Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Monday, December 03, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Six Significant Landscapes
I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.
III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.
IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.
V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
Wallace Stevens
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.
III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.
IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.
V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
Wallace Stevens
Sunday, November 18, 2007
This is what drawing class is like, except no interesting singers with static attacked mullets.
Especially (!) when you're drawing a M. C. Escher drawing.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Fun with small children
Tonight my brother and I are keeping our niece, Arianna, 6, and nephew, Ricky, 4. In the car, I asked them what their favorite animals were.
Arianna said, "My favorite animal is baby cubs!"
And then Ricky said, "I eat those."
This, of course, shocked me. I thought that was illegal or something. So I asked, "Ricky, what are baby cubs?"
"They're like sippy cups."
Then later when we pulled into the driveway, our white cat Puffy jumped up on the jeep. Ricky started talking about the time that the cat bit Arianna. Then Arianna started talking about it too. Suddenly Ricky yelled out, "Puff is just a mozzarella stick!"
Now he and I are sitting at the table, I'm trying to get him to eat his final bites. He's wrestling with his napkin I tucked into his shirt. "Its giving me a wedgie! Napkins always give me wedgies."
Mercy. What will he say next?
Oh wait. Here's what he said next: "Remember that time Gabe played that annoying song on the guitar?"
Arianna said, "My favorite animal is baby cubs!"
And then Ricky said, "I eat those."
This, of course, shocked me. I thought that was illegal or something. So I asked, "Ricky, what are baby cubs?"
"They're like sippy cups."
Then later when we pulled into the driveway, our white cat Puffy jumped up on the jeep. Ricky started talking about the time that the cat bit Arianna. Then Arianna started talking about it too. Suddenly Ricky yelled out, "Puff is just a mozzarella stick!"
Now he and I are sitting at the table, I'm trying to get him to eat his final bites. He's wrestling with his napkin I tucked into his shirt. "Its giving me a wedgie! Napkins always give me wedgies."
Mercy. What will he say next?
Oh wait. Here's what he said next: "Remember that time Gabe played that annoying song on the guitar?"
Monday, November 05, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Poetry Explication: " 'At A Bach Concert': A Proud Restraining Purity"
Coming by evening through the wintry city
We said that art is out of love with life.
Here we approach a love that is not pity.
This antique discipline, tenderly severe,
Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,
Asking of us a grace in what we bear.
Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -
The vital union of necessity
With all that we desire, all that we suffer.
A too-compassionate art is half an art.
Only such proud restraining purity
Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.
Adrienne Rich’s “At a Bach Concert” is a poem that successfully illustrates the necessary links between the themes of form, art, and love. Rich presents the reader with a speaker who celebrates the discovery that art not only gives order to life, but also that order gives meaningful life to art. The poem is concerned mostly with form’s effect on art. She calls form “a love that is not pity” (line 2). The speaker claims that form does not restrain, but gives way to an art that is pure and proud, not pathetic. It is the “ultimate gift that love can offer” (7).
Rich uses form in the structure of this poem to show how vital form is to a piece of art. In the title alone she alludes to Johann Sebastian Bach, an early eighteenth-century composer and musician. He was acclaimed for incorporating a depth of intellect and beauty into a technically challenging format.
By titling the piece “At A Bach Concert,” Rich not only gives readers a physical setting, but also invokes all of the restraints that Bach put on his own works and sets up a running implied comparison between music and poetry. Bach started with a certain meter, or time, and then filled in his measures with the most beautiful things that he could fit within them. While he was strict in implementing musical theory, Bach also manipulated rhythms and sounds within the rules he
so closely observed. Rich is referring to Bach’s music as “this antique discipline, tenderly severe” (4). Bach’s music requires discipline, but the reward is in how the musician is then able to control an expressive force. Music of this kind is beautifully strict. Today, his music remains some of the hardest structurally to play, but it is also among the most unified and beautiful.
