FOR ACL 352/ Comparative Lit II: Pre-Reading for 4.01.2019

                                  Eugène Delacroix, The Women of Algiers, 1834, The Louvre, Paris

Dear Students,
Please read Edward W. Said's Introduction on Orientalism from page 9-36 until next class on 4.01.2019. We are going to talk about the concept of the Occident and the Orient. you can find the text here:
https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/12/Said_full.pdf

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NEW PROGRAM for SoSe19

Dear Students,
The department has set out a new program. Please check the program before the class. At this moment you have Comparative Lit II and Seminar Novel on Monday. And your class in American Poetry II is on Wednesday.
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ACL 306 PLEASE PRINT FOR NEXT CLASS 6.02.2019

“The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

Narra Tief, Luke, https://ptbs.home.blog/

Hamatreya
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Minot, Lee, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, “’Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.”
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
“This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.
’Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.”

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:—


                EARTH-SONG

          “Mine and yours;
          Mine, not yours.
          Earth endures;
          Stars abide—
          Shine down in the old sea;
          Old are the shores;
          But where are old men?
          I who have seen much,
          Such have I never seen.

          “The lawyer’s deed
          Ran sure,
          In tail,
          To them and to their heirs
          Who shall succeed,
          Without fail,
          Forevermore.

          “Here is the land,
          Shaggy with wood,
          With its old valley,
          Mound and flood.
          But the heritors?—
          Fled like the flood's foam.
          The lawyer and the laws,
          And the kingdom,
          Clean swept herefrom.

          “They called me theirs,
          Who so controlled me;
          Yet every one
          Wished to stay, and is gone,
          How am I theirs,
          If they cannot hold me,
          But I hold them?”

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882).  The Complete Works.  1904.
Vol. IX. Poems

I. Poems
Uriel

IT 1 fell in the ancient periods
  Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
  Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,         5
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Seyd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.         10
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,         15
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.         20
‘Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.’
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,         25
A shudder ran around the sky;
The stern old war-gods shook their heads,
The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds;
Seemed to the holy festival
The rash word boded ill to all;         30
The balance-beam of Fate was bent;
The bounds of good and ill were rent;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion. 2

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell         35
On the beauty of Uriel;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud;
Whether doomed to long gyration
In the sea of generation,         40
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight. 3
Straightway, a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,         45
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels’ veiling wings;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,         50
Procession of a soul in matter, 4
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel’s voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,         55
And the gods shook, they knew not why.

Each and All
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she stayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:" —
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

'Le poète est un menteur qui dit toujours la vérité.' -Jean Cocteau

                                                                               Photography by Leopold Reutlinger

Born today, Colette, in full Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, (1873-1954), was an outstanding French writer of the first half of the 20th century whose best novels, largely concerned with the pains and pleasures of love, are remarkable for their command of sensual description. Her greatest strength as a writer is an exact sensory evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colours of her world.

When Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette arrived in Paris in 1893, few guessed that the 20-year-old from Burgandy would go on to become one of the most notorious and exuberant personalities of fin-de-siècle Paris. Colette was a French novelist and performer, best known for her book Gigi, the basis of the film of the same title.
Famous for her free spirit as much her style of writing, Colette was a chronicler of female existence, a precursory feminist who pushed against the bounds of sexuality for women in Paris. To the abhorrence of Parisian society, Colette experimented with androgyny on and off stage. She also frequented the spaces where marginal sexualities were beginning to find some visibility, in the cabarets and pantomimes. Even 142 years after her birth, Colette remains an icon and an indisputably formidable woman.
source: http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/7654/lessons-we-can-learn-from-colette

                                                         COLETTE | Official HD Trailer (2018)

Prezi for Comparative Lit II Intro

Prezi for Comparative Lit II

Prezi for ACL POETRY II

“I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller & fuller of dreams.” -Virginia Woolf

                                                               Why should you read Virginia Woolf? - Iseult Gillespie

Happy Birthday to Virginia Woolf. A significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. One of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. For more about Woolf you may want to read:

“To convey one’s mood in seventeen syllables is very diffic” ― John Cooper Clarke

