Titles: The Great Spirit and The Trial Path
Author: Zitikala-Sa
Type: Native American Stories
Culture: Siouan, Lakota, Native American
Sex: Female
Date Finished: 10th August 2010
TheGreatSpirit
This beautiful story is about a few, yet so many, occurrences in one of Zitikala-Sa’s many days. Telling first of how she loves, filled by her spirit, “to roam leisurely among the green hills”, admiring the natural beauty of the blue sky, the clouds, the river, the flowers and all of natures creatures. Reflecting on her ancestors, admiring a stone statue of “Inyan our great-great-grandfather, older than the hill he rested on”. She ventures upon the path to the Indian Village, where at a cabin she is met by her beloved dog, and comes to listen to a “native preacher”, though he speaks “strangely the jangling phrases of a bigoted creed”. She criticises the converted man and his converted people in the way they believe such Dogma and superstition, falsely believing they are separated in existence because of their beliefs, brought to them by missionaries. She knows her spirit; she is her spirit and is fully aware of her microcosmic place in the Great Spirit, praising the sun, moon and stars and all of God’s creatures.
For me, reading this story was a perfect experience, as I felt completely in tune with Zitikala-Sa’s experience and have shared similar feelings and thoughts, completely spiritual, “excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.” Her way of living and experiencing is of the most pure kind, in that she lets what is in nature guide her, the nature of her spirit, the nature surrounding her, which to me is far far greater than any belief in any script; any religion; any set practice. The line “My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand.” Demonstrates that she is perfect and perfectly little in the greatness of existence, not afraid at how small she is, and always identifying with God; the Great Spirit; the infinite, like the sky.
TheTrialPath
This story, told by an old women sitting in a tepee to her people, is about the night upon which the old woman’s older grandfather died, at the hands of the younger grandfather. In a heated frenzy of disagreement, one brother killed the other. A messenger rushed from the grave site to sit by the side of the story-tellers father, unbidden. The chieftain decided that the father of the dead man should decide in which way the killer be tortured or killed. He decides the killer should have to ride a wild horse across a long distance, from them to the centre tepee, sparing his own life if he should succeed. The old woman was the lover of the killer, and she cried to him not to fall, to choose life and her. The killer rides the rampant beast, and successfully makes it to the centre tent, the horse conquered. The trial ends, but years later the grandfather dies and the horse is killed at the grave, and both are said to travel together in spirit to the next life. The people go to sleep.
Zitikala-Sa’s writing style in this tale is highly entertaining and runs as smoothly as Muddy Waters’ 1955 band, in my opinion. Her writing is filled with lovely Siouan imagery, which is poetic and brave in nature, and each sentence flows onto the next without hesitation, painting new details onto the same image. For example:
“It was an autumn night on the plain. The smoke-lapels of the cone-shaped tepee flapped gently in the breeze. From the low night sky, with its myriad fire points, a large bright star peeped in at the smoke-hole of the wigwam between its fluttering lapels, down upon two Dakotas talking in the dark. The mellow stream from the star above, a maid of twenty summers, on a bed of sweetgrass, drank in with her wakeful eyes.”
To me, reading this story is more like a film script in the way it paints for visual use, simple yet colourful and in perfect detail. The tepees, Dakota Indians and the metaphor: “The mellow stream from the star above, a maid of twenty summers, on a bed of sweetgrass, drank in with her wakeful eyes”, are extremely reminiscent of Siouan times, and generate a feeling that their tribe was deeply rooted in the moment of their time, bravely and creatively.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Titles: Silence—A Fable and Shadow—A Parable
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Culture: American
Type: Poetic Short Stories
Date Finished: 26th July 2010
This pair of short stories, Silence—A Fable and Shadow—A Parable, by Edgar Allan Poe have a similar style and both contain allusions to religion, death and classical times, are dream-like in biblical proportions. Shadow is a story narrated by a man who has “long since gone [his] way into the region of shadows” i.e. died. He calls himself the Greek One who lived in a time of pestilence and terror, where the heavens influenced the meditations and creations of men. He speaks of sitting in an antique hall in the city of Ptolemais with seven men drinking wine in a heavy atmosphere of Evil, laughing hysterically and taking merriment in those who were about to die. A “shadow neither of man nor God” came upon the room and when asked by Oinos, the Greek One, it spoke and told him he was “SHADOW”, to which they cowered and realised a multitude of voices spoke, the “familiar accents of many thousand departed friends”. Silence is a fable spoken by a demon about a place in Libya along the river Zaire, which has no quiet nor silence. The “river [has] a saffron and sickly hue” and on either side is a pale desert with fields of gigantic, sighing water lilies. The demon speaks of a moment were it rained blood, the moon arose with a crimson mist, and a huge grey rock by the side of the river caught his eye, which had upon characters which said “DESOLATION”, and had an old, stately god-like Roman man standing upon its summit, trembling in solitude. A storm struck the place of the demon, and he continued to observe the actions of the man. The demon cursed his surroundings, and the characters on the rock changed to spell “SILENCE”, and the Roman man fled. The listener of the Demon’s tale recounts how wonderful it was to hear, and the Demon next to him laughed, and cursed him because he did not laugh, and a lynx lay down at the Demon’s feet “and looked at him steadily in the face.”
Silence
I think the antiquity of this fable to be beautiful and pleasing to read, because it is of a rare quality that touches heavily upon mysticism and blind, confident exploration. Poe travels into a realm of his imagination that contains mystic conceptions and figures that can only be understood or felt with the spiritual eye; the third eye chakra that dissects the veil hiding the truth. That the secondary character of the Demon tells the fable, for example, rather than the first-person narrator, signifies that the eyes through which we examine the fable are mystic, demonic and imaginative eyes that are unlike our own, yet the Demon simply represents an aspect of the human that is not built upon and well used in society, the mystic imagination. The Demon sees many exaggerated happenings, like the gigantic lilies, the blood red river, the bleeding son, the towering rock, that, through normal, human eyes would be seen as a normal desert with the odd water lily here and there, a brilliant sunset strange, but usual rock formations and a river reflecting the rays of the sun, giving it a wonderful hue. In this way, the mysticism hidden from humanity is what is explored here; the mystical point-of-view of nature, of life, with strong implications of the bible.
Shadow
The parable of the shadow, to me, is Poe’s poetic making of the point that crimes of murder against humanity effect every earthly being, not just those who are dead, and that the karmic retribution of ignoring or causing mass death would posses all impure (the excessive consumption of wine) people with absolute fear and regret. I find it fascinating that Poe made such philosophical challenges in very poetic ways and because of this Poe is even more admirable to me. For example, as the eight men, seemingly Greek war generals or intellectuals, are maniacally revelling in such an atmosphere of “Evil”, a huge shadow looms over the brass door, which is locking them in (symbolic of being trapped by their own creations/doings, and a consequence is always present), and says to them ‘I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the catacombs (tomb) of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion (paradise) which border upon the foul Charonian (Charonte is the boat man of hell) canal.’ The men respond with a heightened sense of fear, and recognise the voice is of thousands of departed friends. Obviously, being faced with a speaking shadow is what possessed these men with fear, but it is more the fact of their realisation that the shadow was a collection of the souls of the dead, or their karmic past, that fills them such terror, signifying that the greatest fear of the soul is that of its karmic past, the consequences of their deeds, in my opinion.
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Culture: American
Type: Poetic Short Stories
Date Finished: 26th July 2010
This pair of short stories, Silence—A Fable and Shadow—A Parable, by Edgar Allan Poe have a similar style and both contain allusions to religion, death and classical times, are dream-like in biblical proportions. Shadow is a story narrated by a man who has “long since gone [his] way into the region of shadows” i.e. died. He calls himself the Greek One who lived in a time of pestilence and terror, where the heavens influenced the meditations and creations of men. He speaks of sitting in an antique hall in the city of Ptolemais with seven men drinking wine in a heavy atmosphere of Evil, laughing hysterically and taking merriment in those who were about to die. A “shadow neither of man nor God” came upon the room and when asked by Oinos, the Greek One, it spoke and told him he was “SHADOW”, to which they cowered and realised a multitude of voices spoke, the “familiar accents of many thousand departed friends”. Silence is a fable spoken by a demon about a place in Libya along the river Zaire, which has no quiet nor silence. The “river [has] a saffron and sickly hue” and on either side is a pale desert with fields of gigantic, sighing water lilies. The demon speaks of a moment were it rained blood, the moon arose with a crimson mist, and a huge grey rock by the side of the river caught his eye, which had upon characters which said “DESOLATION”, and had an old, stately god-like Roman man standing upon its summit, trembling in solitude. A storm struck the place of the demon, and he continued to observe the actions of the man. The demon cursed his surroundings, and the characters on the rock changed to spell “SILENCE”, and the Roman man fled. The listener of the Demon’s tale recounts how wonderful it was to hear, and the Demon next to him laughed, and cursed him because he did not laugh, and a lynx lay down at the Demon’s feet “and looked at him steadily in the face.”
Silence
I think the antiquity of this fable to be beautiful and pleasing to read, because it is of a rare quality that touches heavily upon mysticism and blind, confident exploration. Poe travels into a realm of his imagination that contains mystic conceptions and figures that can only be understood or felt with the spiritual eye; the third eye chakra that dissects the veil hiding the truth. That the secondary character of the Demon tells the fable, for example, rather than the first-person narrator, signifies that the eyes through which we examine the fable are mystic, demonic and imaginative eyes that are unlike our own, yet the Demon simply represents an aspect of the human that is not built upon and well used in society, the mystic imagination. The Demon sees many exaggerated happenings, like the gigantic lilies, the blood red river, the bleeding son, the towering rock, that, through normal, human eyes would be seen as a normal desert with the odd water lily here and there, a brilliant sunset strange, but usual rock formations and a river reflecting the rays of the sun, giving it a wonderful hue. In this way, the mysticism hidden from humanity is what is explored here; the mystical point-of-view of nature, of life, with strong implications of the bible.
Shadow
The parable of the shadow, to me, is Poe’s poetic making of the point that crimes of murder against humanity effect every earthly being, not just those who are dead, and that the karmic retribution of ignoring or causing mass death would posses all impure (the excessive consumption of wine) people with absolute fear and regret. I find it fascinating that Poe made such philosophical challenges in very poetic ways and because of this Poe is even more admirable to me. For example, as the eight men, seemingly Greek war generals or intellectuals, are maniacally revelling in such an atmosphere of “Evil”, a huge shadow looms over the brass door, which is locking them in (symbolic of being trapped by their own creations/doings, and a consequence is always present), and says to them ‘I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the catacombs (tomb) of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion (paradise) which border upon the foul Charonian (Charonte is the boat man of hell) canal.’ The men respond with a heightened sense of fear, and recognise the voice is of thousands of departed friends. Obviously, being faced with a speaking shadow is what possessed these men with fear, but it is more the fact of their realisation that the shadow was a collection of the souls of the dead, or their karmic past, that fills them such terror, signifying that the greatest fear of the soul is that of its karmic past, the consequences of their deeds, in my opinion.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Research Investigation
Crime writing, how does the genre reflect the morals and values of society?