Rich relates Bach’s use of creativity within structure to poetry by putting in into practice. Like Bach, she chose to adhere to a strict form: four stanzas of iambic pentameter, with the first and last lines of each stanza rhyming. Within her chosen form, the poet manipulates words and sounds, and occasionally adds a musical, flourish-like extra syllable to the end of a line, all to compose a meaningful piece that beautifully communicates a love of form in art.
The speaker not only celebrates restrained art, but also conveys her disinterest in art that enforces no restraint when she states, “A too-compassionate art is half an art” (10). When art is conceived only of human feeling and emotion, the outcome cannot always be trusted to communicate effectively.
The same is also claimed of love without restraint. Without this “proud restraining purity,” or love controlled by form, the too-human heart cannot be restored to a place conducive to creativity and life (11). By using form to guide emotion, art “renews belief in love, yet masters feeling” (5). Art that is guided will not be overcome by feelings and can then speak as a piece of art not too compassionate.
“Love” as a piece of vocabulary is used in two ways. The first is the literal meaning. Love is an emotional attachment between two people. Taking this meaning, the poem warns against love without any sort of restraint in the same way it warns against using an artistic mode without restraint. In the second meaning in this poem, love is a form of art, or expression, that has married feeling and emotion with rationality and order. It is “the vital union of necessity with all that we desire” (8-9). Emotion and reason were meant to be used together in human relationships with each other, but in art, the emotion and reason become the medium of communication.
The poem progresses from “approaching” love in the first stanza, to finding a way to restore the human heart, and art, to its right order through form in the last stanza. The rhythm of the poetry keeps one reading straight through it to the end, like listening to a piece of music being played. It does not repeat, but carries on. If it revisits a theme, it is a variation, and is included to emphasize the main theme. This may be to further the implied comparison between poetry and music.
In “At A Bach Concert,” Adrienne Rich has used her medium, like Bach, to create a celebration of the marriage of necessity and desire, of emotion and reason. Her tone is one of hope. Though it may be said that “art is out of love with life,” (2) the speaker in the poem continues on to explain where to look for art that is still in love with life, and it can be found where there is form.
Meiska Starner
We said that art is out of love with life.
Here we approach a love that is not pity.
This antique discipline, tenderly severe,
Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,
Asking of us a grace in what we bear.
Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -
The vital union of necessity
With all that we desire, all that we suffer.
A too-compassionate art is half an art.
Only such proud restraining purity
Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.
Adrienne Rich’s “At a Bach Concert” is a poem that successfully illustrates the necessary links between the themes of form, art, and love. Rich presents the reader with a speaker who celebrates the discovery that art not only gives order to life, but also that order gives meaningful life to art. The poem is concerned mostly with form’s effect on art. She calls form “a love that is not pity” (line 2). The speaker claims that form does not restrain, but gives way to an art that is pure and proud, not pathetic. It is the “ultimate gift that love can offer” (7).
Rich uses form in the structure of this poem to show how vital form is to a piece of art. In the title alone she alludes to Johann Sebastian Bach, an early eighteenth-century composer and musician. He was acclaimed for incorporating a depth of intellect and beauty into a technically challenging format.
By titling the piece “At A Bach Concert,” Rich not only gives readers a physical setting, but also invokes all of the restraints that Bach put on his own works and sets up a running implied comparison between music and poetry. Bach started with a certain meter, or time, and then filled in his measures with the most beautiful things that he could fit within them. While he was strict in implementing musical theory, Bach also manipulated rhythms and sounds within the rules he
so closely observed. Rich is referring to Bach’s music as “this antique discipline, tenderly severe” (4). Bach’s music requires discipline, but the reward is in how the musician is then able to control an expressive force. Music of this kind is beautifully strict. Today, his music remains some of the hardest structurally to play, but it is also among the most unified and beautiful.
