Welcome back, Class. Hope you have been well since last we met. I went home that day thinking about Italo Calvino's "Tale of the Cats, " in particular the image of a young girl/woman descending a ladder into a hole in the ground to be, as it turns out, rescued from an intolerable home life by a family of cats. I know something about cats because I have several and they indeed are fastidious about keepings themselves clean, though I have to clean up their leavings! They are affectionate and loving, which the protagonist in the story must surely delight in. They are cunning, too, operating by an instinctual stealth, and merciless in their dealings with prey. We may see this reflected in the plot, particularly the "good" mother cat's means of setting up for destruction the story's two antagonists, step-mother and sister, both of whom are depicted as opposites of the girl and her allies. Here, as in many fairy tales, a properly protective father is either altogether missing or lacking in his role. By the end, freed from persecution, the girl marries a "handsome" fellow, which I understand to mean bodes well for her personal happiness, just as personal beauty predisposes us to imagine health and prospects of goodness.
The story reminded me of the symbols we encounter in art and how they contain meaning that may at first escape notice. That dark hole, the ladder, what fear she must have felt in her descent; perhaps excitement too. And that ungainly flower, the cauliflower that leads the way. Two influential figures in the literature of mythic and symbolic analysis are Carl Jung, an early student of Sigmund Freud, and Joseph Campbell, a scholar of comparative mythology and popularizer of the "Hero's Journey" or monomyth that may be detected in the plots, characters, motifs, and themes of stories everywhere. In his description, the hero or protagonist is called to some action, perhaps an inner prompting, perhaps an outer obligation that will force him/her to go beyond the familiar, to realize a much wider field of play and overcome a great many obstacles and threats, all of which will be instrumental in the formation and strengthening of the innate propensities and character of this individual. Jung saw the process of individuation as one in which we all strive to reconcile conflicting aspects of our nature, two bring opposites into some kind of workable or harmonious union. The acorn will become an oak, if it is not prevented or obstructed in some way, as he put it. The human wants to grow in accord with its potential, but nothing is easy or guaranteed. Internal issues, hidden fears, shadow elements, lie in wait to ensure that our journey will not be uneventful. He spent his life exploring the human psyche through the images manifest in dreams and in art and stories and culture more broadly. He saw the salvation of the individual and understanding of the hidden elements of the psyche as essential to society and its salvation.
As regards the symbols of stories, myths and legends, whether of ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, India the Judeo-Christian world, Native America, or the contemporary U.S., Joseph Campbell wrote that they refer “primarily to our inner selves” and not to “outer historical events” (Thou Art That 28), that they are psychological archetypes known to all mythologies.” Beyond the necessities imposed by our animal nature, he writes, is “another order of living, which the animals do not know, that of awe before the mystery of being, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days” (29).
Themes in Fiction (and all literature):
Nature: perhaps the primary thematic focus, and a wide field of play, for there is no escaping Nature, the ultimate source and end of all things human and non-human. What is Nature actually, and what is not? We look at nature through the lens of "Art," an entirely human construct, one which here includes philosophy, religion, history, science and, importantly, language. We humans are nature’s creatures, however distinct, highly evolved, and seemingly "superior" to other species. Whether little or much our awareness of the physical universe–Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, and all the world's “creatures great and small,” etcetera– we are defined and bound by our relationship to the natural world, the Cosmos, out of which we emerged, as did all things, some 13 billion years ago, when the Big Bang occurred, according to scientific claims and calculations. The tree of life is an old and apt symbol of this connectedness,
Nature: perhaps the primary thematic focus, and a wide field of play, for there is no escaping Nature, the ultimate source and end of all things human and non-human. What is Nature actually, and what is not? We look at nature through the lens of "Art," an entirely human construct, one which here includes philosophy, religion, history, science and, importantly, language. We humans are nature’s creatures, however distinct, highly evolved, and seemingly "superior" to other species. Whether little or much our awareness of the physical universe–Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, and all the world's “creatures great and small,” etcetera– we are defined and bound by our relationship to the natural world, the Cosmos, out of which we emerged, as did all things, some 13 billion years ago, when the Big Bang occurred, according to scientific claims and calculations. The tree of life is an old and apt symbol of this connectedness,
The Human Experience and Journey (Individual/Society): We are born, grow to youth and maturity, age, and then die . . . and in this our lives, individually and collectively, reflect the age-old succession of the seasons and organic life. A continual process of creation and destruction, as the old gives way before the new, and what is past becomes an archive of artifacts, memories and stories, whereby we can trace our origins, and wonder and speculate about the mysteries of Time. In fact, As William Faulkner wrote, the past is never dead. The vital function that artists perform in creating art works, their evocations and explorations of the material and spiritual realms, of human growth and identity, the conflicts between individuals and societal groups, provide an endless source of insight, inspiration, and wonder. I am hoping you find it so, at any rate.