Introduzione
Crime fiction has played an important part in society around the world in the past two centuries up ‘til now, reflecting its morals and values and its psychological state of mind. The use various artists, authors and directors have made of the crime subject has shed light on the morals and values societies of certain cultures at certain periods have had, and what typifies these societies in the way of their psychological states and their reactionary behaviours. The understanding of the psychological states of mind of different cultures and time periods can offer great insight into how societies change and form, produce and react, showing their fears, their drives and their beliefs and knowledge about the world of crime. I am investigating the links between different cultural societies over time to discover the relevance of crime to people.
What psychological security or strain does crime fiction offer to society?
The whole of St. Petersburg, Russia in the mid 19th century was involved criminally, knew of crime around them or experienced it first hand, in their corrupt, soul-taxing city.
In the first part of Crime and Punishment the author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, emphasizes the psychological strain taken on by the inhabitants of mid 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia, and the criminal acts against others, themselves and humanity they were driven to because of the chaos, malaise and poverty that characterised St. Petersburg at this time. St. Petersburg was experiencing a hot, humid summer at this time, “…during a spell of exceptionally hot weather…” Dostoevsky writes, ridden with poverty and unemployment which resulted in a great lack of moral standards and values, including theft, murder, daily drunkenness, family beatings, prostitution, corrupt law, blackmail, rape et cetera. Dostoevsky writes one scene in which a young girl, about fifteen, had been made forcibly drunk by some men in a bar, who had their way with her and sent her into the crawling streets to wander alone, delusional. Raskolnikov, the main character of the novel, sees her staggering along the street to sit down on a side-road chair, Dostoevsky describes: “The girl was walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side… the seat… on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner… a quite young, fair-haired girl—sixteen, perhaps not more than fifteen…”. Furthermore, a shifty looking gentleman begins to approach her, noticeably with the intention of having his way with her, whom Raskolnikov tells to go away and threatens to fight, right when an officer comes along. In my opinion, in this scene Dostoevsky illustrates the disgusting and corrupt nature of the common Russian in St. Petersburg, and their complete lack of moral integrity, which would have been very close to reality, as it was written from Dostoevsky’s own experiences in this city. However, Raskolnikov demonstrates a more dignified, higher standard of morality than the average citizen, as he is a very individual intellectual, by protecting the girl from harm and paying for her cab ride home. I think the society of mid 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia, was a society lacking most moral standards and practices, and had very few values, other than value for their own lives; to get through another day. They were very familiar with crime, and saw it as a normal part of their every-day lives, never really developing much disdain for it which would have led to the creation of morality and values.
American society of the mid 19th century innocently enjoyed the thrills and kills of crime, especially when it took place in a distorted atmosphere of madness and fiction. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, he tells of an extremely nervous man, who commits a murder of an old, decrepit man, with a “pale blue… vulture’s eye, with a film over it”. As the murderer/narrator tells the story, he has an urging tendency to prove he is not a madman, often saying “why will you say that I am mad?”, “how then am I mad” and “you fancy I am mad”. It is clear that the psychological strain is heavily present on the murderer in crime fiction, as in Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov questions his sanity constantly after killing two elderly women. The reader, often an average man or women of society, would feel very unnerved, worried, scared or even frustrated at reading about a murderer who questions his sanity over and over, after getting away with killing a vulnerable, elderly person. Most societies, especially in the western world, are extremely affected by murder, as they question their safety and the sanity of the world around them. Society takes on a lot of psychological stress from murder, yet they are attracted and wowed by the macabre aspects of death, and thus gain security in themselves. They are scared of the pleasure they take at the absurdity of these murders and crimes, in my opinion.
What differences are there in the way of morals and values of early 19th century Russian and American societies, and the way they are reflected in crime literature?
In two different cultures there are clear differences that can be discovered in their societies’ morality and ethicality, as these are reflected in crime literature. We have already discussed the two texts which from evidence will be taken to investigate this point, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. We want to discover, from these two texts, what contrasts between the morals and values of the two societies these works of literature come from, in relation to crime and the way they view it. Poe’s society, in the Southern American state of Virginia from around 1810 to 1850, was a coy, proper and strict society, still very influenced by Victorian England, which held the intellect in high esteem, often spoke very complexly, and had wealthy bourgeoisie who enjoyed their leisure time, which included reading the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The Majority of the citizens would have had very little firsthand experience with crime, if any at all, especially murder, and so would have felt very thrilled, frightened and pleased to read about fictional cases of it, whilst being morally opposed to the happenings of the story and holding values against the exploitation of madness, so often written about by Poe, who lacked popularity because of this. Dorothy L. Sayers writes “Death in particular seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other single society” – this sentence alone justifies that these Americans, which had minds akin to those of the Anglo-Saxons, took pleasure in these mysterious, fictional writings of death and crime, they enjoyed it innocently, whilst being opposed to and fearful of the reality of death, and I gather they held moral values against the exploitation of madness in literature, as they did not support Poe’s writings, which had a madman theme. Poe writes about how relaxed the detectives who are investigating the murderer’s home become once they are freely shown around the house, and offered a seat and something to drink, which demonstrates the naivety of American society, including the police, and how they sub-consciously take delight in death.
The society of 1840s-60s St. Petersburg, Russia, however, was far different. Dostoevsky’s society was akin to crime on a much larger scale than Poe’s, with the majority of the citizens having direct experience of crime, more often than once, whether they had committed the crime, witnessed it, been subject to it or heard about it; the occurrence of crime was frequent. St. Petersburg was and still is a very large, common city of Russia, with a vast population, very little space to move and live, unless you had a lot of money, which very few did, as they lived in poverty from the lack well-paying employment. The majority of the inhabitants worked in small businesses and hands-on jobs for very sparse pay for very long hours, to come home to small, box-like apartment rooms, which they shared with many other people, some who they would not have known well, who would have been drinking and revelling for most of their night. I believe that, in such a life, a human being has a very cramped space to grow, especially morally and ethically. They would have been so used to crime throughout their lives that their thoughts about it would have been very few, and so developed almost no morals, leaving them subject to committing more crime or experiencing more, in my opinion, especially as there was a prevalent mafia present in St. Petersburg at this time. These people would have very rarely read books, and Dostoevsky’s novel would not have been very accessible to them, however, if they had read it, I doubt they would have been very surprised, thrilled or even fearful because of the crime they would read about. One particular scene in Crime and Punishment that illustrates the lack of moral integrity and values, and the tendency towards crime that the average St. Petersburger has, is when the main character, Raskolnikov, has a dream in his feverish state of a traumatising childhood experience: the young Raskolnikov was walking with his father home from the country, and they came across a tavern that he felt fearful of because “There was always a crowd there, always shouting, laughter and abuse, hideous hoarse singing and often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking figures were hanging about the tavern.” as Dostoevsky writes. There was a cart sitting in front of the tavern with a weak looking nag tied to it, and suddenly a crowd of drunken people came out of the tavern, and the cart owner beckoned them all to get in the cart, though it would have been impossible for the nag to pull them. Dostoevsky describes:
“They all clambered into Mikolka's cart, laughing and making jokes. Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman...The crowd round them was laughing too...wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to help Mikolka. With the cry of "now," the mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop.”
The scene ends with a crowd of people beating the horse to death with iron rods and “an axe to...finish her off.” The crowd walks away after the nag is dead, without any care.
While Edgar Allan Poe’s 19th century society takes thrills and amusement from crime literature, they have had barely any firsthand experience with crime, though they condemn it with their morals and values, that are against crime altogether. The society of 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia was accustomed to crime in their everyday lives, and took no thrills or anything special from crime literature, and also had no moral or ethical values, due to the sickness, heat and corruptness of their city, and the little space they had to develop as human beings, in my opinion.
What differences are there in the way of morals and values between early 20th century and 21st century, as reflected in crime fiction media?
There are clear contrast between the morals and values of contemporary society and early 19th century society. To illustrate this point, the 1931 film M – Eine stadt sucht einen Moerder by Fritz Lang, and the modern, 2008-10 drama series Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan will be used for evidence. The society depicted in M was a very conscious, fluent society in which all parts, such as workers, police, criminals and intellectuals worked to a very high level of success and had developed cunning and a strong society, very close-knit, as all citizens seemed to get along quite well, like family. In this German film, a “kinder Moeder” or child murderer is the driving narrative force; he commits the murder of a young girl, about 7, by buying her a toy and luring her into his home. This beginning already illustrates the cunning of the German mind, to use tricks that are not suspect to achieve their goals. When Elsie Beckmann, the missing girl, is discovered to be missing, the police have the press print a story about it, which the vast public of the city read, and a reward poster to find the murderer, who is thought to have killed children a few years before, is put up around the city. In my opinion, the police in this case have no problems with letting their society know what is going on with crime in their city. The process the police underwent to help them find the murderer was very clever and precise, for example taking fingerprints and analysing them with a projector, a very modern technique, and analysing the psychological state of mind of the murderer based on his writing style, as he sent the newspapers a letter. It is clear that science in this society is well used and developed, and that an intellectual method of police investigation is taken up, in my opinion. I believe that the cautious, calculated ways of the police and society illustrate that they are people with morals against violence and excessive force, and have values for the use of the mind as a tool to achieve goals, such as finding a murderer. Though, ironically, in the end, the criminals of the city are the ones to capture the murderer, through committing various crimes to get to him, such as blackmail, assault and breaking and entering, such as in the last scene they trap the murderer in a government building, which they break into, knock out the guards and search for the murderer, successfully capturing him. The criminals then want to kill the murderer in front of the citizens, to show they believe in true justice, which is actually their crime. In spite of the intense efforts taken by the police to protect the children of their city, it was only for criminal minds to capture another criminal, as they are not bound by the laws and restrictions that the police are, and they think alike to other criminals.
The crime world of the 21st century is dominated by drug-related crime, which is clearly demonstrated by Vince Gilligan’s 21st century television series, Breaking Bad, which is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and reflects that society specifically, but also alludes to the general criminal underground across the world. The society of ABQ, New Mexico is shown to be, on the surface, a large city with mostly middle-class people who are involved in various jobs, ranging in media, department stores, upper-level business, school teaching, humble business etc, and lower-class people who have addictions to drugs and alcohol, live in poverty and have a general lack of responsibility in their lives, generally what you would expect to find in the majority of western societies today. However, underneath all of this simplicity, pre-tense and ignorance there is a dark, maniacal society of criminals who feed the methamphetamine addicts of the lower-class and the few select of the middle-class who condemn drugs openly, but consume them secretly, making more money than anyone else in the state. In the episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin’”, season 1, episode 6, we see Walter White, a middle-class chemistry teacher who, because he has discovered he was cancerous, got into the crime business to produce methamphetamine for criminals to make money for his family before he dies, walking into the “crib” of a king-pin drug addict and seller to reclaim the money and drugs that were stolen from his partner. He succeeds in reclaiming his belongings by using his intelligence of chemistry to create a chemical with the appearance of methamphetamine, which explodes with volatility upon impact with objects. This scene demonstrates the stupidity of the average 21st century criminal, and the intelligence of this specific individual who can over-power five gun-wielding Mexicans with science. In this example two poles of criminality are present, the unintelligent, incautious, violent and junkie criminals, and the cautious, planning, creative, clever and prepared criminals, which leads us to one of Walter’s future partners, Gus, a very clever and powerful criminal leader. In the third season we see Gus often, posing as the manager of a local restaurant chain, “Los Pollos Hermanos” which he owns and launders his drug money through. He makes public appearances frequently, even once bringing food to a crowd of police officers who are in hospital, visiting their comrade, Walter’s step-brother, who has been on the case to find the producer of the “blue-meth”, “Heisenberg”, which is actually Walter working for Gus. Because of Hank’s, Walter’s DEA step-brother, violent, rushed, hopeful method of investigation and tracking he has no chance of discovering the producer. The police of this society are very unintelligent, hands-on shooting, killing, breaking, bashing types, which are almost as immoral as the killers, who never let their society know what is going on in the underworld of their city, lying in the media. In Layer Cake, a crime film by Matthew Vaughn, it is shown that all criminals get killed in the end, even the protagonist, who is shot in the heart on his hotel steps, demonstrating that no matter how careful, intelligent or prepared a criminal is, he is bound to face what he has done, a very present reality in today’s world.
