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Post by hyperborean on Jul 8, 2008 16:33:34 GMT
I just got "Selected Writings" today. It looks like wonderful reading, as well it has been for the past 5 or 10 minutes since I opened up the package.
Now I'm wondering as my eyes are wandering over the "Letters" section, where he first deplores a critic for calling him a madman, then he addresses a friend with details of his dilemma, that he had found his way into some form of dementia; was Nerval censored for his brave or visionary way of asking man to reflect upon modern cultures and archetypes...? Was he censored with the accusation of psychosis because he was taking traditional themes, sometimes religious ones, and taking them places that may have been considered taboo? Basically, Nerval strikes me as a free-thinker, an atheist in sheep's clothing. Or, a pantheist, as the case may be, "May all gods be real, so that I too may claim my own divinity is real."
I'm not well acquainted with French culture around Nerval's time. I mean, I know the French Enlightenment from around the 17th and 18th centuries had brought about writers like Voltaire and the like. So I'm curious, did Nerval strike a nerve that others had refused to ignite? Or am I looking too deeply into this?
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Post by the dark fourth on Jul 8, 2008 16:54:35 GMT
Dunno any details about French Romanticism, but I do know you should read his poem Delphica. In the translation I have, I think you would find some strange coincidences.
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Post by hyperborean on Jul 8, 2008 17:08:30 GMT
will do
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Post by hyperborean on Jul 8, 2008 17:20:26 GMT
After reading Delphica:
All gods are archetypes which come and go as consciously as we do? Are we still similar? In parallel? A good teacher of mine once said, if his course was a success, the class should leave with more questions than they had when they came in. If we could talk to them would they be interested in our stories and love songs? If we could summon them, would they persist in abstraction, or, insist that we leave them alone? It seems humans have are guaranteed to have 2/3 of the equation right, but what of the dark third? With the persistence of imagination, and the insistence of contemplation, what is it that we're missing?
Well, that was fun : )
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Post by the dark fourth on Jul 9, 2008 3:49:11 GMT
No I think you must have had a different translation. It would have been crystal clear. When I get back home I'll type out the version I have, and you'll see.
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Post by hyperborean on Jul 9, 2008 4:19:38 GMT
I was pretty much just using what imagery the sonnet evoked in my head, I wasn't looking at it with a sense of literary criticism, or, putting those more obvious images he did provide in context with each other. Oh, plus I don't know who or what "Daphne" is referring to.
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Post by hyperborean on Aug 18, 2008 18:46:42 GMT
I started reading Aurelia last night. It starts with utmost melancholy and only gets more bizarre from there. It says: "Dream is a second life. I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread. The first few instants of sleep are the image of death; a drowsy numbness steals over our thoughts, and it becomes impossible to determine the precise point at which the self, in some other form, continues to carry on the work of existence. Little by little the diim cavern is suffused with light and, emerging from its shadowy depths, the pale figures who dwell in limbo come into view, solemn and still. Then the tableau takes on shape, a new clarity illuminates these bizarre apparitions and sets them in motion - the spirit world opens for us." As we all know the scene at the end of Gerard de Nerval's life was similarly melancholy and bizarre, "leaving the overall narrative... ...hanging in limbo, like Nerval's corpse." - to quote from the editor's introduction to Aurelia. So far, this story reminds me of the music video for the song "Stand Inside Your Love" by The Smashing Pumpkins. You can check it out here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAV6rWUyqCcBoth Aurelia and Stand Inside Your Love seem to communicate the place where we meet with the characters of our fate. Although we are not arranged on a timeline from start to finish. It seems the more our biology and biography reveal, we are emulsions in motion rendered from our emotions. And we move about this life beyond the eternal, the situated characters of our fate which are indeed arranged in a tableau of sorts. My own perspective of the dream state is more like Nerval's description of the psychedelic vision: "Immense circles traced their way through infinity, like the rings touched off in water by a falling body; peopled with radiant figures, each region in its turn took on colour and movement and then dissolved; a divinity, always the same, smiled as she cast off the fleeting masks of her various incarnations, and then took refuge, out of grasp, in the mystical splendors of the sky of Asia." Which of course, in more or less to say, that what Nerval found out in the end - that if everything is to be illuminated, then everything has to be connected. So, "who wouldn't stand inside your love?" As it is, restless: may none rest in peace, less they choose to cease. That is the law of entropy, the original sin which lures men away from what they need most in life, in order to survive: love, of course.
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Post by hyperborean on Sept 16, 2008 2:39:39 GMT
I'm taking an online poetry course now, simple stuff, just read the poems and post a quick explanation on the forums.
