Emily Dickinson -- This is Immensity

Sometimes I feel like I've spent months of my life immersed in Dickinson. At the most I think it's been two weeks in another American Literature class, but there's nothing quite like two weeks straight of Dickinson capped with a ten page research paper that requires another week of reading about her poetry to convince you that you never want to read another Dickinson poem as long as you live.

Or at least for another semester.

Despite the almost ridiculous number of Dickinson's poems that I've read in the past year, there are a few that no matter how many times I read them catch me by surprise over and over again. This seems to happen more often than not particularly with her two or three line poems (none of which we covered in class, so a lot of this blog may seem a little bit extraneous).

I find 1548 in The Poems of Emily Dickinson particularly striking.

All things swept away
This - is immensity -

I'm not sure whether I love the irony of the concept confined to such a brief piece (read it out loud and then think about it for a few moments -- it's pretty mind-boggling) or the power that Dickinson manages to pack into seven words more, but I feel like there's no denying that the simplicity and complexity of the poem all wrapped up together is nothing short of brilliant. The idea of complete nothingness is incredibly disturbing, and it's striking that we feel such a need to consider it.



For those who care where I'm pulling my poems from, here's a citation:
Dickinson, Emily, and R. Franklin. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.

Harriet Beacher Stowe -- The Cabin that Started a War

All right, maybe that's a bit of a dramatic statement. However, the sun's shining and I'm feeling a bit presumptuous today, so there you have it.

The cynic in me dislikes Uncle Tom's Cabin a little more than is probably necessary. The idealist in me falls all over itself in happiness about once every two chapters or so during particularly beautifully-strung passages. My difficulty in reading this book, prior thoughts taken into considering, is reconciling the two feelings without compromising the novels goals.

Every time I read this book I spend the majority of my time arguing with myself over whether it's worth the time I've spent arguing with myself about it or not, and honestly I still haven't come to a decision that makes both Cynictasia and Idealisttasia content, and probably never will. The novel tends to leave me feeling a bit juvenile (one would think after reading the same novel at least two times it would be more or less easy to form solid opinions about it), partly because I spend so much time complaining to myself about it. Which is silly, but there you have it.

On almost every point I'm torn pretty irrevocably one way or another, both loving and hating the novel all at once. The language is often stunning, and I'm a sucker for breathtaking description. Take Stowe's description of night on the river, for example, for example --

Night came on,--night calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down with her innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent. (Stowe, 111)

Ridiculously potent in so many ways, most interestingly from my perspective that the imagery I find most striking in Stowe's writing involves her description and personification of the landscape rather than description of the same sort about people. Her treatment of the human element in Uncle Tom's produces almost the reverse effect on me. Her descriptions of Eva in the "The Grass Withereth," for instance.

Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their names are always on grave-stones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not. (Stowe, 222)

That bit isn't as frustrating as the passage the describes Eva's interactions with Topsy before she dies, which I'm going to include only in part for time (and my sanity)'s sake.

"O, Topsy, poor child, I love you!" said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder; "I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends;--because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good, for my sake;--it's only a little while I shan't be with you."

The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;--large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! she laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,--while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

I mean, really, Ms. Stowe? Really? Not only does the forced depth of description make me feel a little bit stupid (if she has to explain this relationship so very clearly she apparently expects that I may otherwise have missed the subtleties in contrast...), but the idealization and cliche are a little bit insulting.

I deeply appreciate the sentiments behind Stowe's characters, particularly in the dichotomies between them. The contrasts in the relationships between George and Eliza, Cassy and Emmeline, St. Clare and and his brother, and Eva and Topsy (as well as many others -- the list goes on and on) are cleverly executed and present a clarity and depth of understanding that Uncle Tom's would lack were they nonexistent. At the same time however the contrasts between ideals are often pressed to the point of ridiculousness--I've already referenced the above passage, which is a prime example. I want to appreciate the novel's sentiments so badly, but at the same time I have difficulty grounding myself in these themes simply because everything is so over-exaggerated. The novel is, for instance, one long series of foreshadowing of the last few chapters. I deeply appreciate this on one level, but at the same time it's a large part of one of my greatest critiques of the novel's form. I as a reader appreciate a certain amount of subtlety, and Uncle Tom's Cabin is anything but. Every instance of death it seemed that six or so pages before there was at least a paragraph discussing the probability of that death (i.e. Tom and Eva's discussion of heaven on the shore of the lake, Miss Ophelia pressing St. Clare to make provisions for his servants in the case of his death, etc.). These instances would not be a problem, generally speaking, if Stowe did not insist on pointing out that she's heavily foreshadowed everything. In case you've even missed her little hints, she's even pointedly named an entire chapter "Foreshadowings."