Over an 80 year distance in time we can examine the burgeoned modern world of 1930 to today’s modern world of 2010. Where the values of each society lye is quite clear, and the moral predicaments of each time period certainly have different focus points and realities. The past culture of the 1930s had values for using intelligence, constructivism (also an art movement that was present in Europe at this time), protecting and bringing good, ethical and intelligent children into the world, using clever methods to solve their problems by making the intellect a tool, rather than a weapon and respecting each part of their society as needed for the whole to advance peacefully, not disrupting their balance at this point entirely, like they did later and like the Americans are doing today. They had open morals against most crime, but were not so surrealistic to believe that they or any other society could live in a crimeless world like some today do, in my opinion. Our modern society of 2010, however, has changed drastically from that period in many ways. The vast majority of westerners seem to hold very strong values for family, risking and wasting our lives to provide for them and make them happy, values for a police force to order our whole crime world, when, in my opinion, it is only human will driven by love and acceptance that can cure the crime world, a treatment of the individual soul, not a bizarre, uniformed squad of robots with guns, breaking down doors and killing people because they are so-called “guilty” or “not innocent”, and because of this, many people value violence and bloodshed over love and openness because they are told to believe it protects them. The intellect is vaguely trained and misused consistently in this world, though with the one-in-ten-thousand exception of people like Walter White and Gus, but even they chose to be criminals. The modern world is simply corrupt with malevolent thinking, apathy and ignorance, shown frequently on our television screens in shows like Breaking Bad, in my opinion. But it is also shown that everyone one of us has the ability to make choices which lead us down different paths, and there are some who choose paths of light, love, simplicity and humbleness, while others choose paths of dream states, ignorance and repression, I believe. I think the society of 1930 had less choice than we, however, as their society was a preparation for a world of shifting consciousness which we are in today, where everyone would start to consciously make decisions about the directions of their lives. And so the main difference between our modern world and their past world is that we can choose to create morals and values that suit our way of life, where their morals and values were inherited, destined prepared, futuristic, in my opinion.
Conclusione
We have discovered from our investigation that Crime literature demonstrates the psychological stress, confused with or leading to madness in some cases, heavily present on the killer in crime fiction and also in reality, the people of society reading crime literature feel challenged by their own fear of the madness and crime that are present, whilst being thrilled by the shocking content and grounded and secured by the knowledge of their safety at that moment. This description demonstrates Edgar Allan Poe’s society mainly, but Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian society is seen quite differently, taking little stress, comfort, excitement or wonder from crime literature, while being often exposed to crime in reality, as we have deduced, and so have developed few morals or values against it, as to them it is normal. And we have discovered that our modern underground crime world is drug-orientated, yet we live in an age of conscious choice that allows us the freedom to create our own path, and that because of this many people in the world have chosen crime, pre-tense, ignorance and especially fear as their path, while some others choose intellectual domination, and others love and compassion. Crime fiction, overall, is a way for an artist to reflect the crime in their society in a creation that demonstrates the affects it has upon the human psyche, and the direction the human race is possibly facing. Crime in reality to the human race seems to be an aspect of life that is to be feared, condemned because of the fear it brings, through hatred, violence, deceit and disruption of peace and order, but it is also an aspect that brings a lot of world-hypocrisy, as everyone is a criminal to some extent, whole countries that go to war for example are all, relatively, criminals, it is just that the people we condemn are full-time criminals to different extents, and we refuse to accept that it simply is! That it exists! And we can only help it change with love and acceptance.
Crime writing, how does the genre reflect the morals and values of society?
Introduzione
Crime fiction has played an important part in society around the world in the past two centuries up ‘til now, reflecting its morals and values and its psychological state of mind. The use various artists, authors and directors have made of the crime subject has shed light on the morals and values societies of certain cultures at certain periods have had, and what typifies these societies in the way of their psychological states and their reactionary behaviours. The understanding of the psychological states of mind of different cultures and time periods can offer great insight into how societies change and form, produce and react, showing their fears, their drives and their beliefs and knowledge about the world of crime. I am investigating the links between different cultural societies over time to discover the relevance of crime to people.
What psychological security or strain does crime fiction offer to society?
The whole of St. Petersburg, Russia in the mid 19th century was involved criminally, knew of crime around them or experienced it first hand, in their corrupt, soul-taxing city.
In the first part of Crime and Punishment the author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, emphasizes the psychological strain taken on by the inhabitants of mid 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia, and the criminal acts against others, themselves and humanity they were driven to because of the chaos, malaise and poverty that characterised St. Petersburg at this time. St. Petersburg was experiencing a hot, humid summer at this time, “…during a spell of exceptionally hot weather…” Dostoevsky writes, ridden with poverty and unemployment which resulted in a great lack of moral standards and values, including theft, murder, daily drunkenness, family beatings, prostitution, corrupt law, blackmail, rape et cetera. Dostoevsky writes one scene in which a young girl, about fifteen, had been made forcibly drunk by some men in a bar, who had their way with her and sent her into the crawling streets to wander alone, delusional. Raskolnikov, the main character of the novel, sees her staggering along the street to sit down on a side-road chair, Dostoevsky describes: “The girl was walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side… the seat… on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner… a quite young, fair-haired girl—sixteen, perhaps not more than fifteen…”. Furthermore, a shifty looking gentleman begins to approach her, noticeably with the intention of having his way with her, whom Raskolnikov tells to go away and threatens to fight, right when an officer comes along. In my opinion, in this scene Dostoevsky illustrates the disgusting and corrupt nature of the common Russian in St. Petersburg, and their complete lack of moral integrity, which would have been very close to reality, as it was written from Dostoevsky’s own experiences in this city. However, Raskolnikov demonstrates a more dignified, higher standard of morality than the average citizen, as he is a very individual intellectual, by protecting the girl from harm and paying for her cab ride home. I think the society of mid 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia, was a society lacking most moral standards and practices, and had very few values, other than value for their own lives; to get through another day. They were very familiar with crime, and saw it as a normal part of their every-day lives, never really developing much disdain for it which would have led to the creation of morality and values.
American society of the mid 19th century innocently enjoyed the thrills and kills of crime, especially when it took place in a distorted atmosphere of madness and fiction. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, he tells of an extremely nervous man, who commits a murder of an old, decrepit man, with a “pale blue… vulture’s eye, with a film over it”. As the murderer/narrator tells the story, he has an urging tendency to prove he is not a madman, often saying “why will you say that I am mad?”, “how then am I mad” and “you fancy I am mad”. It is clear that the psychological strain is heavily present on the murderer in crime fiction, as in Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov questions his sanity constantly after killing two elderly women. The reader, often an average man or women of society, would feel very unnerved, worried, scared or even frustrated at reading about a murderer who questions his sanity over and over, after getting away with killing a vulnerable, elderly person. Most societies, especially in the western world, are extremely affected by murder, as they question their safety and the sanity of the world around them. Society takes on a lot of psychological stress from murder, yet they are attracted and wowed by the macabre aspects of death, and thus gain security in themselves. They are scared of the pleasure they take at the absurdity of these murders and crimes, in my opinion.
What differences are there in the way of morals and values of early 19th century Russian and American societies, and the way they are reflected in crime literature?
In two different cultures there are clear differences that can be discovered in their societies’ morality and ethicality, as these are reflected in crime literature. We have already discussed the two texts which from evidence will be taken to investigate this point, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. We want to discover, from these two texts, what contrasts between the morals and values of the two societies these works of literature come from, in relation to crime and the way they view it. Poe’s society, in the Southern American state of Virginia from around 1810 to 1850, was a coy, proper and strict society, still very influenced by Victorian England, which held the intellect in high esteem, often spoke very complexly, and had wealthy bourgeoisie who enjoyed their leisure time, which included reading the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The Majority of the citizens would have had very little firsthand experience with crime, if any at all, especially murder, and so would have felt very thrilled, frightened and pleased to read about fictional cases of it, whilst being morally opposed to the happenings of the story and holding values against the exploitation of madness, so often written about by Poe, who lacked popularity because of this. Dorothy L. Sayers writes “Death in particular seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other single society” – this sentence alone justifies that these Americans, which had minds akin to those of the Anglo-Saxons, took pleasure in these mysterious, fictional writings of death and crime, they enjoyed it innocently, whilst being opposed to and fearful of the reality of death, and I gather they held moral values against the exploitation of madness in literature, as they did not support Poe’s writings, which had a madman theme. Poe writes about how relaxed the detectives who are investigating the murderer’s home become once they are freely shown around the house, and offered a seat and something to drink, which demonstrates the naivety of American society, including the police, and how they sub-consciously take delight in death.
The society of 1840s-60s St. Petersburg, Russia, however, was far different. Dostoevsky’s society was akin to crime on a much larger scale than Poe’s, with the majority of the citizens having direct experience of crime, more often than once, whether they had committed the crime, witnessed it, been subject to it or heard about it; the occurrence of crime was frequent. St. Petersburg was and still is a very large, common city of Russia, with a vast population, very little space to move and live, unless you had a lot of money, which very few did, as they lived in poverty from the lack well-paying employment. The majority of the inhabitants worked in small businesses and hands-on jobs for very sparse pay for very long hours, to come home to small, box-like apartment rooms, which they shared with many other people, some who they would not have known well, who would have been drinking and revelling for most of their night. I believe that, in such a life, a human being has a very cramped space to grow, especially morally and ethically. They would have been so used to crime throughout their lives that their thoughts about it would have been very few, and so developed almost no morals, leaving them subject to committing more crime or experiencing more, in my opinion, especially as there was a prevalent mafia present in St. Petersburg at this time. These people would have very rarely read books, and Dostoevsky’s novel would not have been very accessible to them, however, if they had read it, I doubt they would have been very surprised, thrilled or even fearful because of the crime they would read about. One particular scene in Crime and Punishment that illustrates the lack of moral integrity and values, and the tendency towards crime that the average St. Petersburger has, is when the main character, Raskolnikov, has a dream in his feverish state of a traumatising childhood experience: the young Raskolnikov was walking with his father home from the country, and they came across a tavern that he felt fearful of because “There was always a crowd there, always shouting, laughter and abuse, hideous hoarse singing and often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking figures were hanging about the tavern.” as Dostoevsky writes. There was a cart sitting in front of the tavern with a weak looking nag tied to it, and suddenly a crowd of drunken people came out of the tavern, and the cart owner beckoned them all to get in the cart, though it would have been impossible for the nag to pull them. Dostoevsky describes:
“They all clambered into Mikolka's cart, laughing and making jokes. Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman...The crowd round them was laughing too...wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to help Mikolka. With the cry of "now," the mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop.”
