General Bardic Studies for Liturgists
Question 1. Write two poems of at least 16 lines each appropriate for performance at a High Day ritual. One poem may be in free-verse form, but one must employ some form of meter and/or rhyme. Note in each case for which High Day the poem is intended.
Earth Mother, sustainer,
From you we spring
by you are we nourished
To you we inevitably return.
Our bodies built
upon your bounty
Our spirits strengthen
with your support
What can we give
that is not ours by your grace?
What gift can we make
that was not first your gift to us?
We offer of ourselves,
we offer of our love
we offer of our labors.
Earth Mother, accept this token
and support us in our work.
Earth Mother, we honor you with a kiss.
I wrote the above for use as a prayer to the Earth Mother at any High Day ritual, but it was composed specifically for a Bealtaine rite in 2007. It is clearly free-verse as are most of my prayers.
The Lay of Hades
At last I wearied of the dark
My heart and eyes sensed only dark
Above the blooming violets met me
With petals pale and centers dark
Across the meadow, lithe and winsome
Earth’s daughter tarried with tresses dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
And plunges fields in yearning dark
Lamenting I sank in the soil
to brood alone in my halls of dark
Her vision haunts once peaceful dreams
and sick with longing, my thoughts turned dark
As fleet as frost I grabbed her up
And dragged her down to brighten the dark
To my cold hearth I brought her weeping
My treasure safe, well-cloaked by dark
I wooed with gold, I wooed with meat
and finest wines, rich, bold, and dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
and plunged the fields to scornful dark
At last relenting, six seeds she took
and stained her lips with telling dark
And with that stain, Earth’s cycle’s sealed
the year is halved by light and dark
In Summer gone, yet with the snow
The Queen returns to shine through the dark
The above is a ghazal written in iambic tetrameter for the Autumnal Equinox.
Question 2. Compare and contrast examples from the work of three poets in one cultural tradition from at least two historical eras. (minimum 300 words of the student's original essay material beyond the verses provided, at least one poem per poet)
John Milton (1608-1674) Renaissance era
“When I Consider how my Light is Spent” ca. 1652
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Modernist Era
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 1917
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin --
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”--
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Ezra Pound Modernist Era
“The Garden” 1913
En robe de parade
~Samain
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piecemeal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
Milton was an English poet, Pound an ex-pat American who spent most of his adult life in England, and Eliot was born an American but became a British citizen. Despite the nationalities of their birth, I consider all three poets to be based in the English cultural tradition. From a linguistic point of view, this is most certainly true.
Milton is working in the sonnet form; fourteen lines, employing an abba abba cde cde rhyme scheme. His is a structured, rigid form with rules for metre and rhyme. Eliot’s poem, the poem which helped launch him into notoriety, utilizes a haphazard rhyme scheme. When reading the work aloud, there is an intentional rhythmic structure, though it is by no means uniform. Pound presents us no rhyme scheme and no metric structure. Pound is often hailed as the Father of the Modernist movement. Modernist poetry largely ignored the previous strictures of metrics and rhyming, preferring instead free or open verse and loose rhyme, if any.
Milton’s sonnet conveys a deep sense of loss, in which he explores his increasing blindness and his angst over a talent he seems to think he has not yet actualized. Milton clearly longs to do service to what he considers a gift from God, his poetic ability. Yet he struggles with how to accomplish such a task. He feels the years slipping past him while he has yet to prove his worth. Eliot’s piece approaches the same general theme; the ennui of aging. Yet while Milton’s speaker, presumably himself, demonstrates a humbleness before God and the efforts of others, Eliot’s speaker, Prufrock, exhibits a subconscious arrogance clothed in outward humility. Prufrock does not expect to receive the attention of mermaids, or even any attention other than scorn from the ladies at his dismal tea party. Nevertheless, his central query, shrouded amongst banalities, is whether he dares to disturb the universe. The universe!
Pound’s poem present us with a slightly different malaise; disillusionment and a sense of the debasement of civilization. Pound juxtaposes the strictures of society, seen in the walk by the Kensington Garden railing and the indiscretion of speaking to someone of the opposite gender without a previous introduction, with the image of a loose skein of silk, mention of the end of breeding, and the unruly children of the poor to whom the future clearly belongs.