Rich relates Bach’s use of creativity within structure to poetry by putting in into practice. Like Bach, she chose to adhere to a strict form: four stanzas of iambic pentameter, with the first and last lines of each stanza rhyming. Within her chosen form, the poet manipulates words and sounds, and occasionally adds a musical, flourish-like extra syllable to the end of a line, all to compose a meaningful piece that beautifully communicates a love of form in art.
The speaker not only celebrates restrained art, but also conveys her disinterest in art that enforces no restraint when she states, “A too-compassionate art is half an art” (10). When art is conceived only of human feeling and emotion, the outcome cannot always be trusted to communicate effectively.
The same is also claimed of love without restraint. Without this “proud restraining purity,” or love controlled by form, the too-human heart cannot be restored to a place conducive to creativity and life (11). By using form to guide emotion, art “renews belief in love, yet masters feeling” (5). Art that is guided will not be overcome by feelings and can then speak as a piece of art not too compassionate.
“Love” as a piece of vocabulary is used in two ways. The first is the literal meaning. Love is an emotional attachment between two people. Taking this meaning, the poem warns against love without any sort of restraint in the same way it warns against using an artistic mode without restraint. In the second meaning in this poem, love is a form of art, or expression, that has married feeling and emotion with rationality and order. It is “the vital union of necessity with all that we desire” (8-9). Emotion and reason were meant to be used together in human relationships with each other, but in art, the emotion and reason become the medium of communication.
The poem progresses from “approaching” love in the first stanza, to finding a way to restore the human heart, and art, to its right order through form in the last stanza. The rhythm of the poetry keeps one reading straight through it to the end, like listening to a piece of music being played. It does not repeat, but carries on. If it revisits a theme, it is a variation, and is included to emphasize the main theme. This may be to further the implied comparison between poetry and music.
In “At A Bach Concert,” Adrienne Rich has used her medium, like Bach, to create a celebration of the marriage of necessity and desire, of emotion and reason. Her tone is one of hope. Though it may be said that “art is out of love with life,” (2) the speaker in the poem continues on to explain where to look for art that is still in love with life, and it can be found where there is form.
Meiska Starner
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
At A Bach Concert
Coming by evening through the wintry city
We said that art is out of love with life.
Here we approach a love that is not pity.
This antique discipline, tenderly severe,
Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,
Asking of us a grace in what we bear.
Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -
The vital union of necessity
With all that we desire, all that we suffer.
A too-compassionate art is half an art.
Only such proud restraining purity
Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.
Adrienne Rich
(I am explicating this very poem even as you read)
We said that art is out of love with life.
Here we approach a love that is not pity.
This antique discipline, tenderly severe,
Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,
Asking of us a grace in what we bear.
Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -
The vital union of necessity
With all that we desire, all that we suffer.
A too-compassionate art is half an art.
Only such proud restraining purity
Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.
Adrienne Rich
(I am explicating this very poem even as you read)
Friday, October 19, 2007
Kidneys and Haikus
My friend Brittany and I really want to go on this "Literature and Legends of the British Isles" trip with our school. It costs $4,000 though. We've come up with a nifty and almost painless fundraising idea: we can sell our kindeys! Here is a haiku she wrote about it:
Meiska and Brittany
To England they go, two kidneys
they sold: Black Market
I love it.
Meiska and Brittany
To England they go, two kidneys
they sold: Black Market
I love it.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Monday, October 08, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Tonight
The weather is finally beginning to break here. When I walk among the oldest of alumni here at Cumberland, they speak to me in the voice that is almost the wax whisper of August and almost the rustle of their November ball gowns. The air that gives freedom to their thoughts is crisp and it refreshingly waltzs through the calm that holds them. The skies are clothed in silver and gold gauze by day, and in the deepest of star scattered midnight blue velvets by night; through them blows the winds that will bring glittering snows and carry away the birds to their holiday. The world is preparing for the great masquerade of the fall, and I am relishing the life that springs from dying. Of course, the artist has designed it that way, He makes His messages brilliantly clear when those viewing are willing to open their eyes. The world seems most alive in my eyes when it is fully conscious of it's mortality. I want to be the same. I want the crisp and refreshing air flooding my lungs with life, each breath making me more aware that I am alive. My life here is short, especially in comparison to all of time and eternity, and I would absolutely love to live in a blaze of continual autumnal glory.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Today was a good day because:
(This was kind of inspired by my good friends Fidgit and Foolish Kuh-nig-ut)
* I had hashbrowns with cream cheese for breakfast! (Yummy!)
