Scarica Appunti di Inglese - Twentieth Century Poetry e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! 20 TH-‐ CENTURY POETRY -‐ Revolution for a more symbolic and cerebral kind of poetry. -‐ Modernity in fiction: James Joyce -‐ Poetry is completely revolutionary: Eliot, Pound, Hulme Main points: 1. War on the romantic view of life and art. 2. No moaning, no whining or self-‐expression. In particular authors dislike the continuous crying. They are not interested in emotions but more on the working of human mind, cerebral aspects of poetry. 3. They want to write poetry based on precise images(precision), discipline, “dry hardness”, classicism (They look for inspiration in classical poetry). This situation also for the visual arts CLASSICAL ATTITUDE ROMANTIC ATTITUDE -‐ Abstract, geometrical art (Futurism, Cubism). The trend is common to the all art. -‐ Hard, clear, precise images -‐ Discipline -‐ Naturalistic art -‐ Belief in man’s potentialities -‐ Emotional, soft attitude è Political consequences: The excess of this attitude can have also political consequences (the way the Futurism support Fascism and the totalitarianism). THE WAR POETS For some poets there is a revolution, for other is gradual. THE WAR POETS: a group of authors who lives during the 1°World War and they wrote about it in different ways: Brooke, Owen, Sasson. Rupert BROOKE (1887-‐1915) § He is still very traditional in his poems. He died before to taking part to any battle, so the vision he had of the war is something idealistic and patriotic. We find an idea of the war as something glorious, indeed he believes in dying for his own country. The soldier How many times the words England and English? A lot because of the relation between the poetry and his country. 1st stanza: -‐ He says that to find consolation to the death, the English soldier has to think that the land where he had been killed will become England. -‐ The dust of the soldiers is the dust of a body which is creating by England. The Englishness of the dead soldiers will enrich the foreign land and makes that land an English land forever. The English soldiers is superior à so the foreign land will be enrich by the presence of English soldiers. -‐ L.5: ENGLAND is personified as a mother, who bore(partorisce) the soldiers, as a teacher (shaped), as a leader (political leader who made the conscious). -‐ There is a celebration of English nature: flowers, rivers, sun. 2nd stanza deals with the soul, spirit of the soldiers, which goes back to England. He send back his memories. -‐ Images of happiness, all positive images. There is nature, always sunny, idea of friendship , gentleness, peace. -‐ Content: Celebration of England and of dying for England is something very traditional. -‐ Form of the poem: it is a mixture sonnet: 8 lines plus 6 as in petrarchian sonnet, but the rhyme scheme is not regular: we don’t have the final couplet and the sestet is not regular. è Traditional content and quite traditional form à he is not revolutionary. Alfred OWEN (1909-‐1975) Owen fought in the war, in the trenches of the Western Front. He was sent by the England. He was sent back to the front for shell shock (psicosi traumatica). Then he returned to fight and he was killed one week before the end of the war. Dulce et Decorum Est (Pag 227): § 1st difference is the sound. This is not so musical, is full of hard consonants. § “Dulce et decorum est” is a quotation from Orace. “it is sweet and honorable to die for once own country”. à Owen’s thesis is the opposite: he describes this quotation as the old lie and he focus on the horrors of strange warkers. 1st stanza: -‐ It is the description of the soldiers who are leaving the trenches to go to rest and they are so tired that they sleep while they are walking. They don’t realized that there is a gas attack, because a gas bomb doesn’t do a big noise. -‐ L.6/7: These soldiers are young men but they are described, with a simile, like old people. They are walking in the mad (folla), it is difficult to walk, their foot are covered by blood. They are not clear minded, they are as drunk people because, they are tired: blind, confused, half asleep, deaf(sordi). 