Where Milton answers dissatisfaction with patience and faith, Eliot and Pound find only restlessness and dissolution.
Eliot and Pound were contemporaries, and friends (Pound was Eliot’s trusted editor for his monumental work, The Waste Land). The theme of dissolution of culture is a common one for the Modernists. All three works center on a person dissatisfied, finding their life, upon examination, lacking. For the Modernists, this is connected to the loss of culture and religion. For Milton, writing in a time when the church was strong, the sense of lack is not due to emptiness, but rather unrealized potential.
Question 3. Compare and contrast examples from the work of two poets of the same historical era from two different cultural traditions. (minimum 300 words of the student's original essay material beyond the verses provided at least two poems per poet)
Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Quatrain 1693
O cupbearer, from that wine which you first gave,
Toss in two [more] cups worth and increase (my) happiness.
Either a taste of it must not be made known,
Or, if you have opened the [jug's] top, you must make (me) drunk
and ruined.
Quatrain 1776
I went strolling with (my) beloved in a rose garden.
(And) from lack of awareness, I cast a glance upon a rose.
[That] beloved said to me, "May you be ashamed,
(For) my cheeks are here and you are looking at roses!"
Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207 - c. 1282)
“I Cannot Dance”
I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me.
If you want me to leap with abandon,
You must intone the song.
Then I shall leap into love,
From love into knowledge,
From knowledge into enjoyment,
And from enjoyment beyond all human sensations.
There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.
“God Speaks to the Soul”
And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected
HOW THE SOUL SPEAKS TO THE SOUL
Lord, you are my lover,
My longing,
My flowing stream,
My sun,
And I am your reflection.
HOW GOD ANSWERS THE SOUL
It is my nature that makes me love you often,
For I am love itself.
It is my longing that makes me love you intensely,
For I yearn to be loved from the heart.
It is my eternity that makes me love you long,
For I have no end.
These two poets, Rumi and Mechthild, lived nearly concurrently; she in Germany, he in Persia
She wrote as a Christian mystic, he as a Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic. Both poets enjoyed great support from those around them for their writing. Rumi was fortunate to be surrounded by friends and followers who valued his contribution and encouraged him to expand from poems into music (“A Short Outline of the Life of Rumi”). Mechthild, while a Dominican tertiary, was encouraged to transcribe her ecstatic visions and devotional poems (Weiacker, “A Short Life History”). Clearly, religious faith was a prime inspiration for both poets.
A central theme of Persian Sufism is that of longing to reunite with one’s beloved. The ‘beloved’ in this sense refers to the primal connection to God which man has lost and ever seeks to restore. One sees a similar longing for divine union clothed in the language of romantic love in Mechthild’s poetry.
“Lord, you are my longing” Mechthild’s poem is passionate and ecstatic and the language is fevered. Additionally, there is a sense of totality; that the speaker finds completion in the lover and needs nothing else. That is echoed in Rumi’s Quatrain 1776 in which the beloved expresses jealousy when the speaker gazes on the beauty of a rose. The message is that the speaker should instead devote all focus to the beloved, to God.
I find particular parallels between Rumi’s Quatrain 1693 and Mechthild’s “I Cannot Dance.” Rumi’s poem uses wine as a metaphor for spiritual wisdom. The speaker says that either no taste of wine may be known, or, once tasted, he must be filled to bursting, until he loses himself entirely. Mechthild’s words present a similar image. Either there is no music and no dancing, or, if there is to be dancing, God must play the notes that will inspire the speaker to dance into a trance state beyond all sensation. That must surely be a loss of self as complete as the spiritual drunkenness described by Rumi.
Question 4. Compare and contrast two mythological or folkloric tales from two Indo-European cultures. Include a discussion of the use of narrative point-of-view, the element of time, and any relevant issues of religious (or other) bias influencing the narrative. (minimum 600 words)
For my tales I have selected Perrault’s telling of Little Red Riding-Hood, and The Lay of Thrym from the Icelandic Elder or Poetic Edda. I have tried to use as primary a source as possible, though hindered by the inconvenience of not being able to read French nor Old Norse. Thus, I have sought what I consider to be reliable translations.