John Cooper Clarke, jj C Stances, http://johncooperclarke.com/

PUNK ROCK REVIVAL

PART ONE……….
This disc concerns those those pouting prima-donnas
Found within the swelling J. Arthur Ranks of the sexational psycle sluts
Those nubile nihilists of the North Circular
The lean leonine leatherette lovelies of the Leeds intersection
Luftwaffe angels locked in a pagan paradise
No cash
A passion for trash
The tough madonna whose cro-magnon face and crab nebular curves haunt the highways of the UK
Whose harsh credo captures the collective libido like lariats
Their lips pushed in a neon-arc of dodgems
Delightfully disciplined, dumb but deluxe
Deliciously deliciously deranged
Twin-wheeled existentialists steeped in the sterile excrements of a doomed democracy
Whose post-nietzschean sensibilities reject the bovine gregariousness of a senile oligarchy
Whose god is below zero, whose hero is a dead boy
Condemned to drift like forgotten sputniks in the fool’s orbit bound for a victim’s future
In the pleasure dromes and ersatz bodega bars of the free world
The mechanics of love grind like organs of iron to a standstill
Hands behind your backs
In a noxious gas of cheek to cheek totalitarianism
Hail the psycle sluts
Go go the gland gringos
For the gonad a-go-go age of compulsory cunnilingusa

BIO: John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet who first became famous during the punk rock era of the late 1970s when he became known as a "punk poet". He released several albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continues to perform regularly. Cooper Clarke was presented with the doctorate of arts in "acknowledgement of a career which has spanned five decades, bringing poetry to non-traditional audiences and influencing musicians and comedians".

                                                                          John Cooper Clarke work with Arctic Monkeys

                                                                                      I Wanna Be Yours - John Cooper Clarke

POEMS
(I MARRIED A) MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE(I'VE GOT A BRAND NEW) TRACK SUIT23RD36 HOURSA DISTANT RELATIONACTION MANAPART FROM THE REVOLUTIONARE YOU THE BUSINESSARTS N' CRAFTSBEASLEY STREETBELLADONNABRONZE ADONISBUNCH OF TWIGSBURNLEYCONCUSSIONCONDITIONAL DISCHARGECYCLE ACCIDENTDAY MY PAD WENT MADDAY THE WORLD STOOD STILLDRIVE SHE SAIDDUMB ROW LAUGHSEURO COMMUNIST / GUCCI SOCIALISTEVIDENTLY CHICKENTOWNFACE BEHIND THE SCREAMFILM EXTRA’S EXTRAFULL TIME LOSERGABERDINE ANGUSGHOST OF AL CAPONEGIMMIXGIVE ME WHAT I NEEDHAIKUHEALTH FANATICHEART DISEASE CALLED LOVEHIRE CARHOUSE ON NOWHERE STREETI DON’T WANT TO BE NICEI MUSTN’T GO DOWN TO THE SEA AGAINI WANNA BE YOURSI WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLFI WROTE THE SONGSINNOCENTSISLE OF MANIT MANKUNG-FU INTERNATIONALLIBERA MELIMBO (BABY LIMBO)LUNGS OF THE WORLDMAJORCAMARTIN NEWELLMIDNIGHT SHIFTMISSING PERSONSNETWORK SOUTH EASTNEW ASSASSINNIGHT PEOPLENINETY DEGREES IN MY SHADESNOTHINGPAGANPESTPOST-WAR GLAMOUR GIRLPSYCLE SLUTS (PART ONE & PART TWO)PUNK ROCK REVIVALREADER'S WIVESSALOME MALONEYSLEEPWALKSPERM TESTSPILT BEANSSTRANGE BEDFELLOWSSUSPENDED SENTENCETEN YEARS IN AN OPEN-NECKED SHIRTTHE HANGING GARDENS OF BASILDONTHESE ARE THE DAYS THAT MATTERTOM JONESTRAINSTRUTH LIES WITHINTWATVALLEY OF THE LOST WOMENYOU NEVER SEE A NIPPLE IN THE DAILY EXPRESS

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.” ― Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's (January 24, 1862-1937) first major novel, The House of Mirth, published in 1905, enjoyed considerable literary success. Ethan Frome appeared six years later, solidifying Wharton's reputation as an important novelist. Often in the company of her close friend, Henry James, Wharton mingled with some of the most famous writers and artists of the day, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, André Gide, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and Jack London.