* I crossed paths with a butterfly with curling wings. I'm quite sure something odd would have happened if I would have followed it.
* I ate at Chili's with my friends from Drawing class (during drawing class), which was so fun!
* Witnessed Brittany stealing Dr. Harris' bicycle and riding it up and down the hall and into the room.
* Saw a rain shower in the sun. It looked like it was snowing crystal drops.
* That's when I saw those clouds! God is a good cloud sculptor!
* I love my family and they love me too!
* I got to paint for a few minutes.
* I read Psalm 5 this morning. My Bible has it titled "Morning Prayer for Guidance"
* I had a good dinner including chocolate cake that was NOT stale!
* I was reminded of God's love at every turn it seems.
* I got to talk to Tessla, whom I am very thankful for.
* I have lots of good music to listen to.
* I am blessed with a friend who can make my heart smile and dance and laugh all at the same time!
* There is a golden sun in the sky during the day and silvery stars and a moon at night!
* I am happy!
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Hallelujah! It rains!
Today was the first big thunderstorm in over a month. No more forest fires! No more fires in the median of the interstate! No more summery-ness! No more Fall-less-ness! Yay! I'm just so tickled that it looks like Fall outside! I'm going to go do a happy fall dance!
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Oh my goodness
We poor and lowly Tennesseans have been graced with an Anthropologie store in Green Hills! Oh Mercy! I am so excited that I can't stand it. I may have to go get a job there just to be there all the time, its such a beautiful atmosphere. (Sorry Boys, you may not get it, but that's your loss)
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Isn't There Some Folk Song About the Pirate-Elf-Queen who Dies of a Heat/Humidity Stroke in Tennessee?
If there isn't there should be! Mercy, its so hot outside!
OK, so I'm still trying to live in denial about summer being an actual season, but its hard to lead a rebellion against heat and wear coats and such when its 110 degrees (farenheit). I need fall. Now.
I wish there was a place of perpetual Fall-ness. Doesn't that sound beautiful? So poetic.
OK, so I'm still trying to live in denial about summer being an actual season, but its hard to lead a rebellion against heat and wear coats and such when its 110 degrees (farenheit). I need fall. Now.
I wish there was a place of perpetual Fall-ness. Doesn't that sound beautiful? So poetic.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
I'm back (for now)
After roaming the country ( in very good company), I am now resting at home and letting the creative juices flow. I've seen so much of North America pass by my eyes in the last month: Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Canada, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Massachusetts, Virginia, Colorado, and Oregon (not to mention what I saw from the window of an airplane). We live in a beautiful land and I feel so blessed to have had the chance to discover it, and here are some dis-orderly thoughts on the trip:
How beautiful Niagra Falls are, and the swirling rocks that the falls have worn smooth over time, and the Great Lakes that feed the falls!
The Statue of Liberty is so inspiring in her classical-French-disco confidence, looking over at Ellis Island where so long ago my family came looking for a promised land.
I am thankful for eveery golden hour that my dear travelling companion opened my eyes to.
It was so strange to be in Boston where they celebrate the loss of the British ties that I cling to so desperately.
Of course, it was lovely to be in Williamsburg and Jamestown(e) where the past is so marvellously preserved, and where dolphins and knotty trees can be found along the James River.