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge makes it first appearance in Charles Perrault’s 1695 manuscript of what would eventually be published in 1697 under the title Histoires ou Contes du temps passe. The tale became widely popular in England, after translation, in the eighteenth century (Opie & Opie, 119).
Summary of Little Red Riding Hood
In a small village lived a pretty little girl with her parents. Her mother and grandmother quite doted on her. She was in the custom of wearing a red cloak and thus was commonly called Little Red Riding Hood. One day her mother had made a selection of custards and butter and asked Little red Riding Hood to take some to her grandmother, who had been sick. Little Red Riding Hood set out through the forest whereupon she met a wolf. The wolf restrained himself from eating her right there because of the presence of nearby woodsmen. Red Riding Hood foolishly tells the wolf of her destination. The wolf says he will take a different route and meet her at the grandmother’s house and they shall see which path was the fastest.
The wolf runs swiftly and arrives at the cottage first, Red Riding Hood having taken the longer path and dallied along the way over flower-picking, butterfly-chasing, and nut-collecting, The wolf knocks at the door and pretends to be Red Riding Hood when the grandmother asks who it is. Once he received admittance, he devours the grandmother immediately. At this time Red Riding Hood arrives and knocks at the door. The wolf invites her in using the same words by which he was admitted by the grandmother. He invites Red Riding Hood into bed with him. She undresses and get in the bed but is surprised at her “grandmother’s” appearance. She exclaims, “what great arms you have got!” The wolf replies, “It is the better to embrace thee my pretty child.” Red Riding Hood says, “what great legs you have got!” The wolf replies, “it is to run the better my child.” Red Riding Hood says, “what great eyes you have got!” The wolf replies, “it is to see the better my child” Red Riding Hood says, “what great teeth you have got!” the wolf replies, “it is to eat thee up!” And the wolf then eats the child (Opie & Opie, 125).
The Poetic, or Elder Edda is a collection of poems found in an Icelandic manuscript called the Codex Regius in Latin, and Konungsbok in Icelandic. Both names translate to “King’s Book.” The Elder Edda seems to have been complied around the year 1270 (Terry, xvi).
Summary of the Lay of Thrym
Thor awakes one morning to discover that his mighty hammer, Mjolnir, is missing. He calls on Loki to determine its whereabouts. Borrowing Freyja’s falcon cloak, Loki flies to the land of the giants where Thrym claims to have the hammer. Thrym says he will not return it to the Aesir unless he is given Freyja as his bride.
Loki returns to the Aesir and conveys Thrym’s terms. Freyja refuses to participate in the trade. Heimdall suggests that Thor be disguised as Freyja to retrieve his hammer. Thor reluctantly agrees and he and Loki, dressed as his handmaid, set out for Thrymheim.
Upon the false bride’s arrival, the giants prepare a lavish feast, complete with dainty dishes for the ladies. Thor devours an ox, eight salmon, all of the dainty dishes, and three casks of mead. Thrym is aghast, saying, “I’ve never seen a bride with such sharp teeth! / Never did a bride take bigger bites…!” Loki/Handmaid defends the “bride” by saying they travelled for eight days without stopping to eat. When Thrym leans in to kiss his “bride” he is shocked to see eyes that “seem to burn with blazing fire.” Loki again deflects by explaining they had not slept for the eight days they travelled. Satisfied with the explanation, Thrym then called for Mjollnir to be brought forward and laid in the bride’s lap to bless her. Having regained his mighty hammer, Thor then slays Thrym and all of his court (Terry, 85-89).
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The sense of time in Little red Riding Hood is linear and presents no difficulty, the action takes place over one afternoon. The Lay of Thrym however blithely skips over large chunks of time during which nothing much is happening. If Thor and Loki truly traveled for eight days to Thrymheim, then it must also have taken some time for Loki to fly to that same location, no matter how much more direct a path a falcon might take. Possibly the action occurs over a couple of weeks. Or perhaps Loki lied to Thrym and he and Thor were able to somehow travel faster due to divine gifts.