When World War I broke out, she organized hostels for refugees, worked as a fund-raiser, and wrote for American publications from battlefield frontlines. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her courage and distinguished work.
The Age of Innocence, a novel about New York in the 1870s, earned Wharton the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921 -- the first time the award had been bestowed upon a woman. Wharton traveled throughout Europe to encourage young authors.

- Barnesandnoble.com 
- The House of Mirth, film scene, 2000

“… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element….” - Derek Walcott

                               wave, Cascade - glass sculpture by Sergio Redegalli, Botanic Gardens, Adelaide, 2007

The Sea Is History
- Poem by Derek Walcott

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.

First, there was the heaving oil,
heavy as chaos;
then, likea light at the end of a tunnel,

the lantern of a caravel,
and that was Genesis.
Then there were the packed cries,
the shit, the moaning:

Exodus.
Bone soldered by coral to bone,
mosaics
mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow,

that was the Ark of the Covenant.
Then came from the plucked wires
of sunlight on the sea floor

the plangent harp of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women,

and those were the ivory bracelets
of the Song of Solomon,
but the ocean kept turning blank pages

looking for History.
Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
who sank without tombs,

brigands who barbecued cattle,
leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore,
then the foaming, rabid maw

of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal,
and that was Jonah,
but where is your Renaissance?

Sir, it is locked in them sea sands
out there past the reef's moiling shelf,
where the men-o'-war floated down;

strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself.
It's all subtle and submarine,
through colonnades of coral,

past the gothic windows of sea fans
to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed,
blinks, weighted by its jewels, like a bald queen;

and these groined caves with barnacles
pitted like stone
are our cathedrals,

and the furnace before the hurricanes:
Gomorrah. Bones ground by windmills
into marl and cornmeal,

and that was Lamentations -
that was just Lamentations,
it was not History;

then came, like scum on the river's drying lip,
the brown reeds of villages
mantling and congealing into towns,

and at evening, the midges' choirs,
and above them, the spires
lancing the side of God

as His son set, and that was the New Testament.

Then came the white sisters clapping
to the waves' progress,
and that was Emancipation -

jubilation, O jubilation -
vanishing swiftly
as the sea's lace dries in the sun,

but that was not History,
that was only faith,
and then each rock broke into its own nation;

then came the synod of flies,
then came the secretarial heron,
then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote,

fireflies with bright ideas
and bats like jetting ambassadors
and the mantis, like khaki police,

and the furred caterpillars of judges
examining each case closely,
and then in the dark ears of ferns

and in the salt chuckle of rocks
with their sea pools, there was the sound
like a rumour without any echo

of History, really beginning.

Derek Walcott
1930–2017
Born on the island of Saint Lucia, a former British colony in the West Indies, poet and playwright Derek Walcott was trained as a painter but turned to writing as a young man. He published his first poem in the local newspaper at the age of 14. Five years later, he borrowed $200 to print his first collection, 25 Poems, which he distributed on street corners. Walcott’s major breakthrough came with the collection In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962), a book which celebrates the Caribbean and its history as well as investigates the scars of colonialism. Throughout a long and distinguished career, Walcott returned to those same themes of language, power, and place. His later collections include Tiepolo’s Hound (2000), The Prodigal (2004), Selected Poems (2007), White Egrets (2010), and Morning, Paramin (2016). In 1992, Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel committee described his work as “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.”

Since the 1950s Walcott divided his time between Boston, New York, and Saint Lucia. His work resonates with Western canon and Island influences, shifting between Caribbean patois and English, and often addressing his English and West Indian ancestry. According to Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Arthur Vogelsang, “These continuing polarities shoot an electricity to each other which is questioning and beautiful and which helps form a vision altogether Caribbean and international, personal (him to you, you to him), independent, and essential for readers of contemporary literature on all the continents.” Known for his technical control, erudition, and large canvases, Walcott was, according to poet and critic Sean O’Brien, “one of the handful of poets currently at work in English who are capable of making a convincing attempt to write an epic … His work is conceived on an oceanic scale and one of its fundamental concerns is to give an account of the simultaneous unity and division created by the ocean and by human dealings with it.”