It turns out I am horrible at this. Now my task is to find out why. How is it that when I read a poem, and it inspires thought, then I go on with great length to explore the many facets of that poem which inspire many tangents and attitudes about it; that I end up getting all verbose for nought?
I other words, in my teachers words, "You are reading into this poem rather than analyzing."
Or, "You need to work on understanding what the poet is saying - not on what you would have wanted to say if you had written the poem. You are not paying attention to the poems."
Come on! Isn't the whole point to figure out what you think the poet is saying? Not just recapitulating what the poet has already said... this is frustrating me. It seems all this guy wants is for the student to echo what either the introductory note or the teacher himself has said about the poem.
Example:
"This poem is about love. Now explain what the poem is about." - teacher.
*hits self on the forehead*
My response:
"As it is, the rain is slanted to the west, yet the author wants it to rain down. That is against its disposition, against the grain of that fabric of gravity - which allows the rain to fall at all! But it is slanted and enchanted in the midst of what is missed in the mist. So are the authors’ desires able to change with the disposition of the wind? One thing is for sure – that these are the rains and winds of a young lover at heart.
All our best intentions fall away from us. Only when we are more like clouds in the sky letting ours fall away freely, then we begin to see clearly the origin of the windward race, which attracts our desires and intentions. This sense of trust comes clearer to those who can see further into the distance than stubborn men, shortsighted, who stand proud and tall with certainty of yearning and loss. Their certainty is so flightless and folly, that as they stand still, they press their graves into the earth with the mere force of that gravity.
It is innate depression, the weight that lulls some men to love. They know no weight but their own desires. That shapes their perceptions and condenses all their best intentions into subtle almost imperceptible delusions. That causes them to feel displaced. Thus the rain, which the author reveals, is borne from the FM waves of existential angst, proclaimed at the exclamation point of this poem. The frequency of such longing has been modified, thus it will never take the same shape again. Such “love” will be so forever moving, a constant sea change taking place. And yet the lover is still standing on his grave, or lying in that bed, expecting the weather to change, and bring him back his love. With no hope in sight, will he ever brave the western wind and give in to an honest evaluation of his love?"
Oh well. At least he said my posts were, "extremely interesting."
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Post by ryan on Sept 16, 2008 13:10:33 GMT
It looks like you're not looking objectively enough at the poem and your response is trying to much to be poetic itself, rather than analysing. From your answer I can tell the poem talked about rain, that isn't falling straight down. Assuming there's more to it than that one image of course, I should be able to tell much more than that. You seem to have used the poems base to vear off into your own thoughts.
Does any of that make sense? While there's value in what you're writing, there's not a great deal of academic value beacuse it doesn't seem to say very much about the poem itself.
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Post by hyperborean on Sept 16, 2008 18:31:37 GMT
It looks like you're not looking objectively enough at the poem and your response is trying to much to be poetic itself, rather than analysing. From your answer I can tell the poem talked about rain, that isn't falling straight down. Assuming there's more to it than that one image of course, I should be able to tell much more than that. You seem to have used the poems base to vear off into your own thoughts. Does any of that make sense? While there's value in what you're writing, there's not a great deal of academic value beacuse it doesn't seem to say very much about the poem itself. I see what you're saying, but here's the problem: I am veering off, that much I realize; but not into my own thoughts. I am trying to analyze the author's own thoughts communicated in the precise language he used in the poem. I'm trying to get into his head, so-to-say, in a sort of psychological analysis of the poem... rather than a poetic analysis. It seems like I'm kind of acting like a so-called "medium". Maybe I should stop doing that? It's a real simple poem: "Western Wind" O western wind, when wilt thou blow That the small rain down can rain? Christ! that my love were in my arms - And I in my bed again!
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Post by ryan on Sept 17, 2008 0:01:36 GMT
Yeah I see. I think the problem is that you just aren't being academic enough about it. Sadly that kind of writing calls for you to be a bit more cold and detached from things. I think it's difficult for me o think about just because that's how I'm used to writing now. I think a lot of the problems are down to the language you're using though, what you're saying is obviously great and incredibly perceptive but... I dunno. I just doesn't read right as an academic analysis. Perhaps it would be useful to get some examples of what your teacher is looking for? I know my own writing style comes out a little too personal sometimes, and it's something that gets commented on as not being one of my strong points.
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Post by hyperborean on Sept 17, 2008 2:18:00 GMT
Right on. Very good advice: confirms my own weak suspicions, and makes them stronger. "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." And that's quite alright.
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