’s fear about getting devoured by cannibals and that they will eat each other when they are done with the humans. This is like portraying what is happening in the current society.  People are stepping on one other carelessly of personal satisfactions. He goes on about how the Madman is disappointed by his own brother being part of the flesh-eaters.

In today’s life, we are stabbed in the back by those we trust the most.  In the capitalism world, one needs to speak the vampire language of the business in order to success.  Business men such out the blood of their employees and they are still never satisfy that the big ones start eating up the little ones.

Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s “The Tattooer” tells a story of a young, skillful tattooer named Seikichi, who was famous for his “unrivaled boldness and sensual charm of his art” has a secret pleasure for inflicting pain on men while they are under his needle. “Shading and vermilioning – these are said to be especially painful – were the techniques he most enjoyed” (Tanizaki, 80). He even found himself trying to inflict more pain on the men who appear as if they are not fazed by his work.

Seikichi also had another desire to create a masterpiece on the skin of a beautiful woman. After years of waiting, he finally gets this chance to do so. But tattooing her was the complete opposite of how he felt when tattooing men. When he was tattooing males, I felt that he did not even worry about how his art work would turn out; inflicting pain was the bigger picture. Seikichi felt as if he were torturing himself as he applied the needle to the young girl’s skin. “At every thrust of his needle Seikichi gave a heavy sigh and felt as if he had stabbed his own heart” (Tanizaki, 83).  Regardless of the pain, the young girl says she will do anything for the sake of beauty. In my opinion I believe Seikichi was more interested in how his art work would look on a beautiful woman, rather than constantly working on men. Maybe if he just tattooed women, he would have never taken pleasure in causing anyone pain. The only part of this story I found to be strange was how and why the tattoo of the spider wreathed in flames once she exposed it to sunlight.

Cannibalism is a main clue thourghout the story. The madman thinks everyone else is trying to eat him, every social conduct is a part of cannibalism. “The meanest looking one of all….ready to strike.” From stanza 2. People smile at each other just to be polite as we still do today; it’s a normal social protocol. But madman sees it as they’re pretending smiling at him to hide the evil plan.

“Havent seen it in over thirty years….I know now that I’ve been completely out of things for the last three decades…… I’ve got good reason for my fears.” Who did he see? What did they say? Why does he feel that way? Why is the dog mentioned? What is he scared of? We dont know and he did not mention. In the first stanza, madman’s reasoning is so disconnected and ridiculous. All I could imagine was how crazy was this man? Was he beyond cure?

In stanza three, “But scrawled this easy and that across every page were the words BENEVOLENCE, Righteousness, and MORALITY….fill with a single phrase: eat people.” Until this moment, Luxun make it clear that it is the feudal code of ethics ordered people to eat each other. Madman is going to be a victim under the feudal system.

For Thursday, please read these 2 pieces by Gertrude Stein–“If I Told Him” and an excerpt from “Portraits and Repetition” and I’d like everyone to post about the following (and feel free to be creative!):

• What is a portrait? How do we write a “completed portrait”? What do you think of Stein’s work? What do you think she is trying to teach us?
• OR, write your own “completed portrait” of a close friend.

REVISED PRESENTATION SCHEDULE:

Tuesday, October 30: “The Tattooer” and “Diary of a Madman”

Chris, Inga, Reid, Diouma, Li

Thursday, November 1: The Metamorphosis

Lauren, Alejandro, Anastasia, Amzad, Jeremy

Tuesday, November 6: Virginia Woolf and Jamaica Kincaid

Manprit, Bayron, Melin, Ismelda

Thursday, November 8: “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “In Camera”

Willie, Will, Michelle, Lei

Tuesday, November 13: “Requiem,” “Identity Card,” and “Notes of a Native Son”

Bryan, Slav, Hieu, Kristina

Thursday, November 15: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Naotaka, Jose, Levin, Mike, Heidi

**REMINDER: Rough Draft, Paper 2 will be due on Tuesday, November 20!**