Many readers and critics point to Omeros (1990), an epic poem reimagining the Trojan War as a Caribbean fishermen’s fight, as Walcott’s major achievement. The book is “an effort to touch every aspect of Caribbean experience,” according to O’Brien who also described it as an ars poetica, concerned “with art itself—its meaning and importance and the nature of an artistic vocation.” In reviewing Walcott’s Selected Poems (2007), poet Glyn Maxwell ascribes Walcott’s power as a poet not so much to his themes as to his ear: “The verse is constantly trembling with a sense of the body in time, the self slung across metre, whether metre is steps, or nights, or breath, whether lines are days, or years, or tides.”

Walcott was also a renowned playwright. In 1971 he won an Obie Award for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, which the New Yorker described as “a poem in dramatic form.” Walcott’s plays generally treat aspects of the West Indian experience, often dealing with the socio-political and epistemological implications of post-colonialism and drawing upon various genres such as the fable, allegory, folk, and morality play. With his twin brother, he cofounded the Trinidad Theater Workshop in 1950; in 1981, while teaching at Boston University, he founded the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. He also taught at Columbia University, Yale University, Rutgers University, and Essex University in England.

In addition to his Nobel Prize, Walcott’s honors included a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, and, in 1988, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. He was an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in 2017.

source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/derek-walcott

“Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.” ― Lord Byron

                                     Chiharu Shiota: Love Letters, 2013, Installation, ARNDT, Berlin

Happy Birthday to George Gordon Byron of one the leading poets in the English Romantic movement. (for more pls check: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/george-gordon-byron)
Today, Byron’s Don Juan is considered one of the greatest long poems in English written since John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Byronic hero, characterized by passion, talent, and rebellion, pervades Byron’s work and greatly influenced the work of later Romantic poets.


10 FAMOUS POEMS BY BYRON

#10 MAZEPPA
Year: 1819
Ivan Mazepa was an influential gentleman in Ukraine in late 17th and early 18th century. This poem relates a legend from his early life according to which he had a love affair with Countess Theresa while serving as a page at the court of King John II Casimir Vasa. The Count, on discovering the affair, punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting the horse loose. Byron mostly describes the traumatic journey of Mazeppa while being tied to the horse. The poem is acclaimed by critics for its “vigour of style and its sharp realization of the feelings of suffering and endurance”. Lord Byron is most renowned for his long narrative poems and Mazeppa is among his most well known works in the genre.

Excerpt:-

They bound me on, that menial throng,

Upon his back with many a thong;

They loosed him with a sudden lash–

Away!–away!–and on we dash!–

Torrents less rapid and less rash.

 #9 THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
Year: 1815
Sennacherib was a powerful king of Assyria who laid siege on Jerusalem in 701 BC but failed to capture it. Lord Byron’s poem describes the Biblical account of Sennacherib’s attempted siege according to which the Assyrian were initially successful in the siege but the Angel of the Lord killed them in their sleep thus protecting the holy city. Among the prominent themes of the poem are death and power of the lord. The Destruction of Sennacherib was extremely popular in Victorian England and it remains one of the most famous short poems by Lord Byron.

Excerpt:-

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

 #8 THE GIAOUR (GAVUR)
Year: 1813
“Giaour” is an offensive Turkish word for infidel or non-believer. Byron’s narrative poem tells a fragment of a Turkish tale through three narrators with different points of view. The titular character, the giaour, loved a woman named Leila. However, her master Hassan has her drowned after learning that she has been unfaithful to him with his enemy. The giaour is filled with anger and kills Hassan in an act of vengeance. He is then remorseful and enters a monastery. The poem is known for contrasting Christian and Muslim perceptions of love, sex, death and the afterlife through its use of three narrators. It is also noted for being one of the first works to mention vampires. The oriental narrator predicts that the giaour, due to his crime, is condemned to become a vampire after his death and kill his own dear ones by drinking their blood. Byron came to know about vampires during his travels. The Giaour was a great success when it was first published in 1813 and it remains one of Byron’s most popular poems.

Excerpt:-

For freedom’s battle, once begun,

Bequeath’d by bleeding sire to son,

Though baffled oft, is ever won.