Each piece is told from the third person point of view and in each piece there is a hint of limited omniscient understanding into the thoughts and feeling of at least one character. In Little Red Riding Hood, the narrator is able to explain the wolf’s fear of the nearby faggot-makers as the reason he does not immediately eat the child. The narrator of the Lay of Thrym tells us the Thor’s heart “leaped with laughter then grew hard” when he regained his hammer (Terry, 89). Other than those two glimpses, the narration sticks to the actions and spoken words of the characters.
Finding parallels between Thor and the wolf is a simple matter. Each employ a womanly disguise to achieve their goals. The wolf dons the grandmother’s nightclothes, gets into her bed, and imitates her voice to deceive Red Riding Hood. Thor is dressed “in linen clothing” and given Freyja’s necklace to wear along with a bunch of keys at his waist, “womanly skirts around his knees,” “bright jewels upon his breast,” and a bridal headdress. In both tales, the victim is fooled initially, though closer contact shows the cracks and imperfections of the disguises. Both Little Red Riding Hood and Thrym, when in closer physical proximity to their deceivers, begin to question the situation.
The final dialogs in each tale are quite similar. Red Riding Hood asks about various physical attributes and the wolf answers each with a contrived explanation until at last he eats her. Likewise, Thrym challenges certain unwomanly attributes displayed by Thor, his expansive appetite and his fierce eyes. Loki, like the wolf, swiftly explains away the anomalies. Unlike the tale of Red Riding Hood, the victim’s demise is not what puts an end to the dialog. We cannot know if Red Riding Hood is convinced by the wolf’s answers because he eats her. However, Thrym is ultimately fooled by Loki’s explanations and believes Thor to truly be Freyja, his bride, and is prepared to say his vows. Interestingly, Thrym says the will say their wedding vows “in the name of Var.” Var being one of the Aesic queen, Frigg’s, handmaidens and commonly associated with making and keeping oaths and vows. It is an interesting peek into the religion of the society that spawned this tale. Even the giants, foes of Aesir and Vanir, swear their oaths in the name of the Aesic goddess.
There is one more parallel that perhaps only comes into mind of a modern reader in a post-Freud era. Both tales have a sexual undertone. The wolf calls Red Riding to get into bed with him. She undresses and does so. While there is nothing particularly odd about a little girl getting into bed with her grandmother, the reader knows it is not her grandmother at all. Instead it is a predatory male. Perhaps an argument could be made for the symbolic loss of virginity in this scene. In The Lay of Thrym, the hammer is brought forth to be laid in the lap of the bride. The hammer is Thor’s extremely masculine totem; the loss of it quite literally, if superficially, led to him becoming a woman. It is the supreme phallic symbol. Placing it in the bride’s lap as the consummating action of marriage is, to a modern mind, an obvious reference to the loss of virginity. However, while Little Red Riding Hood is tricked into losing her innocence, it is Thrym who is tricked in the Norse tale.
Works Cited:
"A Short Outline of the Life of Rumi." Whirling Dervishes. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.whirlingdervishes.org/rumilife.htm>.
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 1230 - 1233. Print.
Mechthild. “I Cannot Dance.” Poet Seers Trans. Frank Tobin. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/mechthild-of-magdeburg/poems/i-cannot-dance/index.html>
Mechthild. “How God Speaks to the Soul.” Poet Seers Ed.Andrew Harvey. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/mechthild-of-magdeburg/poems/god-speaks-to-the-soul/index.html>
"Mechthild of Magdeburg." Poet Seers ». Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/mechthild-of-magdeburg/index.html>.
Milton, John. “When I Consider How my Light is Spent.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 378. Print.
"My Cheeks Are Here and You Are Looking At Roses." My Cheeks Are Here and You Are Looking At Roses. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/rub-1776.html>.
Opie, Iona Archibald, and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales. London: Oxford UP, 1974. Print.
Pound, Ezra. “The Garden.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 1189. Print.
Terry, Patricia. Poems of the Elder Edda. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania, 1990. Print.
Wieacker, Katharina. "A Short Life History." Mechthild of Magdeburg. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.mechthild-von-magdeburg.de/englisch/biographie.htm>.
Wikipedia contributors. "Rumi" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 April, 2015. Web.
"You Must Make Me Drunk And Ruined." You Must Make Me Drunk And Ruined. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/rub-1693.html>.