The scene ends with a crowd of people beating the horse to death with iron rods and “an axe to...finish her off.” The crowd walks away after the nag is dead, without any care.
While Edgar Allan Poe’s 19th century society takes thrills and amusement from crime literature, they have had barely any firsthand experience with crime, though they condemn it with their morals and values, that are against crime altogether. The society of 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia was accustomed to crime in their everyday lives, and took no thrills or anything special from crime literature, and also had no moral or ethical values, due to the sickness, heat and corruptness of their city, and the little space they had to develop as human beings, in my opinion.
What differences are there in the way of morals and values between early 20th century and 21st century, as reflected in crime fiction media?
There are clear contrast between the morals and values of contemporary society and early 19th century society. To illustrate this point, the 1931 film M – Eine stadt sucht einen Moerder by Fritz Lang, and the modern, 2008-10 drama series Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan will be used for evidence. The society depicted in M was a very conscious, fluent society in which all parts, such as workers, police, criminals and intellectuals worked to a very high level of success and had developed cunning and a strong society, very close-knit, as all citizens seemed to get along quite well, like family. In this German film, a “kinder Moeder” or child murderer is the driving narrative force; he commits the murder of a young girl, about 7, by buying her a toy and luring her into his home. This beginning already illustrates the cunning of the German mind, to use tricks that are not suspect to achieve their goals. When Elsie Beckmann, the missing girl, is discovered to be missing, the police have the press print a story about it, which the vast public of the city read, and a reward poster to find the murderer, who is thought to have killed children a few years before, is put up around the city. In my opinion, the police in this case have no problems with letting their society know what is going on with crime in their city. The process the police underwent to help them find the murderer was very clever and precise, for example taking fingerprints and analysing them with a projector, a very modern technique, and analysing the psychological state of mind of the murderer based on his writing style, as he sent the newspapers a letter. It is clear that science in this society is well used and developed, and that an intellectual method of police investigation is taken up, in my opinion. I believe that the cautious, calculated ways of the police and society illustrate that they are people with morals against violence and excessive force, and have values for the use of the mind as a tool to achieve goals, such as finding a murderer. Though, ironically, in the end, the criminals of the city are the ones to capture the murderer, through committing various crimes to get to him, such as blackmail, assault and breaking and entering, such as in the last scene they trap the murderer in a government building, which they break into, knock out the guards and search for the murderer, successfully capturing him. The criminals then want to kill the murderer in front of the citizens, to show they believe in true justice, which is actually their crime. In spite of the intense efforts taken by the police to protect the children of their city, it was only for criminal minds to capture another criminal, as they are not bound by the laws and restrictions that the police are, and they think alike to other criminals.
The crime world of the 21st century is dominated by drug-related crime, which is clearly demonstrated by Vince Gilligan’s 21st century television series, Breaking Bad, which is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and reflects that society specifically, but also alludes to the general criminal underground across the world. The society of ABQ, New Mexico is shown to be, on the surface, a large city with mostly middle-class people who are involved in various jobs, ranging in media, department stores, upper-level business, school teaching, humble business etc, and lower-class people who have addictions to drugs and alcohol, live in poverty and have a general lack of responsibility in their lives, generally what you would expect to find in the majority of western societies today. However, underneath all of this simplicity, pre-tense and ignorance there is a dark, maniacal society of criminals who feed the methamphetamine addicts of the lower-class and the few select of the middle-class who condemn drugs openly, but consume them secretly, making more money than anyone else in the state. In the episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin’”, season 1, episode 6, we see Walter White, a middle-class chemistry teacher who, because he has discovered he was cancerous, got into the crime business to produce methamphetamine for criminals to make money for his family before he dies, walking into the “crib” of a king-pin drug addict and seller to reclaim the money and drugs that were stolen from his partner. He succeeds in reclaiming his belongings by using his intelligence of chemistry to create a chemical with the appearance of methamphetamine, which explodes with volatility upon impact with objects. This scene demonstrates the stupidity of the average 21st century criminal, and the intelligence of this specific individual who can over-power five gun-wielding Mexicans with science. In this example two poles of criminality are present, the unintelligent, incautious, violent and junkie criminals, and the cautious, planning, creative, clever and prepared criminals, which leads us to one of Walter’s future partners, Gus, a very clever and powerful criminal leader. In the third season we see Gus often, posing as the manager of a local restaurant chain, “Los Pollos Hermanos” which he owns and launders his drug money through. He makes public appearances frequently, even once bringing food to a crowd of police officers who are in hospital, visiting their comrade, Walter’s step-brother, who has been on the case to find the producer of the “blue-meth”, “Heisenberg”, which is actually Walter working for Gus. Because of Hank’s, Walter’s DEA step-brother, violent, rushed, hopeful method of investigation and tracking he has no chance of discovering the producer. The police of this society are very unintelligent, hands-on shooting, killing, breaking, bashing types, which are almost as immoral as the killers, who never let their society know what is going on in the underworld of their city, lying in the media. In Layer Cake, a crime film by Matthew Vaughn, it is shown that all criminals get killed in the end, even the protagonist, who is shot in the heart on his hotel steps, demonstrating that no matter how careful, intelligent or prepared a criminal is, he is bound to face what he has done, a very present reality in today’s world.
Over an 80 year distance in time we can examine the burgeoned modern world of 1930 to today’s modern world of 2010. Where the values of each society lye is quite clear, and the moral predicaments of each time period certainly have different focus points and realities. The past culture of the 1930s had values for using intelligence, constructivism (also an art movement that was present in Europe at this time), protecting and bringing good, ethical and intelligent children into the world, using clever methods to solve their problems by making the intellect a tool, rather than a weapon and respecting each part of their society as needed for the whole to advance peacefully, not disrupting their balance at this point entirely, like they did later and like the Americans are doing today. They had open morals against most crime, but were not so surrealistic to believe that they or any other society could live in a crimeless world like some today do, in my opinion. Our modern society of 2010, however, has changed drastically from that period in many ways. The vast majority of westerners seem to hold very strong values for family, risking and wasting our lives to provide for them and make them happy, values for a police force to order our whole crime world, when, in my opinion, it is only human will driven by love and acceptance that can cure the crime world, a treatment of the individual soul, not a bizarre, uniformed squad of robots with guns, breaking down doors and killing people because they are so-called “guilty” or “not innocent”, and because of this, many people value violence and bloodshed over love and openness because they are told to believe it protects them. The intellect is vaguely trained and misused consistently in this world, though with the one-in-ten-thousand exception of people like Walter White and Gus, but even they chose to be criminals. The modern world is simply corrupt with malevolent thinking, apathy and ignorance, shown frequently on our television screens in shows like Breaking Bad, in my opinion. But it is also shown that everyone one of us has the ability to make choices which lead us down different paths, and there are some who choose paths of light, love, simplicity and humbleness, while others choose paths of dream states, ignorance and repression, I believe. I think the society of 1930 had less choice than we, however, as their society was a preparation for a world of shifting consciousness which we are in today, where everyone would start to consciously make decisions about the directions of their lives. And so the main difference between our modern world and their past world is that we can choose to create morals and values that suit our way of life, where their morals and values were inherited, destined prepared, futuristic, in my opinion.
Conclusione
We have discovered from our investigation that Crime literature demonstrates the psychological stress, confused with or leading to madness in some cases, heavily present on the killer in crime fiction and also in reality, the people of society reading crime literature feel challenged by their own fear of the madness and crime that are present, whilst being thrilled by the shocking content and grounded and secured by the knowledge of their safety at that moment. This description demonstrates Edgar Allan Poe’s society mainly, but Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian society is seen quite differently, taking little stress, comfort, excitement or wonder from crime literature, while being often exposed to crime in reality, as we have deduced, and so have developed few morals or values against it, as to them it is normal. And we have discovered that our modern underground crime world is drug-orientated, yet we live in an age of conscious choice that allows us the freedom to create our own path, and that because of this many people in the world have chosen crime, pre-tense, ignorance and especially fear as their path, while some others choose intellectual domination, and others love and compassion. Crime fiction, overall, is a way for an artist to reflect the crime in their society in a creation that demonstrates the affects it has upon the human psyche, and the direction the human race is possibly facing. Crime in reality to the human race seems to be an aspect of life that is to be feared, condemned because of the fear it brings, through hatred, violence, deceit and disruption of peace and order, but it is also an aspect that brings a lot of world-hypocrisy, as everyone is a criminal to some extent, whole countries that go to war for example are all, relatively, criminals, it is just that the people we condemn are full-time criminals to different extents, and we refuse to accept that it simply is! That it exists! And we can only help it change with love and acceptance.
Impressionism
The artistic techniques used by the Impressionists (or the ‘insurgents’) had been used occasionally by other painters in history, but never collectively and so effectively. One of the most characteristic techniques adopted by the insurgents was painting en plein air (meaning outdoors). They did this to directly capture the natural light effects of the scene before them, producing lively and fresh (plein) artworks. In these outdoor paintings, these new artists ingeniously repeated the tones of blue they saw in the sky in the bold shadows they painted, ensuing a feeling of openness and freshness in the art. Some paintings were done under the stars; in the evening, and as a result captured shadowy and twilit scenes. Thick, short brushstrokes (oft applied impasto) were the impressionistic way of depicting their vision and supporting their artistic ideals: to capture the true nature and essence of their subject, ignoring the minute details. ‘Impression’, in French, can mean snapshot. And in order to live up to their name, the impressionists frequently cropped their paintings (especially Monsieur Degas), enforcing the capturing of subjectively beautiful scenes in a moment. Pure impressionists, such as Renoir, despised the use of black, and instead mixed complementary colours to produce dark tones. Les Insurgés stressed and focused on the way natural light plays upon objects, especially in accordance with the reflection of colour from each object, and to emphasize this, colour was applied juxtaposed, if possible without blending, to give the painting’s surface a bright, pulsing and energetic surface, caused by the optical mixing of colour in the viewer’s eye. Lastly, wet-on-wet painting, the application of wet paint as a successive layer onto paint which is still wet, was incorporated to yield the effects of soft-edged objects that dissolve into the scene.