Yet again, this makes me feel like an idiot. I wrote beneath that particularly helpful chapter heading "thanks for the info." Because really, how should I ever have guessed otherwise? Thank you, Ms. Stowe, for heading off any sense of confusion or ambiguity that I may possibly have had.

All in all, I can't help but be frustrated with Uncle Tom's Cabin. There's so much overwhelmingly good about it, style and themewise, but at the same time so much that makes me want to shut my head in a door. I've read the thing through in its entirety about three times now, and if anything the more I read it the more confused I become. Do I think it ought to be dismissed from the canon of American Literature? Absolutely not. But I think it's a more troublesome book in many ways (many of which I simply don't have time to cover) than it's often presented to be.

Edgar Allen Poe -- Shall Be Lifted Nevermore

There has always been a particularly soft space in my heart for Poe. My mom still quotes Annabell Lee sporadically from when she memorized it as a child, and its opposingly optimistic and haunting lines are some of my first memories of poetry. My perception of The Raven will be forever tainted by the memory of Robert Davison's croaking of "Nevermore" in eighth grade, and The Fall of the House of Usher has made me almost ridiculously suspicious of any minor crack in the plaster walls of our farmhouse.

Questions of the author's mental stability aside, Poe remains an emblematic figure in the American literary canon. If anything, his alcoholism and severe bouts with depression and misfortune make his body of work all the more stunning--he was, if anything, writing out of adversity. It makes me a little bit sad that his personal choices so often taint our understanding of his work as the works of a fellow perhaps a little more than mad, but it is rather these tones madness and downright insanity that make the vast majority of his writing so interesting, so I suppose I can't complain too much.

Carnivalin'

Since I'm a few days late posting this post and therefore feel as though my classmates have more than adequately covered the classes general feelings as far as The Scarlet Letter is concerned, I thought I'd look back a little further into the past month and tackle rather our readings of Emerson and Thoreau, in order not to be ridiculously redundant.

In general we as a class seemed to be more or less uncomfortable with both the content and presentation of Emerson's American Scholar and Nature, both relatively philosophical in nature. Despite a general dislike and frustration, many of my classmates managed to find bits and pieces of good sense. Emerson's deep appreciation of nature and his concept of its role in our understanding of ourselves. Many also struggled with Emerson's concept of the spiritual -- Kiera mentions in particular the tones of Eastern religions that pervade his writings, which are particularly interesting in relation to his prior role as a protestant minister.

We seemed to appreciate Thoreau's presentation of Emerson's philosophy a great deal more, as a group, in particular his initiative in immersing himself in nature. His elegant language was also appealing to the group in general. A few of our classmates, however, found him to fall a little short of his ultimate goal of separating himself from the necessities of society and secluding himself in nature, Walden being, instead of an exposition of an idealistic existence becomes more of an artistic representation of a less-than-idealistic reality.

Overall more people seemed to feel comfortable tackling the concepts in Thoreau as opposed to those in Emerson, due to the relative simplicity of Walden in comparison with Emerson's more philosophical ramblings. Thoreau is approachable and therefore more practical, despite his downfalls.

Nature

Sometimes I feel like it's almost necessary to get out of nature -- spend some time in a primarily urban environment -- to be able to appreciate how necessary it is to our peace of mind, and also to be able to appreciate the bits of nature that filter in to that urban setting and change our perceptions of the natural and the urban at the same time. Perhaps this idea is what creates for me a disconnect in my reading of Emerson and Thoreau. I love nature. Having spent a fairly ridiculous amount of my life in a tent on the back side of some mountain watching the rain wash away what's left of the evening's campfire, listening to the water hum to itself as it filters through the canopy of trees, I feel like there's a part of me that is insepparable from it. some of my favorite memories, often the images that I remember best and most clearly, are lakes and rivers in Glacier park and the way the sun strikes the water trickling down the sides of Going to the Sun road as the snow begins to melt.