#7 SO WE’LL GO NO MORE A-ROVING
Year: 1817
One of the shortest compositions of Lord Byron, this poem consists of three stanzas, each of four lines. It was written by Byron at the age of 29 and included in a letter to his friend Thomas Moore. The poem was published in 1830, six years after the death of Byron. Lord Byron was notorious for living his life indulgently with numerous love affairs and aristocratic excesses. So We’ll Go No More A-Roving is interpreted as a poem in which he describes his tiredness from his indulgent lifestyle despite its attraction and his nature. It talks about the speaker’s age conquering his youth making it difficult for him to indulge in the tempting activity of going “a-roving” at night. The chorus of the poem is inspired from a Scottish song “The Jolly Beggar.”

Excerpt:-

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon.

 #6 THE CORSAIR
Published: 1814
A corsair is an authorized pirate. Byron’s poem tells the tale of the corsair Conrad who decides to raid the riches of the Sultan Seyd but gets caught while trying to rescue the women in the Sultan’s harem. Gulnare, the Sultan’s favourite slave, tries to trick Syed into releasing Conrad but her plan fails. Unable to convince Conrad to kill the Sultan, she kills him herself and they successfully escape. When Gulnare and Conrad return to his home, Conrad finds that his wife Medora has died from grief, having believed him dead. Along with The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos and Lara; The Corsair is one of the four celebrated “Oriental Tales” of Lord Byron. It sold over 10,000 copies on its first day of sale and was extremely popular and influential in its time.

Excerpt:-

O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,

Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,

Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,

Survey our empire, and behold our home!

These are our realms, no limit to their sway,—

Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.

 #5 WHEN WE TWO PARTED
Year: 1813
Lord Byron had a flirtation with Lady Frances Caroline Annesley, but later she was scandalously linked with Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Byron is said to have written this poem on his split with Lady Frances. When We Two Parted is a short lyric of four eight-line stanzas in which the speaker mourns the loss of a romantic relationship. The prominent theme of the poem is betrayal. It is ironic that Byron himself had numerous love affairs in his life and could well have inspired such a lyric. When We Two Parted is known for the strong feelings it is able to convey and, being a poem about a vastly relatable topic of lost love, it continues to be highly popular.

Excerpt:-

In secret we met–

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?–

With silence and tears.

 #4 DARKNESS
Year: 1816
The eruption of Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora in 1815 is considered one of the greatest natural disasters ever to befall mankind. The following year, in which this poem was written, saw darkness and record-cold temperatures across Europe; and is known as “the year without a summer”. Byron’s poem, inspired by the then inexplicable darkness caused due to this eruption, uses the hellish biblical language of the apocalypse to convey to his readers the real possibility of the occurrence of the events described in the holy text. Previously read as an apocalyptic story of the last man on earth, Darkness is now regarded by many critics to be anti-biblical despite its many references to the Bible. It remains one of Byron’s most analysed poems.

Excerpt:-

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

 #3 CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
Year: 1812 – 1818
This is a long narrative poem in four cantos with the first two published in 1812; the third in 1816, and the fourth in 1818. It is a loosely autobiographical account of Byron’s two year long tour of Europe from 1809 to 1811. “Childe” is a title from medieval times, designating a young noble who is not yet knighted. The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man and is renowned for depicting, with unprecedented frankness, the disparity between romantic ideals and the realities of the world. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is also noted for being the first work to depict the Byronic hero, one of the most potent and relevant character archetypes in western literature. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is one of the most famous works of Lord Byron and it was on publication of its first two cantos that Byron first gained public attention and acclaim.

Excerpt:-

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

 #2 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
Year: 1813
The most famous short poem of Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty consists of three stanzas of six lines. The poem celebrates the external appearance as well as inner beauty of a woman by whom the poet is captivated. The speaker starts by admiring the harmony of the woman’s external appearance before he suggests that her perfect looks are a reflection of her inner goodness. It is said that Byron was inspired to write She Walks in Beauty after meeting his cousin by marriage, Mrs. Anne Beatrix Wilmot, who was in mourning and wearing a black dress. Byron was struck by her unusual beauty and wrote the poem the next morning.