Question 1. Write two poems of at least 16 lines each appropriate for performance at a High Day ritual. One poem may be in free-verse form, but one must employ some form of meter and/or rhyme. Note in each case for which High Day the poem is intended.
Earth Mother, sustainer,
From you we spring
by you are we nourished
To you we inevitably return.
Our bodies built
upon your bounty
Our spirits strengthen
with your support
What can we give
that is not ours by your grace?
What gift can we make
that was not first your gift to us?
We offer of ourselves,
we offer of our love
we offer of our labors.
Earth Mother, accept this token
and support us in our work.
Earth Mother, we honor you with a kiss.
I wrote the above for use as a prayer to the Earth Mother at any High Day ritual, but it was composed specifically for a Bealtaine rite in 2007. It is clearly free-verse as are most of my prayers.
The Lay of Hades
At last I wearied of the dark
My heart and eyes sensed only dark
Above the blooming violets met me
With petals pale and centers dark
Across the meadow, lithe and winsome
Earth’s daughter tarried with tresses dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
And plunges fields in yearning dark
Lamenting I sank in the soil
to brood alone in my halls of dark
Her vision haunts once peaceful dreams
and sick with longing, my thoughts turned dark
As fleet as frost I grabbed her up
And dragged her down to brighten the dark
To my cold hearth I brought her weeping
My treasure safe, well-cloaked by dark
I wooed with gold, I wooed with meat
and finest wines, rich, bold, and dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
and plunged the fields to scornful dark
At last relenting, six seeds she took
and stained her lips with telling dark
And with that stain, Earth’s cycle’s sealed
the year is halved by light and dark
In Summer gone, yet with the snow
The Queen returns to shine through the dark
The above is a ghazal written in iambic tetrameter for the Autumnal Equinox.
Question 2. Compare and contrast examples from the work of three poets in one cultural tradition from at least two historical eras. (minimum 300 words of the student's original essay material beyond the verses provided, at least one poem per poet)
John Milton (1608-1674) Renaissance era
“When I Consider how my Light is Spent” ca. 1652
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Modernist Era
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 1917
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin --
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”--
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Ezra Pound Modernist Era
“The Garden” 1913
En robe de parade
~Samain
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piecemeal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
Milton was an English poet, Pound an ex-pat American who spent most of his adult life in England, and Eliot was born an American but became a British citizen. Despite the nationalities of their birth, I consider all three poets to be based in the English cultural tradition. From a linguistic point of view, this is most certainly true.
Milton is working in the sonnet form; fourteen lines, employing an abba abba cde cde rhyme scheme. His is a structured, rigid form with rules for metre and rhyme. Eliot’s poem, the poem which helped launch him into notoriety, utilizes a haphazard rhyme scheme. When reading the work aloud, there is an intentional rhythmic structure, though it is by no means uniform. Pound presents us no rhyme scheme and no metric structure. Pound is often hailed as the Father of the Modernist movement. Modernist poetry largely ignored the previous strictures of metrics and rhyming, preferring instead free or open verse and loose rhyme, if any.
Milton’s sonnet conveys a deep sense of loss, in which he explores his increasing blindness and his angst over a talent he seems to think he has not yet actualized. Milton clearly longs to do service to what he considers a gift from God, his poetic ability. Yet he struggles with how to accomplish such a task. He feels the years slipping past him while he has yet to prove his worth. Eliot’s piece approaches the same general theme; the ennui of aging. Yet while Milton’s speaker, presumably himself, demonstrates a humbleness before God and the efforts of others, Eliot’s speaker, Prufrock, exhibits a subconscious arrogance clothed in outward humility. Prufrock does not expect to receive the attention of mermaids, or even any attention other than scorn from the ladies at his dismal tea party. Nevertheless, his central query, shrouded amongst banalities, is whether he dares to disturb the universe. The universe!
Pound’s poem present us with a slightly different malaise; disillusionment and a sense of the debasement of civilization. Pound juxtaposes the strictures of society, seen in the walk by the Kensington Garden railing and the indiscretion of speaking to someone of the opposite gender without a previous introduction, with the image of a loose skein of silk, mention of the end of breeding, and the unruly children of the poor to whom the future clearly belongs.