The city, for me, makes these images so much more poignant. There's almost nothing like catching the till of birdsong in a break in traffic, noting the roots of trees pushing and prying at cracks in sidewalks, or watching the first snow fall and blanket the ground, covering everything in a coccoon of white and making it all, in some way, equal. These things, in nature, are not extraordinary. The closeness of society and the contrasts between civilization and the wilderness seem more important to me than simply immersing oneself in on or the other. Their connotations are more powerful when they are juxtaposed one with the other. While I've often wished to lose myself for months in the backwoods of Montana, I suspect those woods would take on the tenors of civilization for me, simply because I've been so steeped in them myself, and carry those ideas and expectations wrapped around my shoulders wherever I go, whether I'm in the city or not. That is to say, I feel that if I were to attempt exist for a time solely in the nature that I love, I already carry too much of what I want to leave behind with me to fully be able to experience that solitude. It is better for me, then, to more or less accept what's here and appreciate it more fully in the knowledge that the two -- the city and the wilderness -- somehow or another coexist.

It seems like this concept is a great deal more Emersonian than it seems on the surface. Emerson understands the need for man to seclude himself, to reach a sort of communion with nature in order to understand his own nature, but he also seems to understand the impossibility of such an ideal existence. Even Thoreau's experience suggests that distancing oneself from society in such an ideal way is difficult, if not impossible. Understanding this dichotomy may allow us to experience life to the fullest.

Henry David Thoreau -- A Little Idealism Never Hurt Anybody

Yeah, so I won't lie. I don't like Thoreau. I haven't since I read Walden the first time somewhere around junior high. Perhaps it's because I really didn't understand him the first time around, or just generally fall into the "there's no possible way this guy could have been that genuine" category because I'm a little too cynical, but I've just never been able to jive with his work. It isn't that I think he's wrong -- he's all too right about a ridiculous number of things.

I mostly just think he appreciated the sound of his own voice a little too much, and could probably have used a week or two on his own in the real wilderness with absolutely no human contact to properly build on the ideals that he touts so eloquently.

So maybe I'm a little too hard on the guy. But really, he says it himself -- he spent a good bit of time literally wandering around doing odd little jobs that didn't particularly need doing, and was pretty well incensed that the city didn't want to pay him to do what he wanted to do. So in a fit of transcendentalist angst he casts aside this prescribed life depending upon possession and status and advancement and secludes himself in "nature." I appreciate in particular that the area he picks out on Walden pond for his humble abode, he specifically points out, is a spot with great economic possibility.

I could probably rant for an hour on why I think Thoreau's overrated, but I'm sure there are better things I could be doing with my time. I also feel like it's equally possible to appreciate and utilize his philosophy without necessarily separating ourselves completely from the life that we're living -- perhaps this haphazard sort of existance helps us to appreciate the little things in nature and the beauty of that outside, solitary sort of life all the more.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have no clever titles, today.

First off I'd like to say that most of what I'm going to say in this blog is based on memory from my last reading of Emerson, which was probably.... four or five years ago. I've made it through "American Scholar" and parts of "Nature" (not gonna lie, it was mostly during class. for some reason Emerson keeps putting me to sleep), but I don't know that I'm quite comfortable enough with his ideology to be able to write about it with any confidence.

That said, I have a mixed sort of appreciation for Emerson. Having spent a great deal of my life outdoors and in the backwoods of Montana I can honestly understand a great deal of his attraction to nature (because while Emerson defines "nature" as being that outside of man -- the "not me" -- he does seem to make the point that nature is also that outside what is made by man) as a place for reflection and self-understanding. I don't necessarily ascribe to the same connection between man and nature, as Biblically speaking the oneness (or something to that effect) that Emerson describes doesn't seem to jive too well, but a great deal of what he claims seems to descend from a logical progression.

If we are able to separate ourselves from what distracts us (which seems to be in general that which is made by humankind, the works of our hands, etc.) into some place foreign and completely outside of ourselves, it might serve to allow us to better understand who we are, at the core of ourselves.

There is of course the possibility that I'm reading Emerson completely wrong (or not reading him much at all), and he's a bit more of a crackpot than my initial analysis perceives, but I do think I get for the most part where he's coming from and am glad to have gotten to spend more time with his writing.