Neo-impressionism
The artistic purpose of the neo-impressionists, led and founded by Georges Seurat, was to create a disciplined and refined type of artistic expression which meditated upon order and eternity, in blunt contrast to the ephemerality and intuition begotten by the Impressionists. Earnestly driven by their aesthetic principles, they attempted to purify the feeling-based impulsiveness of the Impressionists’ artistic style. The techniques of Pointillism and Divisionism combined, which dominated early neo-impressionistic technique, were the methods developed by Georges Seurat to accomplish his aesthetic ideals. Pointillism involves the specific method in which paint is applied with the brush onto the canvas, and Divisionism is focused on scientific colour theory. Pointillism: short blocks or points of colour are applied individually onto the canvas creating precise, reasonably geometric form, thus instilling an idea of order and immovability. Divisionism: the dots and short strokes of pure colour are placed side by side, in a range of tones according to the laws of colour theory in order to show form, which relies upon the optical mixing of colour in the viewers’ eye, intended to create a distinct luminous effect about the artworks.
Post-impressionism
The term Post-impressionism is used in a historical sense to describe the artistic period that developed from Impressionism, beginning in 1886 and ending some 20 years or so later, and contained a series of artists younger than the impressionists, who rejected the limitations of Impressionism and created different principles in the way that line, form, pattern and colour should be used, whilst keeping the Impressionist use of intense colours and thick (impasto) brush strokes. To extend Impressionism, these later Impressionists distorted natural figures for their own expression, emphasized geometric form, and incorporated unnatural and impulsive use of colour. But, unfittingly for an artistic movement, the Post-impressionists did not altogether think alike, and could not agree on the direction to take the art. Vincent van Gogh frequently used vibrant, agitated and swirling brush strokes in his technique, which created patterns and distortions that reflected his mind-state and feelings. Paul Cézanne strongly desired to turn Impressionism into something “solid and durable, like the art of museums.” And so reduced objects to fundamental shapes, pertaining to vibrant, Insurgent colour, producing solid and durable effects in his art that yielded the depiction of three dimensional form, similar to that of the Neo-classicists’. Paul Gauguin applied broad areas of paint and colour – flattening the figures he depicted and producing unnatural, decorative patterns and effects.
The artistic techniques used by the Impressionists (or the ‘insurgents’) had been used occasionally by other painters in history, but never collectively and so effectively. One of the most characteristic techniques adopted by the insurgents was painting en plein air (meaning outdoors). They did this to directly capture the natural light effects of the scene before them, producing lively and fresh (plein) artworks. In these outdoor paintings, these new artists ingeniously repeated the tones of blue they saw in the sky in the bold shadows they painted, ensuing a feeling of openness and freshness in the art. Some paintings were done under the stars; in the evening, and as a result captured shadowy and twilit scenes. Thick, short brushstrokes (oft applied impasto) were the impressionistic way of depicting their vision and supporting their artistic ideals: to capture the true nature and essence of their subject, ignoring the minute details. ‘Impression’, in French, can mean snapshot. And in order to live up to their name, the impressionists frequently cropped their paintings (especially Monsieur Degas), enforcing the capturing of subjectively beautiful scenes in a moment. Pure impressionists, such as Renoir, despised the use of black, and instead mixed complementary colours to produce dark tones. Les Insurgés stressed and focused on the way natural light plays upon objects, especially in accordance with the reflection of colour from each object, and to emphasize this, colour was applied juxtaposed, if possible without blending, to give the painting’s surface a bright, pulsing and energetic surface, caused by the optical mixing of colour in the viewer’s eye. Lastly, wet-on-wet painting, the application of wet paint as a successive layer onto paint which is still wet, was incorporated to yield the effects of soft-edged objects that dissolve into the scene.
Neo-impressionism
The artistic purpose of the neo-impressionists, led and founded by Georges Seurat, was to create a disciplined and refined type of artistic expression which meditated upon order and eternity, in blunt contrast to the ephemerality and intuition begotten by the Impressionists. Earnestly driven by their aesthetic principles, they attempted to purify the feeling-based impulsiveness of the Impressionists’ artistic style. The techniques of Pointillism and Divisionism combined, which dominated early neo-impressionistic technique, were the methods developed by Georges Seurat to accomplish his aesthetic ideals. Pointillism involves the specific method in which paint is applied with the brush onto the canvas, and Divisionism is focused on scientific colour theory. Pointillism: short blocks or points of colour are applied individually onto the canvas creating precise, reasonably geometric form, thus instilling an idea of order and immovability. Divisionism: the dots and short strokes of pure colour are placed side by side, in a range of tones according to the laws of colour theory in order to show form, which relies upon the optical mixing of colour in the viewers’ eye, intended to create a distinct luminous effect about the artworks.
Post-impressionism
The term Post-impressionism is used in a historical sense to describe the artistic period that developed from Impressionism, beginning in 1886 and ending some 20 years or so later, and contained a series of artists younger than the impressionists, who rejected the limitations of Impressionism and created different principles in the way that line, form, pattern and colour should be used, whilst keeping the Impressionist use of intense colours and thick (impasto) brush strokes. To extend Impressionism, these later Impressionists distorted natural figures for their own expression, emphasized geometric form, and incorporated unnatural and impulsive use of colour. But, unfittingly for an artistic movement, the Post-impressionists did not altogether think alike, and could not agree on the direction to take the art. Vincent van Gogh frequently used vibrant, agitated and swirling brush strokes in his technique, which created patterns and distortions that reflected his mind-state and feelings. Paul Cézanne strongly desired to turn Impressionism into something “solid and durable, like the art of museums.” And so reduced objects to fundamental shapes, pertaining to vibrant, Insurgent colour, producing solid and durable effects in his art that yielded the depiction of three dimensional form, similar to that of the Neo-classicists’. Paul Gauguin applied broad areas of paint and colour – flattening the figures he depicted and producing unnatural, decorative patterns and effects.
Claude Monet of Impressionism, Georges Seurat of Neo-Impressionism and Vincent van Gogh of Post-Impressionism all had differing artistic styles that each give specific meaning to their paintings of the Eiffel Tower.
Claude Monet, the fore-leader of Impressionism, idealised the simple, frivolous and romantic perspective of 19th century French life, with an especial focus on leisure activity. Parisians would visit the Eiffel Tower for its romance, beauty and speciality in the city of Paris, a city where people simply lived to enjoy themselves, a way of life Monet appreciated.
The soft, vibrant, essence-capturing effects of Impressionist painting are a poetical ode to the ephemerality of the enjoyment of the moment, so indulged in by the French, representing their free, comical approach to life as a nation, embracing love and light. The rushed, short brush strokes also influence this theme of romance, ephemerality and leisure, impassioning and charging the painting, capturing emotion, and thus perfectly complementing the French energy and way of life, especially in a post stamp.
The effects of Seurat’s techniques contrast greatly with those of Claude Monet. Seurat had a desire to depict art with solid, permanent and almost geometrically shaped forms with his techniques of Pointillism and Divisionism, which focused on scientific colour theory and the optical mixing of colour in the eye. He believed Neo-Impressionism should reflect the scientific development of this his time period in France by including scientific theory, relation to the modernity of the developed, late 19th century mind. Seurat actually did complete a painting of the Eiffel Tower, a building which to him and many other French people was a great symbol of the modernity that had developed in France at this time, and the progression of technology, science and the mind.
Seurat’s technique of painstakingly precise placement of specifically coloured points, side by side, created an overall solid, yet luminous effect that can be compared to the attractiveness of the Eiffel Tower, and its convicting presence of new creation and development in the world. Initially, people struggled to accept Seurat’s malaise-inflicting Pointillist paintings, because they demonstrated how a single soul can turn the face of art in another, completely fresh direction, that showed precision, strength and vibrancy that came from such a driven and forthright man.
Seurat’s Neo-Impressionist style used as a French national postage stamp would reflect the transition through a century of malaise, challenge and industry into a more enlightened and experienced France, ready to create for the future.
Vincent van Gogh, a foremost Post-Impressionist and expressionist-inspiring man of spirit, like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had fervent and religious appreciation of nature, believing it to be a necessary focus in life, especially in painting and poetry. Nature to van Gogh was the most pure form of spirit or god manifest on earth. He chose to show this with expressive, swirling brush strokes of vibrant colour, which results in the uplifting of nature with the artist’s expressive emotion. In doing so, the nature of reality is distorted, while it is remade as a part of the artist’s expression, romanticising it, giving it human emotion. With this emotion driven process, an artwork of swirling patterns, unrealistic colours and momentary capturing with excited brush strokes is formed, with contrasts of bright, passionate reds, oranges and yellows against calm, happy, peaceful colours such as green and blue.
Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist, emotion driven art techniques reflect a god empowered archetype that stands for the power of humanity. By building constructions like the Eiffel Tower, that pose and impending threat to nature, the French erected the artificial side in their humanity; a compensating, phallic power within the centre of their so-called city of love. And so Vincent’s style would give an opposing point-of-view to the French Eiffel Tower, and what it means of France.
Where Monet used vibrant colour and soft, short, rushed brush strokes to capture the essence of their subject, ephemeral light effects and the total impression, Seurat used vibrant, yet structured and very specific colours, calculatedly and precisely placing them in dots of pure colour juxtaposed to yield the effects of geometry, luminosity, permanence and solidity that captures the modernity of late, 19th century France. Van Gogh used vibrant colour like Monet and Seurat, but his colours were unrealistic, and used for expressing feeling and experience. His frenzied brush strokes with swirling patterns to communicate his state of mind and feeling also give a human life quality to nature, uplifting it and transforming it, something that neither Monet nor Seurat could fathom.
These three artists all created artistic techniques, involving colour and paint application, for their own purposes, such as expressing their thoughts and/or feelings about the world. They communicated their feelings to the world through their individual techniques, whether romantic and simple, a testament to man’s scientific prowess, or the love of god in nature and the opposition to the destructive feats of humanity.
Claude Monet, the fore-leader of Impressionism, idealised the simple, frivolous and romantic perspective of 19th century French life, with an especial focus on leisure activity. Parisians would visit the Eiffel Tower for its romance, beauty and speciality in the city of Paris, a city where people simply lived to enjoy themselves, a way of life Monet appreciated.
The soft, vibrant, essence-capturing effects of Impressionist painting are a poetical ode to the ephemerality of the enjoyment of the moment, so indulged in by the French, representing their free, comical approach to life as a nation, embracing love and light. The rushed, short brush strokes also influence this theme of romance, ephemerality and leisure, impassioning and charging the painting, capturing emotion, and thus perfectly complementing the French energy and way of life, especially in a post stamp.
The effects of Seurat’s techniques contrast greatly with those of Claude Monet. Seurat had a desire to depict art with solid, permanent and almost geometrically shaped forms with his techniques of Pointillism and Divisionism, which focused on scientific colour theory and the optical mixing of colour in the eye. He believed Neo-Impressionism should reflect the scientific development of this his time period in France by including scientific theory, relation to the modernity of the developed, late 19th century mind. Seurat actually did complete a painting of the Eiffel Tower, a building which to him and many other French people was a great symbol of the modernity that had developed in France at this time, and the progression of technology, science and the mind.