Where Milton answers dissatisfaction with patience and faith, Eliot and Pound find only restlessness and dissolution.
Eliot and Pound were contemporaries, and friends (Pound was Eliot’s trusted editor for his monumental work, The Waste Land). The theme of dissolution of culture is a common one for the Modernists. All three works center on a person dissatisfied, finding their life, upon examination, lacking. For the Modernists, this is connected to the loss of culture and religion. For Milton, writing in a time when the church was strong, the sense of lack is not due to emptiness, but rather unrealized potential.
Question 3. Compare and contrast examples from the work of two poets of the same historical era from two different cultural traditions. (minimum 300 words of the student's original essay material beyond the verses provided at least two poems per poet)
Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Quatrain 1693
O cupbearer, from that wine which you first gave,
Toss in two [more] cups worth and increase (my) happiness.
Either a taste of it must not be made known,
Or, if you have opened the [jug's] top, you must make (me) drunk
and ruined.
Quatrain 1776
I went strolling with (my) beloved in a rose garden.
(And) from lack of awareness, I cast a glance upon a rose.
[That] beloved said to me, "May you be ashamed,
(For) my cheeks are here and you are looking at roses!"
Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207 - c. 1282)
“I Cannot Dance”
I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me.
If you want me to leap with abandon,
You must intone the song.
Then I shall leap into love,
From love into knowledge,
From knowledge into enjoyment,
And from enjoyment beyond all human sensations.
There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.
“God Speaks to the Soul”
And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected
HOW THE SOUL SPEAKS TO THE SOUL
Lord, you are my lover,
My longing,
My flowing stream,
My sun,
And I am your reflection.
HOW GOD ANSWERS THE SOUL
It is my nature that makes me love you often,
For I am love itself.
It is my longing that makes me love you intensely,
For I yearn to be loved from the heart.
It is my eternity that makes me love you long,
For I have no end.
These two poets, Rumi and Mechthild, lived nearly concurrently; she in Germany, he in Persia
She wrote as a Christian mystic, he as a Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic. Both poets enjoyed great support from those around them for their writing. Rumi was fortunate to be surrounded by friends and followers who valued his contribution and encouraged him to expand from poems into music (“A Short Outline of the Life of Rumi”). Mechthild, while a Dominican tertiary, was encouraged to transcribe her ecstatic visions and devotional poems (Weiacker, “A Short Life History”). Clearly, religious faith was a prime inspiration for both poets.
A central theme of Persian Sufism is that of longing to reunite with one’s beloved. The ‘beloved’ in this sense refers to the primal connection to God which man has lost and ever seeks to restore. One sees a similar longing for divine union clothed in the language of romantic love in Mechthild’s poetry.
“Lord, you are my longing” Mechthild’s poem is passionate and ecstatic and the language is fevered. Additionally, there is a sense of totality; that the speaker finds completion in the lover and needs nothing else. That is echoed in Rumi’s Quatrain 1776 in which the beloved expresses jealousy when the speaker gazes on the beauty of a rose. The message is that the speaker should instead devote all focus to the beloved, to God.
I find particular parallels between Rumi’s Quatrain 1693 and Mechthild’s “I Cannot Dance.” Rumi’s poem uses wine as a metaphor for spiritual wisdom. The speaker says that either no taste of wine may be known, or, once tasted, he must be filled to bursting, until he loses himself entirely. Mechthild’s words present a similar image. Either there is no music and no dancing, or, if there is to be dancing, God must play the notes that will inspire the speaker to dance into a trance state beyond all sensation. That must surely be a loss of self as complete as the spiritual drunkenness described by Rumi.
Question 4. Compare and contrast two mythological or folkloric tales from two Indo-European cultures. Include a discussion of the use of narrative point-of-view, the element of time, and any relevant issues of religious (or other) bias influencing the narrative. (minimum 600 words)
For my tales I have selected Perrault’s telling of Little Red Riding-Hood, and The Lay of Thrym from the Icelandic Elder or Poetic Edda. I have tried to use as primary a source as possible, though hindered by the inconvenience of not being able to read French nor Old Norse. Thus, I have sought what I consider to be reliable translations.