2nd stanza: description of the gas attack. -‐ When they react they try to be quick but they fumble, they are too late. -‐ One of the soldiers cannot wear the gas mask in time, so he breathes the gas and he moves in a mad way like a man in fire or in lime (calce). -‐ L.14: The poet witnesses the soldier’s death. The poet sees the soldier drowning, as if he was underwater à the green light of the gas is connected to the color of the sea. -‐ The poet can only look to his companion dying, he cannot do anything. à This image will torment the poet in his dreams 3rd stanza: focus on the consequences of this death on the poet dreams. -‐ He keeps having nightmares where he see the soldiers dying again and again, asking for help. 4th stanza: the poet describes with a very strong image the consequences of the gas on the dead soldier. -‐ The gas continues to destroy the soldier’s body. -‐ The poet is talking to someone (appears an addressee in line 17 “you”, line 25 “my friend”). The poet invites this hypothetical “you” to come and see what happens during the war. -‐ The poet invites the “you” to experience what he feels: the poet feels suffocating like his companions. he invites to come here with him and walk behind the dead bodies, and see his face: the soldier eyes keep moving apparently (the gas is corrupting them). “If you could hear every movement of the cart, the blood which becomes a sort of boiling from the corps”. -‐ Other senses are involved: taste (bitter), touch (incurable sores), the tongs à the soldier is not responsible. è The thesis is that: If you could experience what I have experience, you would not try to convince young men to go to war, you wouldn’t promote with such enthusiasm the enrolment of young men and the old lie: “Dulce and decorum est pro patria mori” -‐ In this period medicine start to recognize these situation like diseases not cowardness (codardia). OWEN is innovative! Language and images are revolutionary: there are no poetical pictureà the images are concrete, unpleasant, even disgusting but this is the real situation. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1907) -‐ pag 218 § There is a wide range of cultural references: from Dante to Shakespeare. § This poem describes the experience of one man, J. Alfred Prufrock, whose thoughts are reflected in a monologue: he tells about his dull and uneventful life, his lost opportunities and his cowardice. He expresses his solitude and inability to take risks and make decisions (theme of indecision and postponing). § Prufrock, the archetypical modern man, is the opposite of the Romantic hero: he is insecure, he has no values, he is the victim of the irony that paralyses any form of action à he has no possibility to change his present state. § The poem is set in the city and constantly changes perspective, like a movie camera, presenting different scenes in an apparently illogical order. Prufrock’s thoughts jump from the present moment into the future. § The poem is a variation on the dramatic monologue with one difference: there is no listener, but Prufrock is talking only to himself, to an alter-‐ego of himself à this emphasizes his sense of isolation and detachment from the others. 1st stanza: -‐ There is the declaration of space and time: a) the place is a big city, a metropolis, described by the secondary streets, the back of restaurants and so on: the most squalid parts of the city. b) the time: it is evening and Prufrock is going to a social party. Prufrock is going to an upper-‐class event, where people discuss of art: but the contest is ironical because it is mixed up with trivial (banali) things of little importance -‐ Since the beginning we understand that he is not alone (“you and I”): there is someone who is listening to him, maybe someone imaginary, an alter-‐ego. -‐ The language is different from the Romantic or Victorian poetry: we have a series of images which can be considered conceits (the evening … sky + streets that .. argument). -‐ The overwhelming question “What is it?” is visible throughout the poem: Prufrock doesn’t want to answer it. 2nd stanza: (starting line 15) -‐ The second stanza is about the setting: there is a sort of camera movement from the city to the house where the dinner party is being held. This house is surrounded by the fog that provides a sense of sleepiness (sonnolenza)à it is a metaphor, a personification: the fog is described as a living thing: ü the fog is a cat: Eliot was a cat person. ü the fog is yellow because of the lamps in the streets. 3rd stanza: -‐ The third stanza is a key one, because there are many themes which will be found in the next stanzas. • The theme of time and postponing (rinvio)à “there will be time” • the theme of the mask. • The theme of the contrast between important and trivial things, as the taking of a toast and tee. -‐ Prufrock is deeply concerned about the way he appears when he meets other people. -‐ There is an overwhelming question that will have no answer and no precise formulation. We don’t know if it is a question to himself or to someone else. -‐ Tecnica dell’allusione (l.29) 4th stanza: -‐ The theme of postponing and indecision same topics are developed also here. This stanza is concentrate on the insecurity of Prufrock, who is afraid of the judgment of people: he thinks that he will be criticized, and he will not feel at ease. -‐ L.40: Prufrock is concerned with his hair which is growing thin (stanno diventando calvi) and about