Seurat’s technique of painstakingly precise placement of specifically coloured points, side by side, created an overall solid, yet luminous effect that can be compared to the attractiveness of the Eiffel Tower, and its convicting presence of new creation and development in the world. Initially, people struggled to accept Seurat’s malaise-inflicting Pointillist paintings, because they demonstrated how a single soul can turn the face of art in another, completely fresh direction, that showed precision, strength and vibrancy that came from such a driven and forthright man.
Seurat’s Neo-Impressionist style used as a French national postage stamp would reflect the transition through a century of malaise, challenge and industry into a more enlightened and experienced France, ready to create for the future.
Vincent van Gogh, a foremost Post-Impressionist and expressionist-inspiring man of spirit, like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had fervent and religious appreciation of nature, believing it to be a necessary focus in life, especially in painting and poetry. Nature to van Gogh was the most pure form of spirit or god manifest on earth. He chose to show this with expressive, swirling brush strokes of vibrant colour, which results in the uplifting of nature with the artist’s expressive emotion. In doing so, the nature of reality is distorted, while it is remade as a part of the artist’s expression, romanticising it, giving it human emotion. With this emotion driven process, an artwork of swirling patterns, unrealistic colours and momentary capturing with excited brush strokes is formed, with contrasts of bright, passionate reds, oranges and yellows against calm, happy, peaceful colours such as green and blue.
Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist, emotion driven art techniques reflect a god empowered archetype that stands for the power of humanity. By building constructions like the Eiffel Tower, that pose and impending threat to nature, the French erected the artificial side in their humanity; a compensating, phallic power within the centre of their so-called city of love. And so Vincent’s style would give an opposing point-of-view to the French Eiffel Tower, and what it means of France.
Where Monet used vibrant colour and soft, short, rushed brush strokes to capture the essence of their subject, ephemeral light effects and the total impression, Seurat used vibrant, yet structured and very specific colours, calculatedly and precisely placing them in dots of pure colour juxtaposed to yield the effects of geometry, luminosity, permanence and solidity that captures the modernity of late, 19th century France. Van Gogh used vibrant colour like Monet and Seurat, but his colours were unrealistic, and used for expressing feeling and experience. His frenzied brush strokes with swirling patterns to communicate his state of mind and feeling also give a human life quality to nature, uplifting it and transforming it, something that neither Monet nor Seurat could fathom.
These three artists all created artistic techniques, involving colour and paint application, for their own purposes, such as expressing their thoughts and/or feelings about the world. They communicated their feelings to the world through their individual techniques, whether romantic and simple, a testament to man’s scientific prowess, or the love of god in nature and the opposition to the destructive feats of humanity.
Title: Whiteout on Van Buren
Author: Don Winslow
Culture: American
Type: Short Story
Date Finished: 20th February 2010
The short story Whiteout on Van Buren by Don Winslow is a piece of neo-noir fiction about a vaguely described man named Jerry, who takes a walk in the hot weather of Phoenix, Arizona, being pestered by prostitutes along the way. He has been hired as a hit-man to kill another vaguely described man in a hotel apartment across the city. When he arrives, full of nerves, the story twists and he ends up getting shot or stabbed, and walks out into the front of the hotel and dies. Someone comes along and steals his money, while the man he was supposed to kill looks over him from a balcony, drinking icy alcohol.
Although I felt this a rather dreary and uncomfortable story, I found a bit of dry humour in it that gave me the giggles. The author put very little humour in this story, keeping within the noir tradition, but one comical piece of conversation without real substance is written, that is intentionally humouress, but intolerably so and in bad taste. This humour occurs when two men are talking about a Russian named Rosavich, who has come to Phoenix, and why a man from a cold, foreign country would be in America:
“Aren’t Russians supposed to like snow and sleighs and ice hockey and shit like that? Go after an Israeli, you expect to find him in the desert, not a Russian.” His friend then says “maybe he’s a Russian Jew.”
Winslow probably spent quite a bit of time crafting this thick punch-lined bit of humour, containing elements of uneducated American humour with many stereo-types that reflect the lack of social morals of some Americans, and it is humouress purely because of this irony, as I perceive it.
I disliked the way women were portrayed throughout the story, as they are treated by the author like the trash that is picked up every Tuesday morning, which made me uncomfortable. Winslow depicts his women as whores of desperation, graceless and self-degrading; the least spiritual form of existence; like carnal ragdolls bent on self-destruction. My ideals and experiences of those of the female existence are centred on the gracefulness, beauty, joy and creativity that they bring in to the world, Winslow seems to have ideals for the opposite, in my opinion, which is more or less closer to the wider reality. The example is in the opening, when the protagonist passes an alley on the way to his job and is confronted by a whore, who relentlessly pesters him to pay her for the use of her body, despite him consistently denying her. Winslow goes onto to write “women in Phoenix...They’re all whores”, in keeping with his fluently negative depiction of women. I believe all men and women are responsible for the words they create, whether in writing or speaking, and Winslow here is clearly trying to persuade the reader to take a negative perception of women, looking at them all as femme fatales, out to get money and power for the abuse they entreat, although this is the way women are used in all noir, to create some sense that everyone is corrupt, in my opinion.
Author: Don Winslow
Culture: American
Type: Short Story
Date Finished: 20th February 2010
The short story Whiteout on Van Buren by Don Winslow is a piece of neo-noir fiction about a vaguely described man named Jerry, who takes a walk in the hot weather of Phoenix, Arizona, being pestered by prostitutes along the way. He has been hired as a hit-man to kill another vaguely described man in a hotel apartment across the city. When he arrives, full of nerves, the story twists and he ends up getting shot or stabbed, and walks out into the front of the hotel and dies. Someone comes along and steals his money, while the man he was supposed to kill looks over him from a balcony, drinking icy alcohol.
Although I felt this a rather dreary and uncomfortable story, I found a bit of dry humour in it that gave me the giggles. The author put very little humour in this story, keeping within the noir tradition, but one comical piece of conversation without real substance is written, that is intentionally humouress, but intolerably so and in bad taste. This humour occurs when two men are talking about a Russian named Rosavich, who has come to Phoenix, and why a man from a cold, foreign country would be in America:
“Aren’t Russians supposed to like snow and sleighs and ice hockey and shit like that? Go after an Israeli, you expect to find him in the desert, not a Russian.” His friend then says “maybe he’s a Russian Jew.”
Winslow probably spent quite a bit of time crafting this thick punch-lined bit of humour, containing elements of uneducated American humour with many stereo-types that reflect the lack of social morals of some Americans, and it is humouress purely because of this irony, as I perceive it.
I disliked the way women were portrayed throughout the story, as they are treated by the author like the trash that is picked up every Tuesday morning, which made me uncomfortable. Winslow depicts his women as whores of desperation, graceless and self-degrading; the least spiritual form of existence; like carnal ragdolls bent on self-destruction. My ideals and experiences of those of the female existence are centred on the gracefulness, beauty, joy and creativity that they bring in to the world, Winslow seems to have ideals for the opposite, in my opinion, which is more or less closer to the wider reality. The example is in the opening, when the protagonist passes an alley on the way to his job and is confronted by a whore, who relentlessly pesters him to pay her for the use of her body, despite him consistently denying her. Winslow goes onto to write “women in Phoenix...They’re all whores”, in keeping with his fluently negative depiction of women. I believe all men and women are responsible for the words they create, whether in writing or speaking, and Winslow here is clearly trying to persuade the reader to take a negative perception of women, looking at them all as femme fatales, out to get money and power for the abuse they entreat, although this is the way women are used in all noir, to create some sense that everyone is corrupt, in my opinion.
Title: The Odyssey (late 8th century BCE)
Author: Homer
Culture: Ionic
Type: Epic Poem
Date Finished: 24th May 2010
The epic poem The Odyssey by Homer is about the mythic Greek Hero Odysseus and his challenging journey back home to Ithaka from Troy, the holy city he victoriously sacked with his Achaean army. He is driven by the desire to get back to his kingdom and family, to protect his city and remove the yearning from the hearts of his wife and son, Penelope and Telemachus, who have to endure the treachery of Penelope’s insolent suitors who are “eating them out of house and home”, as Penelope refuses to marry one or reject all of the suitors.
Meanwhile, Odysseus’ ship is thrown off course by the wrath of Poseidon the sea god, Odysseus and his men struggle to return home, with various trials preventing their return, such as the sweet and deadly songs of the Sirens, the brutal and hungry Cyclops, the lotus-eaters who lure people with psychedelic drugs, the black-witch Circe, the multi-headed beast Scylla and the living whirl-pool Charybdis. After many of Odysseus’ men had died in these traps, the rest were killed by a raging storm set upon them by Zeus, because they had eaten the holy cattle of the sun-god Hyperion, even after being warned by Circe.
Odysseus was the only one to survive the wrath of Zeus by holding onto the ship’s mast. For days he floated on the remnants of his ship, until he came to the island Ogygia of the nymph Calypso. She kept as her sex-slave for five years, before being told by Hermes the messenger to let Odysseus attempt to return home. Reluctantly she tells Odysseus he can leave, giving him wine, clothes and equipment to build a raft. Odysseus sails for almost a month, coming near to the Island of the sea-faring Phaecians. After almost dying in a storm sent by Poseidon, Odysseus is helped by Athena and a goddess of the sea to reach the shore of Phaecia, where he falls asleep, ragged and briny under two thick olive bushes.
After a long and complicated visit and story-telling session on this island, the king orders his best rowers to return Odysseus to his home, which they do smoothly and quickly. They lay him on an Ithakan beach with his treasure, sleeping. After a complicated return, meeting Telemachus first, Odysseus returns to his house, disguised as a beggar. He plots with his son on how to murder the suitors, and eventually kills the hundred of them with the help of two servants, his son and the goddess Athena, reclaiming his house and reacquainting himself with Penelope and his city.
I admired the use of epithets, formulaic phrases and scenes and the general poetry of this lovely epic tale. In my opinion Homer must have been very intelligent and ingenious, with the poetic mind to create repetitions of language devices in the way of describing the characters, of attractive scenes which are repeated at various points in the tale to aid in remembering certain occurrences in the oral poem and to enliven the stylistic colour of The Odyssey. “But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn, With rosy lustre purpled o'er the lawn...(followed by action of characters)” is an example of a formulaic phrase in The Odyssey, describing the mythological Greek perception of the unique light that shines upon the earth at early morning, as the ancient Greeks often described phenomena of the earth with metaphoric tales. This phrase occurs at least six times throughout this poem, and it is followed by a specific action each time it occurs, Homer is aided in remembering certain scenes in sequence. Examples of epithets are “Athena of the flashing eyes”, “Hermes with the golden rod” and “Zeus the thunderer”. These give the listener or reader a more frequent, clear understanding of the gods and characters in the poem, as they basically describe very unique traits of each individual frequently and consistently.
The beauty, fluency and care with which the poetry of this epic poem has been written impresses, amazes and gives me the greatest joy in reading. Alexander Pope’s 18th century translation is written with all of these qualities, offering colourful and diverse descriptions that are very accurate and hold true to Homer’s original. This paragraph demonstrates what I am talking about:
“Till now approaching nigh the magic bower,
Where dwelt the enchantress skill'd in herbs of power,
A form divine forth issued from the wood
(Immortal Hermes with the golden rod)
In human semblance. On his bloomy face
Youth smiled celestial, with each opening grace.