Excerpt:-

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow’d to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

 #1 DON JUAN
Year: 1819 – 1824
Don Juan is a legendary fictional character known for being devoid of most moral or sexual restraints. His name is a common metaphor for a “womanizer”. Based on the legend of Don Juan, Byron’s poem reverses his traditional portrayal and instead shows him as not a womaniser but as someone easily seduced by women. The poem consists of 16 cantos with the 17th being unfinished at the time of Byron’s death in 1824. Byron is credited with inventing the expression ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’ in this poem. Don Juan is considered as the masterpiece of Lord Byron and ranks as one of the most important English long poems since John Milton’s renowned work Paradise Lost. It is a variation of the epic form and Byron himself called it an “Epic Satire”. Lord Byron is so highly regarded among scholars mostly due to the satiric realism of Don Juan.

Excerpt:-

Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,

How much would novels gain by the exchange!

How differently the world would men behold!

source:https://learnodo-newtonic.com/lord-byron-famous-poems

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” ― George Orwell

             in memory to Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950) known as George Orwell

"One eyes sees, the other feels" -Paul Klee

Pera Museum presents for the first time in Turkey a selection that brings together all periods of the versatile, multicultural visual world of renowned director Sergey Parajanov, master of poetic cinema. Featuring many works across a wide spectrum ranging in style from the traditional to pop-art, from strikingly unique collages to storyboard drafts, from film costumes to drawings, paintings, mosaics, objects and photographs, the exhibition sheds light on the brilliant and fertile world of the artist.

Born in Tbilisi, Parajanov received singing and violin lessons as a child, displayed an interest in ballet and painting, worked with a theatre troupe, wrote scripts and embraced all branches of the fine arts. He settled in Moscow and studied at VGIK, the State Institute of Cinematography. His unique, breathtaking and spectacular cinematic language places him among the most important directors in film history.

Childhood, family, religion, captivity, freedom, multiculturality and traditional themes are at the forefront of his works, yet Parajanov engages with everything about life. Although he approaches many different genres, his work does not fit into any single category, it remains original throughout. Because of his dissident stance, he suffered under the Soviet regime, and was imprisoned for long periods. Even when free, he was deprived from the means to make films –this was how he begun to make his collages, discovering potential in any kind of material he came across. The boundless world of fantasy and symbolism in his collages reveals him as a master of the art of objects. His collages also brought him freedom, and the means to transcend borders and as in his films, his powerful creative energy found further expression in this medium.

The exhibition also features works exclusively created in homage to Parajanov by Sarkis, another master artist who passionately followed him.

This exhibition has been prepared in collaboration with the Sergey Parajanov Museum, and a selection of Parajanov’s films will also be screened in a parallel program.

for more pls visit: https://www.peramuseum.org/Exhibition/Parajanov-with-Sarkis/235

'Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.' Franz Kafka

                                                                                                                  Kay Jan, slotkay.com/
Annabel Lee
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Happy Birthday to Edgar Allan Poe the American writer, poet, critic and inventor of the detective fiction genre.

"A good book is an education of the heart." - Susan Sontag

Dear Students,
I have left some wonderful goodies at the Campus copy center Blok B.
For ACL 352 Comparative Lit II: get the two novels and the book with the articles.
For ACL 408 Seminar Novel: get your two books and the package book of articles.
For ACL 306 Poetry II: I am going to provide the material in a weekly basis. You will find the required poems at your uni-account and at this blog.
I will also share your SoSe syllabus 2019 as soon as the uni- system is ready for publications.
best
gh

“How winter fills my soul” -Sylvia Plath

            by Jung Lee | QUIET | Art Basel, http://www.damnmagazine.net/2018/03/12/jung-lee-dwelling-with-neon-light/

Happy Birthday to Jack London who was a 19th century American author and journalist, best known for the adventure novels White Fang and The Call of the Wild. London's writing style is often referred to as a Naturalist style, which means that he provides vivid yet simple descriptions of natural settings and events without coloring them with any opinions or preconceived assumptions. His stories generally observe the fictional events he writes about objectively, focusing on ways to explain human behavior scientifically or biologically rather than emotionally. (https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-would-you-describe-jack-londons-writing-style-320757)