what other people could say about it. -‐ L. 42: Then he focuses on his dressing: he tries to wear clothes as much more elegant as possible, but again he is worried about what people could say about it. (his morning coat, his necktie) -‐ He is going to propose to a woman. Now Prufrock’s attention starts to be focused on women and on the way they look at him. 5th stanza: -‐ He speaks about himself : he talks about his incapacity of living a life fully. Life appears to him as closed and separated moments (evenings, mornings, afternoons). -‐ We are in an upper class context, so people speak in an upper class intonation: in England it is possible to understand the social class people belong to, just by the way they speak. NB: Eliot riprende discorso del flaneur e del dandy con Prufrock. MA P. non riesce ad esserlo perché non è rilassato come il flaneur e non ha autostima di se stesso come dovrebbe avere il dandy. Un altro argomento che Eliot riprende da Baudelaire è l’accidia = lo spleen. à “noia accidiosa” riferimento a Dante. -‐ Prufrock attraversa la metropoli dove non c’è nulla di bello e interessante, dove si vedono solo il backyards dei ristoranti, la spazzatura, il retro delle case. -‐ Prufrock è preoccupato di come verrà visto. -‐ Similitudine e metafore di tipo metafisico, conceits che riguardano la descrizione del tempo (l.9) -‐ Poca poetic diction, immagini non poetiche. -‐ Prufrock arriva alla casa dove c’è il ricevimento. Casa avvolta in una nebbia (correlativo oggettivo) à come l’atmosfera serale. -‐ Particolare uso del simbolo complessi, non banali. Simboli che costruiscono una situazione complessa. § L. 52: we have the 1st fragment: the voices of people § L.55: there is the second one: the eyes. In this stanza Prufrock images himself like an insect pinned on a wall, exposed to the eyes of the people around him. This image will be used again and again in the year à Kafka will use the image of the “scarafaggio” à fear of exposion! § L. 62: The 3rd fragment is the arms of the woman. P is afraid by this arm. P noticed the jewels covered by the hair. The smelling of the women perfume prevents him from speaking. à “how should I began?” it is difficult to him to start a conversation, so he wonders how to start. § Prufrock cannot find the courage to speak to women. He doesn’t know how to start a conversation, how to be interesting to women. § I’m not the sailor, Ulysses, I’ve nothing interesting to say. His real life is something very reserved and far away from the society, he imagines himself like a pair of ragged claws, where nobody could see him or judge him (l 72). L.75: image of fog compare to an animal (cat or a dog, a pet). Theme of sleepyness. Evenging is personified, sleeps. Fog connecting with the opening image à evening sleeping. L.79: indecision, mixing up of impo decision, moment in life with trivial aspects (tee cake) -‐ Series of comparison esplicit, negative à I’m not that kind of man: I’m not a prophet (Giovanni Battista). Comparison is not simply negative, but also ironical (P sta perdendo I capelli, mantre Giovanni Battista ha long and curly hair) -‐ He has missed his opportunitiy (85): the possibility of becoming somebody else, he thought he could have an opportunity but it was just a lflicker. -‐ He id thinking about his death 88: 2 negative comaproson in this stanza. -‐ Methapysical poetry. I’ not a great poet, not a great lover. Quotation by Marvell(image of the bird of pray, attack of time and hit it and the 2 lovers creat a perfect sphere) -‐ I’m not Lazaro. -‐ Theme of incommunicability! L 100: -‐ Idea of impossibility to communicate. -‐ Imagine of the magic lanthern is similar to the on of the insect in the wall (fear of explosion). He imagine himself as the pattern of his nerves projected in a wall. Lantern magica serviva per vedere le immagini in movimenti. -‐ L 103: Hamlet: man of doubt, man of indecision à I’m not Hamlet because in the end he decided and act!! So he is not the hero of his tragedy because he cannot decide. -‐ P identifies himself with the secondary character in Hamlet, who is POLONIUS. -‐ Finally P takes a couple of decisions about trivial things which concerned external appareance (the kind of trousers and walk on the beach) -‐ The beach is functional to introduce another negative comparison: I’m not Ulysses because the marmaid are nto singing for him (L.127) -‐ The description is dreamlikeà the soundis almost a lullaby, going to sleep. Because P is describing his life as a dream. He say that he can live his ife only dreaming because he cannot faced real life, and when ita happens he died. -‐ The use WE put together P himself and his addressee, hiss listener à why we think an alter ego because the listener going inside P à the I becomes WE. So P cannot communicate even with friend, but only with himself.