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge makes it first appearance in Charles Perrault’s 1695 manuscript of what would eventually be published in 1697 under the title Histoires ou Contes du temps passe. The tale became widely popular in England, after translation, in the eighteenth century (Opie & Opie, 119).
Summary of Little Red Riding Hood
In a small village lived a pretty little girl with her parents. Her mother and grandmother quite doted on her. She was in the custom of wearing a red cloak and thus was commonly called Little Red Riding Hood. One day her mother had made a selection of custards and butter and asked Little red Riding Hood to take some to her grandmother, who had been sick. Little Red Riding Hood set out through the forest whereupon she met a wolf. The wolf restrained himself from eating her right there because of the presence of nearby woodsmen. Red Riding Hood foolishly tells the wolf of her destination. The wolf says he will take a different route and meet her at the grandmother’s house and they shall see which path was the fastest.
The wolf runs swiftly and arrives at the cottage first, Red Riding Hood having taken the longer path and dallied along the way over flower-picking, butterfly-chasing, and nut-collecting, The wolf knocks at the door and pretends to be Red Riding Hood when the grandmother asks who it is. Once he received admittance, he devours the grandmother immediately. At this time Red Riding Hood arrives and knocks at the door. The wolf invites her in using the same words by which he was admitted by the grandmother. He invites Red Riding Hood into bed with him. She undresses and get in the bed but is surprised at her “grandmother’s” appearance. She exclaims, “what great arms you have got!” The wolf replies, “It is the better to embrace thee my pretty child.” Red Riding Hood says, “what great legs you have got!” The wolf replies, “it is to run the better my child.” Red Riding Hood says, “what great eyes you have got!” The wolf replies, “it is to see the better my child” Red Riding Hood says, “what great teeth you have got!” the wolf replies, “it is to eat thee up!” And the wolf then eats the child (Opie & Opie, 125).
The Poetic, or Elder Edda is a collection of poems found in an Icelandic manuscript called the Codex Regius in Latin, and Konungsbok in Icelandic. Both names translate to “King’s Book.” The Elder Edda seems to have been complied around the year 1270 (Terry, xvi).
Summary of the Lay of Thrym
Thor awakes one morning to discover that his mighty hammer, Mjolnir, is missing. He calls on Loki to determine its whereabouts. Borrowing Freyja’s falcon cloak, Loki flies to the land of the giants where Thrym claims to have the hammer. Thrym says he will not return it to the Aesir unless he is given Freyja as his bride.
Loki returns to the Aesir and conveys Thrym’s terms. Freyja refuses to participate in the trade. Heimdall suggests that Thor be disguised as Freyja to retrieve his hammer. Thor reluctantly agrees and he and Loki, dressed as his handmaid, set out for Thrymheim.
Upon the false bride’s arrival, the giants prepare a lavish feast, complete with dainty dishes for the ladies. Thor devours an ox, eight salmon, all of the dainty dishes, and three casks of mead. Thrym is aghast, saying, “I’ve never seen a bride with such sharp teeth! / Never did a bride take bigger bites…!” Loki/Handmaid defends the “bride” by saying they travelled for eight days without stopping to eat. When Thrym leans in to kiss his “bride” he is shocked to see eyes that “seem to burn with blazing fire.” Loki again deflects by explaining they had not slept for the eight days they travelled. Satisfied with the explanation, Thrym then called for Mjollnir to be brought forward and laid in the bride’s lap to bless her. Having regained his mighty hammer, Thor then slays Thrym and all of his court (Terry, 85-89).
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The sense of time in Little red Riding Hood is linear and presents no difficulty, the action takes place over one afternoon. The Lay of Thrym however blithely skips over large chunks of time during which nothing much is happening. If Thor and Loki truly traveled for eight days to Thrymheim, then it must also have taken some time for Loki to fly to that same location, no matter how much more direct a path a falcon might take. Possibly the action occurs over a couple of weeks. Or perhaps Loki lied to Thrym and he and Thor were able to somehow travel faster due to divine gifts.