This year we are going to read some parts of Jack London's work. You can do a quick research if you want to:

https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf

https://repozytorium.uwb.edu.pl/jspui/bitstream/11320/3087/1/%C5%81aszkiewicz_Crossroads_6.pdf 

http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/478/files/jacklondonbrochurepdf.pdf

“January is the month for dreaming” -Jean Hersey

                                                                                           ‘Heartbeat’ by Charles Pétillion,  London’s Covent Garden

Winter solitude

in a world of one colour

the sound of wind

Matsuo Bashō

'Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality' -Lewis Carroll

                                                The Mori Building Digital Art Museum: Epson teamLab Borderless in Tokyo 

"Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality." - Andrei Tarovsky

                                            "Poem/ für Rosalie" Tusche, Gardine, @andyamholst

„Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur noch solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. -Franz Kafka

                                                   Cafe- Judenviertel Krakau Kazimierz 2018

Reading for Comparative Lit II- SoSe 2019:
Emily Apter, Christopher Braider, Marshall Brown, Jonathan Culler, David Damrosch, Caroline Eckhardt, Caryl Emerson, David Ferris, Gail Finney, Roland Greene, Linda Hutcheon, Djelal Kadir, Françoise Lionnet, Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Richard Rorty, Haun Saussy, Katie Trumpener, Steven Ungar, Zhang Longxi

As one of a series of decennial reports by the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization offers itself as a “report on the state of the discipline” in 2004; but unlike previous ACLA reports it is conceived of by its editor, Haun Saussy, as “a multi-vocal report” in which nineteen authors present their arguments on the development of comparative literature in the contemporary era of globalization (viii). A common thread is provided by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Wellek Library lectures, published as Death of a Discipline (2003), and the nineteen contributors were invited to impress, alarm, delight, and stimulate their readership by disagreeing with Saussy and each other about the significance of Spivak's text for the discipline. The collection thus offers the reader an opportunity to synthesize perspectives and develop their own points of view on the state, history, and future of comparative literature. In Death of a Discipline, Spivak contends that the Euro/US-centric discipline of comparative literature must not merely transcend national borders, but also its location within disciplinary boundaries. Stressing the potential hazards of comparative literature practiced as a single discipline, Spivak predicts its demise. She argues that globalization makes the project of a discrete and integral discipline of comparative literature unsustainable; instead, she concludes, it must collaborate with other disciplines in order to move beyond its current limitations. The discipline must transcend borders, including those between languages, peoples, nations, and “self ” and “other,” while embracing interdisciplinary studies, area studies, cultural studies, multicultural studies, and globalization studies. Each contributor echoes or confronts Spivak's notion of the “death of a discipline” in developing their own perspective. The book therefore consists of divergences from a set theme, and it is written in a variety of styles. By challenging each author to confront others' arguments, Saussy has created what the German Idealists termed “a unity of difference and non-difference” (i), rendering disagreement desirable. Saussy's preface and his introductory essay, entitled “Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmare: Of Memes, Hives, and Selfish Genes,” surveys the development and process of comparative literary studies not merely by representing its triumph in an age of globalization (5), but also by making a metaphorical comparison with “genetically modified crops”(4).While Saussy acknowledges that “all literature has always been comparative, watered by many streams” (5)—that is, where there is literature, there is comparative literature—some genetically modified genes escape into nature, changing the “makeup of wild and cultivated plants” through pollenization (4).

source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236790977_Comparative_Literature_in_an_Age_of_Globalization_review

                                   Romeo and Juliet on the Balcony - Julius Kronberg/ by Mehmet Geren 

Challenge yourself with POETRY-Games

Dear Students,

If you need some new challange regarding poetry, you can now download poetry games.
Be free to check out these new APPS:

 My Daily Haiku (Android): A random haiku generator.

Build a Poem (iOS): A turn-based game, which lets players write poems or song lyrics together.

HaikuJAM (Android): A multiplayer writing game that lets players write a poem together.

Poetry Slam (Android): A game that lets poets duel with words.

Shatoetry: on iOS and Android: The one and only official app of William Shatner! Build a poem read in the voice of the original Captain Kirk!

by A.J. O'Connel