He seized my hand, and gracious thus began:
'Ah whither roam'st thou, much-enduring man?
O blind to fate! what led thy steps to rove
The horrid mazes of this magic grove?
Each friend you seek in yon enclosure lies,
All lost their form, and habitants of sties.
Think'st thou by wit to model their escape?
Sooner shalt thou, a stranger to thy shape,
Fall prone their equal: first thy danger know,
Then take the antidote the gods bestow.
The plant I give through all the direful bower
Shall guard thee, and avert the evil hour.
Now hear her wicked arts: Before thy eyes
The bowl shall sparkle, and the banquet rise;
Take this, nor from the faithless feast abstain,
For temper'd drugs and poison shall be vain.”
In this paragraph fluency is strongly a part, while its beauty is abundant to woo the heart; care has been taken to sustain its grace, and impressions of gaiety will light up the face. Each line rhyme’st with the next in succession, offering description in variety that doth teach a lesson: the mind is entertain’d not by revision, but by variation with poetic incision, as I believe it all to be, though my opinion is wrought with ephemerality.
Author: Homer
Culture: Ionic
Type: Epic Poem
Date Finished: 24th May 2010
The epic poem The Odyssey by Homer is about the mythic Greek Hero Odysseus and his challenging journey back home to Ithaka from Troy, the holy city he victoriously sacked with his Achaean army. He is driven by the desire to get back to his kingdom and family, to protect his city and remove the yearning from the hearts of his wife and son, Penelope and Telemachus, who have to endure the treachery of Penelope’s insolent suitors who are “eating them out of house and home”, as Penelope refuses to marry one or reject all of the suitors.
Meanwhile, Odysseus’ ship is thrown off course by the wrath of Poseidon the sea god, Odysseus and his men struggle to return home, with various trials preventing their return, such as the sweet and deadly songs of the Sirens, the brutal and hungry Cyclops, the lotus-eaters who lure people with psychedelic drugs, the black-witch Circe, the multi-headed beast Scylla and the living whirl-pool Charybdis. After many of Odysseus’ men had died in these traps, the rest were killed by a raging storm set upon them by Zeus, because they had eaten the holy cattle of the sun-god Hyperion, even after being warned by Circe.
Odysseus was the only one to survive the wrath of Zeus by holding onto the ship’s mast. For days he floated on the remnants of his ship, until he came to the island Ogygia of the nymph Calypso. She kept as her sex-slave for five years, before being told by Hermes the messenger to let Odysseus attempt to return home. Reluctantly she tells Odysseus he can leave, giving him wine, clothes and equipment to build a raft. Odysseus sails for almost a month, coming near to the Island of the sea-faring Phaecians. After almost dying in a storm sent by Poseidon, Odysseus is helped by Athena and a goddess of the sea to reach the shore of Phaecia, where he falls asleep, ragged and briny under two thick olive bushes.
After a long and complicated visit and story-telling session on this island, the king orders his best rowers to return Odysseus to his home, which they do smoothly and quickly. They lay him on an Ithakan beach with his treasure, sleeping. After a complicated return, meeting Telemachus first, Odysseus returns to his house, disguised as a beggar. He plots with his son on how to murder the suitors, and eventually kills the hundred of them with the help of two servants, his son and the goddess Athena, reclaiming his house and reacquainting himself with Penelope and his city.
I admired the use of epithets, formulaic phrases and scenes and the general poetry of this lovely epic tale. In my opinion Homer must have been very intelligent and ingenious, with the poetic mind to create repetitions of language devices in the way of describing the characters, of attractive scenes which are repeated at various points in the tale to aid in remembering certain occurrences in the oral poem and to enliven the stylistic colour of The Odyssey. “But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn, With rosy lustre purpled o'er the lawn...(followed by action of characters)” is an example of a formulaic phrase in The Odyssey, describing the mythological Greek perception of the unique light that shines upon the earth at early morning, as the ancient Greeks often described phenomena of the earth with metaphoric tales. This phrase occurs at least six times throughout this poem, and it is followed by a specific action each time it occurs, Homer is aided in remembering certain scenes in sequence. Examples of epithets are “Athena of the flashing eyes”, “Hermes with the golden rod” and “Zeus the thunderer”. These give the listener or reader a more frequent, clear understanding of the gods and characters in the poem, as they basically describe very unique traits of each individual frequently and consistently.
The beauty, fluency and care with which the poetry of this epic poem has been written impresses, amazes and gives me the greatest joy in reading. Alexander Pope’s 18th century translation is written with all of these qualities, offering colourful and diverse descriptions that are very accurate and hold true to Homer’s original. This paragraph demonstrates what I am talking about:
“Till now approaching nigh the magic bower,
Where dwelt the enchantress skill'd in herbs of power,
A form divine forth issued from the wood
(Immortal Hermes with the golden rod)
In human semblance. On his bloomy face
Youth smiled celestial, with each opening grace.
He seized my hand, and gracious thus began:
'Ah whither roam'st thou, much-enduring man?
O blind to fate! what led thy steps to rove
The horrid mazes of this magic grove?
Each friend you seek in yon enclosure lies,
All lost their form, and habitants of sties.
Think'st thou by wit to model their escape?
Sooner shalt thou, a stranger to thy shape,
Fall prone their equal: first thy danger know,
Then take the antidote the gods bestow.
The plant I give through all the direful bower
Shall guard thee, and avert the evil hour.
Now hear her wicked arts: Before thy eyes
The bowl shall sparkle, and the banquet rise;
Take this, nor from the faithless feast abstain,
For temper'd drugs and poison shall be vain.”
In this paragraph fluency is strongly a part, while its beauty is abundant to woo the heart; care has been taken to sustain its grace, and impressions of gaiety will light up the face. Each line rhyme’st with the next in succession, offering description in variety that doth teach a lesson: the mind is entertain’d not by revision, but by variation with poetic incision, as I believe it all to be, though my opinion is wrought with ephemerality.
Titles: The Night and The Riot
Author: Anatoly Marienhof
Culture: Russian
Type: Imaginist Poetry
Date Finished: 12th July 2010
The Night is a short poem by Anatoly Marienhof, a foremost Russian writer of Imaginism, a poetic movement of the early 20th century that contained poems with “sequences of arresting and uncommon images...[using] metaphors, sometimes producing long chains of them in their poems”, about the impression he had of night. The Riot seems to reference the early Russian revolutions and Marienhof’s impressions of these.
TheNight
Upon reading the first two lines of this gently mind-expanding poem I was enlightened with the impression of directed, focused liberty in the power that the mind has to create and imagine. I have never read such poetry before, if any similar to this exists, and the unique chain of metaphors of the poem are both purely and deeply realistic in a fantastic sense, paradoxically. The poem runs:
“The night, like a tear, flowed out of an immense eye
and rolled down along the roofs upon the lashes.
Sorrow rose up like Lazarus
and raced in the streets to cry and blame everyone,
throwing herself around necks – and everyone flipped
and screamed: you're insane!
and with whoops of fear beat the eardrums
ringing like diamond cards.”
The poem is soft in its delivery, yet revolutionary in its content, and shows how the talented and correctly directed mind can picture a bizarre, imagined yet strong and grounded scene, and then describe it with language that shows the imagination clearly, yet with such a distorted frame.
TheRiot
To me this poem shows the trauma, ridiculousness and the hate endured by poets and average people alike during the time of Stalin and Lenin’s takeover of Russia. The Bolshevik revolutionists were brutally violent and destructive, inventing means to suppress humanity. The poem is:
The riot's crimson finger pokes
Into the map
of both hemispheres:
“Here! Here! Here!”
Death gropes every hole
like a broom.
Hey there, you! Against the wall, all – prisoners.”
And the earth, like a butcher's apron
covered in human, as though in a bull's, blood.....
“Christ has risen!”
It is direct, probing and a realistic impression and description of the arbitrary revolutionary patterns and is drawn from this into a poem with perfect sanity in imagination, from my point-of-view. In a very sincere way this kind of poetry was necessary for the world, as it sensitively and justly suffered the entire problem of humanity in this age, and such suffering cannot be successfully endured by a human being, and so such poets always die early in life, with most Imaginists dying between the age of 25 and 60, as opposed to more thick, earthly and grounded poets like Goethe and Hesse, who lived past 80.
Author: Anatoly Marienhof
Culture: Russian
Type: Imaginist Poetry
Date Finished: 12th July 2010
The Night is a short poem by Anatoly Marienhof, a foremost Russian writer of Imaginism, a poetic movement of the early 20th century that contained poems with “sequences of arresting and uncommon images...[using] metaphors, sometimes producing long chains of them in their poems”, about the impression he had of night. The Riot seems to reference the early Russian revolutions and Marienhof’s impressions of these.
TheNight
Upon reading the first two lines of this gently mind-expanding poem I was enlightened with the impression of directed, focused liberty in the power that the mind has to create and imagine. I have never read such poetry before, if any similar to this exists, and the unique chain of metaphors of the poem are both purely and deeply realistic in a fantastic sense, paradoxically. The poem runs:
“The night, like a tear, flowed out of an immense eye
and rolled down along the roofs upon the lashes.
Sorrow rose up like Lazarus
and raced in the streets to cry and blame everyone,
throwing herself around necks – and everyone flipped
and screamed: you're insane!
and with whoops of fear beat the eardrums
ringing like diamond cards.”
The poem is soft in its delivery, yet revolutionary in its content, and shows how the talented and correctly directed mind can picture a bizarre, imagined yet strong and grounded scene, and then describe it with language that shows the imagination clearly, yet with such a distorted frame.
TheRiot
To me this poem shows the trauma, ridiculousness and the hate endured by poets and average people alike during the time of Stalin and Lenin’s takeover of Russia. The Bolshevik revolutionists were brutally violent and destructive, inventing means to suppress humanity. The poem is:
The riot's crimson finger pokes
Into the map
of both hemispheres:
“Here! Here! Here!”
Death gropes every hole
like a broom.
Hey there, you! Against the wall, all – prisoners.”
And the earth, like a butcher's apron
covered in human, as though in a bull's, blood.....
“Christ has risen!”
It is direct, probing and a realistic impression and description of the arbitrary revolutionary patterns and is drawn from this into a poem with perfect sanity in imagination, from my point-of-view. In a very sincere way this kind of poetry was necessary for the world, as it sensitively and justly suffered the entire problem of humanity in this age, and such suffering cannot be successfully endured by a human being, and so such poets always die early in life, with most Imaginists dying between the age of 25 and 60, as opposed to more thick, earthly and grounded poets like Goethe and Hesse, who lived past 80.
Title: The Gold Bug (1843)
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Culture: American
Type: Short Story (45 pg)
Date Finished: 24th January 2010
The short story The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe is about the cryptic adventure, set in early 19th century America, South Carolina, undergone by the unnamed narrator, his friend Mr. William Legrand and his Negro slave, Jupiter. On Sullivan’s Island, the home of Legrand, a mysterious gold beetle is found when Legrand is bitten by it, and then Legrand is seemed by Jupiter to be going insane. This was not the case, but nevertheless Legrand’s unnamed friend is summoned to visit, and visit he does. The gold bug leads Legrand and, somewhat collaterally, his friend to believe the gold bug is a clue that leads the buried treasure of Captain Kidd, and so they take upon themselves the task of deciphering the mysterious message.