Religion/God/ Spirituality: The course material invites you to consider representations of nature, of the human and what we have made of things, the phenomena, and the noumena of the world. What to think of nature, our origins, the Creation, each other, family, society, culture? Indeed, we may see nature, including humans and their constructs, an antagonist, an ally, a morally neutral, even amoral force, reflective of forces and processes far beyond our ability to comprehend, in which savagery, destruction, suffering and death stand equally with kindness, creation, joy, and life. Life comprises a great many conceptual opposites and their reconciliation is a life's work. The poems and stories illustrate just such work. We think in categories of opposition: life/death; light/dark; good/evil; finite/infinite; material/immaterial; mutable/immutable; temporal/eternal; transcendence/immanence; the One/the Many, holy/unholy. We have the given and what we make of it verbally or linguistically, conceptually. Art manifests the human imagination and spirit in its attempt to recreate, name, and understand life.
And from Annie Dillard's "About Symbol": All art may be said to be symbolic in this sense: it is a material mock-up of bright idea. Any work of art symbolizes the process by which spirit generates matter, or materials generate idea. Any work of art symbolizes juncture itself, the socking of eternity into time and energy into form.
ART A definition of Art, from Carl Jung's "The Poet": Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. . . .
A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal. A dream never says: "You ought," or: "This is the Truth." It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and we must draw our own conclusions.
And from Annie Dillard's "About Symbol": All art may be said to be symbolic in this sense: it is a material mock-up of bright idea. Any work of art symbolizes the process by which spirit generates matter, or materials generate idea. Any work of art symbolizes juncture itself, the socking of eternity into time and energy into form.
Christian Houge
To summarize, we live in time, and in space, and the cycles of nature and stages of life provide rich subject matter for writers reflecting on the experience of living. Nature, in fact, appears a mirror and a touchstone of the Self and human experience. We are part of universal nature, and we bring our particular human nature to it, with our griefs, our joys, our forebodings, aspirations, and imaginings. The Book of Nature informs us to the extent we take the time to read it and to acknowledge how it shapes us. A falling leaf, a sudden snowfall, the stars shining in the blackness of space–these speak to us.
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Whenever I read "Rip Van Winkle," Washington Irving's story set in the Catskills of colonial America, I think of the power of nature to call us out of ourselves and away into the wonders of mountains, woods, trees, rivers, streams, and of how "civilization" was carved from wilderness. The attitude of awe and reverence inspired by earth's landscapes and the healthful vigor and refreshment we experience there come back to me, and I want to go on a long hike just like Rip did.
Two links that give context to the landscape in art:
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/engl203/overviews/sublime.htm
https://www.britannica.com/art/Hudson-River-school
Two links that give context to the landscape in art:
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/engl203/overviews/sublime.htm
https://www.britannica.com/art/Hudson-River-school
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I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. –John Masefield (1878-1967), British poet
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The following questions may serve as a guide and be useful in thinking and writing about a story:
1. What does the title indicate? How does it frame or shape our understanding of the story whole?
2. Who is speaking and why, or to what purpose? What tone(s) of voice do you hear and where?
3. What is the situation? What significant actions occur? What's the conflict or at stake for the speaker or central character?
4. What image(s) do you find most attractive or arresting? Do any–person, place or thing–appear symbolic? What associations are thus called forth?
5. Which words, phrases, lines or images present difficulties of interpretation?
6. What is the climax of the story and its apparent theme(s)?
1. What does the title indicate? How does it frame or shape our understanding of the story whole?
2. Who is speaking and why, or to what purpose? What tone(s) of voice do you hear and where?
3. What is the situation? What significant actions occur? What's the conflict or at stake for the speaker or central character?
4. What image(s) do you find most attractive or arresting? Do any–person, place or thing–appear symbolic? What associations are thus called forth?
5. Which words, phrases, lines or images present difficulties of interpretation?
6. What is the climax of the story and its apparent theme(s)?
The Panther Rainer Maria Rilke ( 1875-1926 )
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
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