What a great thing to be able to visit the place where so many great writers have found inspiration, Concord, with its famous pond. I took Hawthorne away with me.
I remember how fun it was to return to the hills of Tennessee in the company of the Beatles and Bryan Adams with our voices raised to their limits.
The North-West is made of emeralds and rain drops, I am thankful for every chance I get to see is beauty, for Mt.Tabor and
the reprive it has been.
I also remember the ways that God showed His power and artistry to me on the flight home from Portland.
How beautiful Niagra Falls are, and the swirling rocks that the falls have worn smooth over time, and the Great Lakes that feed the falls!
The Statue of Liberty is so inspiring in her classical-French-disco confidence, looking over at Ellis Island where so long ago my family came looking for a promised land.
I am thankful for eveery golden hour that my dear travelling companion opened my eyes to.
It was so strange to be in Boston where they celebrate the loss of the British ties that I cling to so desperately.
Of course, it was lovely to be in Williamsburg and Jamestown(e) where the past is so marvellously preserved, and where dolphins and knotty trees can be found along the James River.
What a great thing to be able to visit the place where so many great writers have found inspiration, Concord, with its famous pond. I took Hawthorne away with me.
I remember how fun it was to return to the hills of Tennessee in the company of the Beatles and Bryan Adams with our voices raised to their limits.
The North-West is made of emeralds and rain drops, I am thankful for every chance I get to see is beauty, for Mt.Tabor and
the reprive it has been.
I also remember the ways that God showed His power and artistry to me on the flight home from Portland.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Forget the plain old silver spoon, this is the spoon I wish I was born with
Of course, it's by Lalique.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Well, I'm feeling a feeling kind-of like despair after my Wallace Stevens paper was a bomb. Now all I can think about is how to make it better before my final when I re-submit it. Sigh.
It's a weird thing, this paper. I didn't have to write it on Wallace Stevens and his imagination, but I wanted to. I'm pretty determined to do it at least. I think there is something of great value in this research, now I just have to figure out what it is.
There are lots of dandelion puffs in the lawn at my school, I like the way one can spread little growing lives all over just by touching them! It's a rather romantical concept, I think.
I found our kittens today, they must be 3 weeks old already, their eyes were open. Their mother hid them well, but what a delightful surprise! One black, one white and black, and one tan-ish, like the mom. They are so fuzzy! I picked up the box and carried it into the house and grinning showed each member of my family what I'd found. "What is it?" they say. "Just open it!" I say. Three fuzzy lives.
I'm going to go see if there are any salamanders outside.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
I need Divine Inspiration!
This man is giving me such a hard time! If only his poetry wasn't so hard!
I have a small book to write about him (Wallace Stevens) by Friday, so everyone please be praying that it goes, well, just that it goes. I should repent of my wicked-procrastinating ways, maybe I will tomorrow.
Monday, April 09, 2007
"Love"
The title of this is "Love," and I like this painting! I like Edward Burne-Jones in general, but I love those scarlet wings.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Speaking of the R.O.U.S. . . .
And the F.O.U.S...
And the T.O.U.S...
And the J.O.U.S...
And the L.O.U.S...
Maybe we aren't containing nuclear waste quite as well as was once thought?
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Why yes, that is a zebra...
... in the second story window of Memorial Hall. Doesn't every college have a menagerie across the hall from the English department?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The resurrection of an old paper
On Gallow’s Hill
In “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” Nathaniel Hawthorne approaches the Salem Witch Trials by presenting us with three different stories woven together with several common threads. These stories, though they seem unrelated, have more in common than just their location with the “shadowy past” (206): Gallow’s Hill. The three tales - that of the narrator and his guests, Alice and Leonard Doane, and the recollection of the witch hunt - all serve to strengthen a common theme.
