Literary Journal #12 - Their Eyes were Watching God

    First of all, I have to mention that I never thought I would like this book before I read it. Being an Asian kid who only lived in this country for a little over three years, I did not find any connection between an African American woman who lived in early twentieth century and me. But it turned out, that it became one of my favorite books of all time after I finished reading it. Honestly, I did not even want to read the book but I had to read it for my English class at school. Coming back to the States, I first opened the book in Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan, where I had 4 hour layover. Finishing the book on the plane right before it landed in Philadelphia airport, I felt like time passed by very quick. It was unusual because I abhor flying and become more impatient and bored in airplanes.

    Anyway, the novel is about an African American woman, whose name is Janie, leaves home to find her own life. She marries three men, and after her last husband Tea Cake dies, she comes back home.

    Identity of each individual cannot be defined by other people. In order to discover one's own identity, she/he has to go on a journey (which does not necessarily have to be a physical travelling) and experience the world she/he is surrounded by. I think I could have sympathy towards Janie because I felt I was having a similar journey as a young adult looking for my identity after I left home to live in a completely different environment and be friends with people who speak different language and eat different food in different looking houses.

    It is not an easy task to live a life that one wants to live. Ironically, it often seems easier to pursue the life that other people, instead of ourselves, value. But I always feel like life is a solitary act. Though we might be surrounded by people who we talk to and hang out with all the time, each of us is separate entity that carries different stories and character inside of us. And personal spirit can only grow within us when we admit that our lives are the hurdles to overcome. Often it hurts, but you can discover and appreciate more beauties after you overcome the great obstacles of your life.

Literary Journal #11 - Pagliacci

    Ruggero Leoncavallo's famous opera, Pagliacci, is a great masterpiece of music, literature and play. Although operas are not considered as a major branch of literature, they contain no less factors of literature than other forms of literature. Not only they have stories, they are plays and they are music. Out of many, many operas, Pagliacci is my personal favorite. It is a story of clown, Canio, and his commedia troupe. Canio's wife, Nedda, cheats on him and has affair with another clown Silvio. Driven mad after he found out about the affair, Canio stabs both Nedda and Silvio at the end of the opera.(for details, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagliacci) It will be insensitive to compare this work directly to other regular plays, but Pagliaacci is definitely a masterpiece in both literature and music.
 
    I personally feel Pagliacci and Shakespeare's plays have many things in common. One of them is that they both deal with human emotions and relationships that lead their characters into chaos and death. The tragic heroes complete and perfect the stories of humans. The biggest difference seems like Pagliacci is quite Italian. An English man would kill himself before killing his wife for cheating. But probably the reason Italians have made most of the best operas is their rich emotions and unstoppable passion.

    I remember posting a Youtube video of Vesti la Giubba (Put on the Costume) in this blog. It is sung by Canio, after he finds out about the affair. Even though he feels devastated, he still has to prepare for the show. Living as a clown, he has to make people even when he himself is very sad and depressed. Here is another great, great recording by the legendary Mario Lanza.

    Even though I understand new forms of arts have been developed throughout last several decades, I feel very sad not many people write operas anymore. People consider operas only as an antique form of art and don't think they would be fun. Yes, I admit some, no actually many lines in Italians operas are really lame. Often they like to kill their characters for no sufficient reason and talk about love in very vague ways. But everything develops over time. I want to see more operas coming out in the future. They are a perfect form of literature and art. Musicals are good too, but it seems to me operas often deal with more serious human emotions and are more attached to the literature and writings they are based on.

Literary Journal #10 - "Last Words to Miriam" by D. H. Lawrence

Last Words to Miriam

Yours is the shame and sorrow,

       But the disgrace is mine;

Your love was dark and thorough,

Mine was the love of the sun for a flower

       He creates with his shine.

I was diligent to explore you,

       Blossom you stalk by stalk,

Till my fire of creation bore you

Shrivelling down in the final dour

       Anguish — then I suffered a balk.

I knew your pain, and it broke

       My fine, craftsman's nerve;

Your body quailed at my stroke,

And my courage failed to give you the last

       Fine torture you did deserve.

You are shapely, you are adorned,

       But opaque and dull in the flesh,

Who, had I but pierced with the thorned

Fire-threshing anguish, were fused and cast

       In a lovely illumined mesh.

Like a painted window: the best

       Suffering burnt through your flesh,

Undrossed it and left it blest

With a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: but now

       Who shall take you afresh?

Now who will burn you free

       From your body's terrors and dross,

Since the fire has failed in me?

What man will stoop in your flesh to plough

       The shrieking cross?

A mute, nearly beautiful thing

       Is your face, that fills me with shame

As I see it hardening,

Warping the perfect image of God,

       And darkening my eternal fame.

        Maybe this is the reason why so many people dislike D. H. Lawrence. He is not reluctant to say whatever he feels in his mind through his writings. And because he is so attached to the theme of human relationships and shows his agony resulting from them, he is often called a sexist. 

   

        While the poem is constructed with quintets and traditional end rhymes, the theme and the message it carries is quite anti-traditional. Unlike other love poems, Lawrence's use of words and his expressions are extreme and crude. Until it gets to the last stanza, the poem sounds like a complete blame on the narrator's woman, Miriam. I mean, it is pretty unnecessary to name those words or paraphrase the key lines because you can really know what they mean. But once it gets to the last stanza, it becomes clear that the main purpose of the poem is neither blaming Miriam nor discovering the cause of the failure of the relationship, but it is to regret the narrator's inability to continue the relationship, as he puts himself into the position of "shame" and "darken my[his] eternal fame."

 

        To me, D. H. Lawrence is a romanticist rather than a sexist. He is able to throw out his crude emotions on the piece of paper and shape them into order. His genius perfects his poetry in which content and form are united into a finished piece of art. 

Literary Journal #9 - "Piano" by D. H. Lawrence: Can You Repeat the Past?

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

    One of the most famous works done by D. H. Lawrence, the poem Piano is a masterwork of English Literature. While the theme of the poem, nostalgia, can be considered a cliché, shows Lawrence's unique way of writing and delivering emotions. Not only nostalgia for him is a mere sentimental attachment to the past, but also is an inevitable human condition which is triggered by "an insidious mastery of song" that instigates a battle in his heart.* And finally the soft song of the woman completely destroys the "manhood" of the narrator and "betrays" him. The barriers between past and present collapse, but the narrator comes to his realization that there already has been a huge time gap between the past and the present that he cannot cross. Perhaps the reason he weeps is not because he misses his past, but because he notices the lack of his ability to go back to the past. This makes me recall a famous quote in F. S. Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.

"You can't repeat the past? ... Of course you can."

    Can you really repeat the past?

    Perhaps you might create the exactly same situation or setting of the past in present. But are the emotions result from it will have same or equivalent degree of value it had in the past? Everyone, at least once in a while, wishes that they could go back good old days. But when you think about what you felt in those "good" and "old" days, you weren't perhaps appreciating the days you were living as much as you would have done now. It seems a little ironic that people, who in these days fast forward five minute commercials on TV and pick up their foods at drive-thru windows, want to rewind their lives occasionally.

*Camacho, Amaranta O. "THE IMAGE OF NOSTALGIA IN “PIANO”, A POEM BY D.H. LAWRENCE." (2012)