I found the use of cryptography in Poe’s tale pleasing in the sense that its inclusion created a new dimension in short story writing, and for this it was one of his only stories to be greatly heralded by the public of his time. Cryptography is a form of secret writing, using a code of symbols to replace the real alphabet, and is highly difficult to decrypt and master the use of, which is why it was so admired. After the narrator and Legrand progress with their ratiocination (the use of reason and detecting to resolve a problem), they discover a substitution cipher, using symbols for letters, mainly numbers, question marks, crosses and semi-colons, which they decipher and discover a puzzle describing landmarks that will lead them to the treasure:
“A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north
main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head
a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.”
They solve the puzzle using ratiocination, and find the hidden treasure, with a few mild mistakes along the way. This constant puzzle solving with the use of basic human logical thinking is impressive in that it brings to the wider-world the tool-use of the mind, which is obviously preached by Poe to be very important in the development of society, as it can acquire great rewards that serve human existence, such as the gleaming treasure found in this tale, that symbolises human gain, human evolution.
At the beginning of most of Poe’s tales there is a quote from another writer, or a select line from a poem or story of Poe’s, that illustrates to the reader a fluent theme that will be discovered in the story. This, to me, is greatly entertaining, as it is so very stylistic of Poe and his analytic and intellectually colourful temperament. The line used at the beginning of The Gold Bug is shown in smaller writing than the story placed above the first paragraph, underneath the title, as most are, and says “What ho! What ho! this fellow is dancing mad! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. (All in the Wrong)” Poe’s stylistic element is fairly obvious in this line, as it uses antique language and very unique sentence forms. What I find interesting in this line is that it foreshadows the theme of madness present in the gold bug, specifically the madness that seemingly came upon Legrand after he was bitten by the gold bug, and that he was treated as a madman in his pursuit of treasure which the narrator did not full-heartedly believe to be in existence. Despite the mad assertions about this “dancing mad” fellow, he was proved to be extremely passionate and perhaps eccentric in his desire, as he found the treasure he longed to find.
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Culture: American
Type: Short Story (45 pg)
Date Finished: 24th January 2010
The short story The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe is about the cryptic adventure, set in early 19th century America, South Carolina, undergone by the unnamed narrator, his friend Mr. William Legrand and his Negro slave, Jupiter. On Sullivan’s Island, the home of Legrand, a mysterious gold beetle is found when Legrand is bitten by it, and then Legrand is seemed by Jupiter to be going insane. This was not the case, but nevertheless Legrand’s unnamed friend is summoned to visit, and visit he does. The gold bug leads Legrand and, somewhat collaterally, his friend to believe the gold bug is a clue that leads the buried treasure of Captain Kidd, and so they take upon themselves the task of deciphering the mysterious message.
I found the use of cryptography in Poe’s tale pleasing in the sense that its inclusion created a new dimension in short story writing, and for this it was one of his only stories to be greatly heralded by the public of his time. Cryptography is a form of secret writing, using a code of symbols to replace the real alphabet, and is highly difficult to decrypt and master the use of, which is why it was so admired. After the narrator and Legrand progress with their ratiocination (the use of reason and detecting to resolve a problem), they discover a substitution cipher, using symbols for letters, mainly numbers, question marks, crosses and semi-colons, which they decipher and discover a puzzle describing landmarks that will lead them to the treasure:
“A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north
main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head
a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.”
They solve the puzzle using ratiocination, and find the hidden treasure, with a few mild mistakes along the way. This constant puzzle solving with the use of basic human logical thinking is impressive in that it brings to the wider-world the tool-use of the mind, which is obviously preached by Poe to be very important in the development of society, as it can acquire great rewards that serve human existence, such as the gleaming treasure found in this tale, that symbolises human gain, human evolution.
At the beginning of most of Poe’s tales there is a quote from another writer, or a select line from a poem or story of Poe’s, that illustrates to the reader a fluent theme that will be discovered in the story. This, to me, is greatly entertaining, as it is so very stylistic of Poe and his analytic and intellectually colourful temperament. The line used at the beginning of The Gold Bug is shown in smaller writing than the story placed above the first paragraph, underneath the title, as most are, and says “What ho! What ho! this fellow is dancing mad! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. (All in the Wrong)” Poe’s stylistic element is fairly obvious in this line, as it uses antique language and very unique sentence forms. What I find interesting in this line is that it foreshadows the theme of madness present in the gold bug, specifically the madness that seemingly came upon Legrand after he was bitten by the gold bug, and that he was treated as a madman in his pursuit of treasure which the narrator did not full-heartedly believe to be in existence. Despite the mad assertions about this “dancing mad” fellow, he was proved to be extremely passionate and perhaps eccentric in his desire, as he found the treasure he longed to find.
Title: Crime and Punishment (1866)
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Culture: Russian
Type: Novel
Date Finished: 25th July 2010
The novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is about a Russian university student, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, living in a box-like flat in the midst of the crowded and busy St. Petersburg. Suffering from poverty and no longer being able to pay his university fees, he enters a month long trance of depression, excessive-thinking, black-outs and haziness. He formulates a plan to murder an old, female pawnbroker, who cheats her customers, for her money. He believes by removing this parasitic woman from the universe he is justified in killing her and making better use of her money, often justifying himself by saying he is like Napoleon Bonaparte, killing for a higher purpose, whom he finds out he is the opposite of.
I was thrilled and shocked by the bizarre, almost surrealist scenes of Russian activity that are spread throughout the novel in Raskolnikov’s dreams. Dostoevsky writes these with such calculation and colour, yet makes them appear hazy and out of order, like the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou by Salvador Dali and Louis Bunuel. For example, Raskolnikov falls into a sickness induced sleep in which he dreams of being a child in his home town, walking with his father home from the country. Raskolnikov puts a cross on his infant brother’s grave and kissed the small headstone, moving on with his father and finding a large tavern to be in their way. A cart with a weak nag tied in front of it stood outside, and in a flash of colours and drunkenness a large crowd pours out of the tavern door and stood revelling around the cart, being brought to attention by the cart owner who tells them to get in the back, “"Get in! Come along!" The crowd laughed. "D'you hear she'll gallop!" says the driver. The scene ends with horse being whipped and beaten to death with axes and iron bars, and the little Raskolnikov crying at the horse’s dead body, kissing it on the lips. The rowdiness, lack of sense and sanity of these tavern-dwellers relentlessly murdering a horse, combined with the vagueness of walking home from the country, the macabre aspect of the infant grave-stone kissing boy, the cross, and the flurry of emotion give these types of scenes a strange, beastly sense of natural mysticism mixed with brutality and insanity.
The intensity of this young Russian man, Raskolnikov, both in intellect and spirit, is powerful and draws you in to the strength of this novel, in my opinion. Dostoevsky’s style in the way he presents his characters is remarkable, showing clearly their deep-rooted emotional problems and disposition in the world, as well as their purpose and direction. An example of this is in the beginning of the novel when Raskolnikov is introduced to us as a young ex-university student, living in a small room land-ladied by an old, miserable woman, whom he avoids each time he walks down his stairs. In a beginning scene Raskolnikov goes for a walk through the streets and is described as ignoring every person he passed, self-absorbed in his own thoughts and sufferings, with a high level of anxiety about him, and ruthlessness towards the people of the exterior world, which is based on the corrupt or vague impressions they made upon him as an intellectual. When his maid brings him supper one day, she asks what he is doing: is he working? Is he studying? Only to get the answer that he is thinking. At this response she bursts in to laughter at the absurdity, which opens up to us that Raskolnikov is far too involved in his illusory, romantic suffering, and so wastes his days in his “accursed mind”. The fall into a self-destroying state that Raskolnikov made demonstrates to the reader the belligerency of some human beings, who are so selfish, in my opinion, as to believe their life to be anything other than a beautiful gift.
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Culture: Russian
Type: Novel
Date Finished: 25th July 2010
The novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is about a Russian university student, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, living in a box-like flat in the midst of the crowded and busy St. Petersburg. Suffering from poverty and no longer being able to pay his university fees, he enters a month long trance of depression, excessive-thinking, black-outs and haziness. He formulates a plan to murder an old, female pawnbroker, who cheats her customers, for her money. He believes by removing this parasitic woman from the universe he is justified in killing her and making better use of her money, often justifying himself by saying he is like Napoleon Bonaparte, killing for a higher purpose, whom he finds out he is the opposite of.
I was thrilled and shocked by the bizarre, almost surrealist scenes of Russian activity that are spread throughout the novel in Raskolnikov’s dreams. Dostoevsky writes these with such calculation and colour, yet makes them appear hazy and out of order, like the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou by Salvador Dali and Louis Bunuel. For example, Raskolnikov falls into a sickness induced sleep in which he dreams of being a child in his home town, walking with his father home from the country. Raskolnikov puts a cross on his infant brother’s grave and kissed the small headstone, moving on with his father and finding a large tavern to be in their way. A cart with a weak nag tied in front of it stood outside, and in a flash of colours and drunkenness a large crowd pours out of the tavern door and stood revelling around the cart, being brought to attention by the cart owner who tells them to get in the back, “"Get in! Come along!" The crowd laughed. "D'you hear she'll gallop!" says the driver. The scene ends with horse being whipped and beaten to death with axes and iron bars, and the little Raskolnikov crying at the horse’s dead body, kissing it on the lips. The rowdiness, lack of sense and sanity of these tavern-dwellers relentlessly murdering a horse, combined with the vagueness of walking home from the country, the macabre aspect of the infant grave-stone kissing boy, the cross, and the flurry of emotion give these types of scenes a strange, beastly sense of natural mysticism mixed with brutality and insanity.
The intensity of this young Russian man, Raskolnikov, both in intellect and spirit, is powerful and draws you in to the strength of this novel, in my opinion. Dostoevsky’s style in the way he presents his characters is remarkable, showing clearly their deep-rooted emotional problems and disposition in the world, as well as their purpose and direction. An example of this is in the beginning of the novel when Raskolnikov is introduced to us as a young ex-university student, living in a small room land-ladied by an old, miserable woman, whom he avoids each time he walks down his stairs. In a beginning scene Raskolnikov goes for a walk through the streets and is described as ignoring every person he passed, self-absorbed in his own thoughts and sufferings, with a high level of anxiety about him, and ruthlessness towards the people of the exterior world, which is based on the corrupt or vague impressions they made upon him as an intellectual. When his maid brings him supper one day, she asks what he is doing: is he working? Is he studying? Only to get the answer that he is thinking. At this response she bursts in to laughter at the absurdity, which opens up to us that Raskolnikov is far too involved in his illusory, romantic suffering, and so wastes his days in his “accursed mind”. The fall into a self-destroying state that Raskolnikov made demonstrates to the reader the belligerency of some human beings, who are so selfish, in my opinion, as to believe their life to be anything other than a beautiful gift.
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