Hawthorne begins the story by introducing a narrator, who takes his two female guests to hear his grim tale out on Gallow’s Hill. Here the author uses this context to present and compare the truth of the past to the horrors of the narrator’s piece of fiction. The tale is that of brother and sister Alice and Leonard Doane, and an acquaintance named Walter Brome, who is very much like Leonard. Walter claims to have seduced Alice, which throws Leonard into a jealous rage that ends in Leonard killing Walter. He confesses all to the Wizard who, unknown by Leonard, had orchestrated this plot. Alice and Leonard go to the grave of Walter where every resident of the cemetery comes forth to hear the truth of Alice’s situation, whether she had been seduced or remained virtuous. She is innocent and the dead flee at her sinlessness.
When the narrator is finished speaking, his guests laugh at his false tale of horror. So he “detained them a while longer on the hill, and made a trial whether truth were more powerful than fiction” (215). He proceeds to describe the chilling scene of the falsely accused “witches”who had been “brought to death by wilder tales than these” (212) being led up to the gallows, which had once stood where they were presently standing. His guests react much more fearfully to this tale than to his first. The truth of history is often times more terrifying than fiction.
Here we may observe the parallels in the two tales told by the narrator, which have the same theme and moral. In the stories we see the trial of the innocent. Both of the accused have been brought to trial by the gossip and suspicion of friends and family. Alice is accused by her brother, and those accused of witch craft were accused by their families, friends, neighbors, and pastors.Those who had before been seen as friends, were now seen as enemies.
Leonard was consumed with a serious jealousy and raging hatred for Walter that often tainted his pure view of his sister. The accusers in Salem also tasted this growing bitterness. Their being consumed with searching out sin and punishing it led to the assigning of sin to those who had committed no crime. This same hatred that raged in both the hearts of Leonard and the townspeople is symbolized in the wood wax that covered the hill where this hate was bred. “Everything that should nourish man or beast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed” (205). This hate and jealousy made these people miserable. Hawthorne calls the accusers “the afflicted, a guilty and miserable band” (216). Their evil doesn’t seem to have an end. They simply were not satisfied with destroying a few lives, but they wanted to drag as many down as they could. This is evidence of the rapidly growing nature of their violence. Even after Leonard had killed Walter, he felt as if a “fiend was whispering him to meditate vio-lence against the life of Alice” (211). The incomplete burial of Walter Brome may represent the way that the people tried to cover up the martyrdom of those innocent people, like Leonard chopping away at the ice. But like Leonard, they could not cover their own sins. Maybe when they looked back on their vile sins, they too saw the faces of their loved ones and felt the guilt of taking the lives of their very family members.
Nathaniel Hawthorne would have us to learn a great deal from this story. The truth of the past is indeed much more frightening than that the ghosts and apparitions of fiction. The narrator intends to discover “whether truth were more powerful than fiction” (215). No matter how much Hawthorne’s narrator tried to scare his guests with his ghost stories, they were ultimately scared by his retelling of the pasts terrors, the crimes committed by and against their very ancestors. “But here my companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves were trembling; . . . I had reached the seldom trodden places of their hearts, and found the wellspring of their tears. And now the past had done all it could” (216). They were more afraid of the evils of the human heart. We are not to be the judges of men’s motives and souls, but we are to learn from history’s mistakes. Hawthorne suggests that “We build the memorial column on the height which our fathers made sacred with their blood, poured out in holy cause. And here in dark, funereal stone, should rise another monument, sadly commemorative of the errors of an earlier race” (216). We need to be reminded of what we humans are capable of when left to our own devices. The evils of ghosts and fiends can not compare to the evils that lurk in the hearts of man. We should be forced to remember in a way that can not “be cast down, while the human heart has one infirmity that may result in crime” (216). Our striving should not be to jump to conclusions, but to offer forgiveness and acceptance to our brothers and sisters. We need not search out secret sin, but offer grace when it comes to light.
Work Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Alice Doane’s Appeal.” Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches.
New York: Library of America, 1982. 205-216.