Each piece is told from the third person point of view and in each piece there is a hint of limited omniscient understanding into the thoughts and feeling of at least one character. In Little Red Riding Hood, the narrator is able to explain the wolf’s fear of the nearby faggot-makers as the reason he does not immediately eat the child. The narrator of the Lay of Thrym tells us the Thor’s heart “leaped with laughter then grew hard” when he regained his hammer (Terry, 89). Other than those two glimpses, the narration sticks to the actions and spoken words of the characters.
Finding parallels between Thor and the wolf is a simple matter. Each employ a womanly disguise to achieve their goals. The wolf dons the grandmother’s nightclothes, gets into her bed, and imitates her voice to deceive Red Riding Hood. Thor is dressed “in linen clothing” and given Freyja’s necklace to wear along with a bunch of keys at his waist, “womanly skirts around his knees,” “bright jewels upon his breast,” and a bridal headdress. In both tales, the victim is fooled initially, though closer contact shows the cracks and imperfections of the disguises. Both Little Red Riding Hood and Thrym, when in closer physical proximity to their deceivers, begin to question the situation.
The final dialogs in each tale are quite similar. Red Riding Hood asks about various physical attributes and the wolf answers each with a contrived explanation until at last he eats her. Likewise, Thrym challenges certain unwomanly attributes displayed by Thor, his expansive appetite and his fierce eyes. Loki, like the wolf, swiftly explains away the anomalies. Unlike the tale of Red Riding Hood, the victim’s demise is not what puts an end to the dialog. We cannot know if Red Riding Hood is convinced by the wolf’s answers because he eats her. However, Thrym is ultimately fooled by Loki’s explanations and believes Thor to truly be Freyja, his bride, and is prepared to say his vows. Interestingly, Thrym says the will say their wedding vows “in the name of Var.” Var being one of the Aesic queen, Frigg’s, handmaidens and commonly associated with making and keeping oaths and vows. It is an interesting peek into the religion of the society that spawned this tale. Even the giants, foes of Aesir and Vanir, swear their oaths in the name of the Aesic goddess.
There is one more parallel that perhaps only comes into mind of a modern reader in a post-Freud era. Both tales have a sexual undertone. The wolf calls Red Riding to get into bed with him. She undresses and does so. While there is nothing particularly odd about a little girl getting into bed with her grandmother, the reader knows it is not her grandmother at all. Instead it is a predatory male. Perhaps an argument could be made for the symbolic loss of virginity in this scene. In The Lay of Thrym, the hammer is brought forth to be laid in the lap of the bride. The hammer is Thor’s extremely masculine totem; the loss of it quite literally, if superficially, led to him becoming a woman. It is the supreme phallic symbol. Placing it in the bride’s lap as the consummating action of marriage is, to a modern mind, an obvious reference to the loss of virginity. However, while Little Red Riding Hood is tricked into losing her innocence, it is Thrym who is tricked in the Norse tale.
Works Cited:
"A Short Outline of the Life of Rumi." Whirling Dervishes. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.whirlingdervishes.org/rumilife.htm>.
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 1230 - 1233. Print.
Mechthild. “I Cannot Dance.” Poet Seers Trans. Frank Tobin. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/mechthild-of-magdeburg/poems/i-cannot-dance/index.html>
Mechthild. “How God Speaks to the Soul.” Poet Seers Ed.Andrew Harvey. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/mechthild-of-magdeburg/poems/god-speaks-to-the-soul/index.html>
"Mechthild of Magdeburg." Poet Seers ». Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/mechthild-of-magdeburg/index.html>.
Milton, John. “When I Consider How my Light is Spent.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 378. Print.
"My Cheeks Are Here and You Are Looking At Roses." My Cheeks Are Here and You Are Looking At Roses. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/rub-1776.html>.
Opie, Iona Archibald, and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales. London: Oxford UP, 1974. Print.
Pound, Ezra. “The Garden.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 1189. Print.
Terry, Patricia. Poems of the Elder Edda. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania, 1990. Print.
Wieacker, Katharina. "A Short Life History." Mechthild of Magdeburg. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.mechthild-von-magdeburg.de/englisch/biographie.htm>.
Wikipedia contributors. "Rumi" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 April, 2015. Web.
"You Must Make Me Drunk And Ruined." You Must Make Me Drunk And Ruined. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/rub-1693.html>.