In “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” Nathaniel Hawthorne approaches the Salem Witch Trials by presenting us with three different stories woven together with several common threads. These stories, though they seem unrelated, have more in common than just their location with the “shadowy past” (206): Gallow’s Hill. The three tales - that of the narrator and his guests, Alice and Leonard Doane, and the recollection of the witch hunt - all serve to strengthen a common theme.
Hawthorne begins the story by introducing a narrator, who takes his two female guests to hear his grim tale out on Gallow’s Hill. Here the author uses this context to present and compare the truth of the past to the horrors of the narrator’s piece of fiction. The tale is that of brother and sister Alice and Leonard Doane, and an acquaintance named Walter Brome, who is very much like Leonard. Walter claims to have seduced Alice, which throws Leonard into a jealous rage that ends in Leonard killing Walter. He confesses all to the Wizard who, unknown by Leonard, had orchestrated this plot. Alice and Leonard go to the grave of Walter where every resident of the cemetery comes forth to hear the truth of Alice’s situation, whether she had been seduced or remained virtuous. She is innocent and the dead flee at her sinlessness.
When the narrator is finished speaking, his guests laugh at his false tale of horror. So he “detained them a while longer on the hill, and made a trial whether truth were more powerful than fiction” (215). He proceeds to describe the chilling scene of the falsely accused “witches”who had been “brought to death by wilder tales than these” (212) being led up to the gallows, which had once stood where they were presently standing. His guests react much more fearfully to this tale than to his first. The truth of history is often times more terrifying than fiction.
Here we may observe the parallels in the two tales told by the narrator, which have the same theme and moral. In the stories we see the trial of the innocent. Both of the accused have been brought to trial by the gossip and suspicion of friends and family. Alice is accused by her brother, and those accused of witch craft were accused by their families, friends, neighbors, and pastors.Those who had before been seen as friends, were now seen as enemies.
Leonard was consumed with a serious jealousy and raging hatred for Walter that often tainted his pure view of his sister. The accusers in Salem also tasted this growing bitterness. Their being consumed with searching out sin and punishing it led to the assigning of sin to those who had committed no crime. This same hatred that raged in both the hearts of Leonard and the townspeople is symbolized in the wood wax that covered the hill where this hate was bred. “Everything that should nourish man or beast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed” (205). This hate and jealousy made these people miserable. Hawthorne calls the accusers “the afflicted, a guilty and miserable band” (216). Their evil doesn’t seem to have an end. They simply were not satisfied with destroying a few lives, but they wanted to drag as many down as they could. This is evidence of the rapidly growing nature of their violence. Even after Leonard had killed Walter, he felt as if a “fiend was whispering him to meditate vio-lence against the life of Alice” (211). The incomplete burial of Walter Brome may represent the way that the people tried to cover up the martyrdom of those innocent people, like Leonard chopping away at the ice. But like Leonard, they could not cover their own sins. Maybe when they looked back on their vile sins, they too saw the faces of their loved ones and felt the guilt of taking the lives of their very family members.
Nathaniel Hawthorne would have us to learn a great deal from this story. The truth of the past is indeed much more frightening than that the ghosts and apparitions of fiction. The narrator intends to discover “whether truth were more powerful than fiction” (215). No matter how much Hawthorne’s narrator tried to scare his guests with his ghost stories, they were ultimately scared by his retelling of the pasts terrors, the crimes committed by and against their very ancestors. “But here my companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves were trembling; . . . I had reached the seldom trodden places of their hearts, and found the wellspring of their tears. And now the past had done all it could” (216). They were more afraid of the evils of the human heart. We are not to be the judges of men’s motives and souls, but we are to learn from history’s mistakes. Hawthorne suggests that “We build the memorial column on the height which our fathers made sacred with their blood, poured out in holy cause. And here in dark, funereal stone, should rise another monument, sadly commemorative of the errors of an earlier race” (216). We need to be reminded of what we humans are capable of when left to our own devices. The evils of ghosts and fiends can not compare to the evils that lurk in the hearts of man. We should be forced to remember in a way that can not “be cast down, while the human heart has one infirmity that may result in crime” (216). Our striving should not be to jump to conclusions, but to offer forgiveness and acceptance to our brothers and sisters. We need not search out secret sin, but offer grace when it comes to light.
Work Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Alice Doane’s Appeal.” Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches.
New York: Library of America, 1982. 205-216.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
a pirates life for me
And in a day we should be rich!" she laughed. "I'd give it all to you, the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig up. I think you would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn't a thing to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the golden specks fly."
"We'd share it, and scatter it together," he said.
I think the above is a delightful bit of writing from Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', and makes me wish to find buried treasure and long summer nights when one plays hide and seek until midnight and of catching fireflies, though I'm not sure why I think of fireflies. Maybe its the part about the golden specks flying? Anyways, when my brothers and I were little, we wanted to be pirates (it isn't any fun to be a pirate by yourself). Mom said no, that pirates stole things and killed people. We persisted, and soon she said we could play pirates out on our swing set, but we had to be 'Christian Pirates'. I don't really know what makes a Christian pirate christian, but we did lots of arr-ing and had swashbuckling adventures into the woods and captured all the other kids on our street. We even had a pirate flag on our swing set, it was smiling. I think it intimidated the other kids. I don't know, but I do know its fun to be a pirate, even if you have to be a Christian pirate, and to this day, when my brothers and I go to Long John Silvers, we always get the paper pirate hats and wear them about town, 'cause we're proud of our Christian heritage.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Wallace Stevens
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Yo! I'm in charge around here, I'm sitting on the golden cloud, I'm surrounded by funny little winged cherubs. Peace out hommies.
I think this is the funniest, ghetto-est angel ever. Yo.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
My favorite movies!
Sense and Sensibility
The Lord Of The Rings
Robin Hood: Prince Of Theives
Kate and Leopold
Beauty and The Beast
A Little Princess
The Fountain
The Princess Bride
The Secret Garden
Mary Poppins
The Phantom Of The Opera
Big Fish
Star Wars
Ever After
Rigeletto
Labrynth
Emma
The Village
A Hard Day's Night
X-Men
That's the top 20, but here's some more:
Robin Hood (Disney)
Signs
Gone With The Wind
Pride and Prejudice
Nicholas Nickleby
The New World
Just Visiting
The Lady In The Water
Hook
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Pochahantas
A Walk To Remember (Just kidding! I strongly dislike this movie)
The Prestige
Finding Neverland
Indiana Jones
Anna and the King
Swing Kids
The Princess Diaries
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Lilo And Stitch
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Around the World in 80 Days
Nacho Libre
Alice in Wonderland
Ghostbusters
And that one movie about the Pre-Raphaelites that hasn't been made yet.
The Lord Of The Rings
Robin Hood: Prince Of Theives
Kate and Leopold
Beauty and The Beast
A Little Princess
The Fountain
The Princess Bride
The Secret Garden
Mary Poppins
The Phantom Of The Opera
Big Fish
Star Wars
Ever After
Rigeletto
Labrynth
Emma
The Village
A Hard Day's Night
X-Men
That's the top 20, but here's some more:
Robin Hood (Disney)
Signs
Gone With The Wind
Pride and Prejudice
Nicholas Nickleby
The New World
Just Visiting
The Lady In The Water
Hook
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Pochahantas
A Walk To Remember (Just kidding! I strongly dislike this movie)
The Prestige
Finding Neverland
Indiana Jones
Anna and the King
Swing Kids
The Princess Diaries
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Lilo And Stitch
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Around the World in 80 Days
Nacho Libre
Alice in Wonderland
Ghostbusters
And that one movie about the Pre-Raphaelites that hasn't been made yet.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
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