Sonnet CXVI William Shakespeare 1564-1616
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Thank You, My Fate Anna Swir (1909-1984)
Great humility fills me,
great purity fills me,
I make love with my dear
as if I made love dying
as if I made love praying,
tears pours
over my arms and his arms.
I don't know whether this is joy
or sadness, I don't understand
what I fell, I'm crying,
I'm crying, it's humility
as if I were dead,
gratitude, I thank you, my fate,
I'm unworthy, how beautiful
my life.
Today we will get to some of the other poetry and prose selections included on the syllabus, and next week the film Howl. I will distribute several pieces, fairytale and myth, along with some poetry selections. If you wrote a response last week to Into the Wild, you have just one more due for the quarter today, by week 10, at which time your final project is also due. If you choose to respond to Howl, you may submit the response week 11.
Recitations and the final in-class exam will happen week 11.
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In the fairytale “The Frog Prince, ” included first in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a collection first published in 1812, a young princess goes for a walk in a wood and at last sits beside a “cool spring of water with a rose in the middle of it.” There she plays catch with a golden ball, her favorite toy. In fact, missing a catch, she sees it roll into the spring, and disappear in its depths. She would give everything she has to get it back, but how?
I have heard the story interpreted by Joseph Campbell (Pathways to Bliss 2004) in terms of the hero’s journey, an allegorical (symbolic) reading. In it, the wood represents the unknown calling to her, a dangerous, dark place where she ventures alone, beyond the reach of her familiars. Campbell calls it an “abyss.” The spring represents an underworld, the unconscious, the source of intuitive promptings and impulse. She plays with a golden ball, which represents her Self: golden and perfectly circular, a sacred potentiality. In playing with it, she risks losing it. Fortunately, an ugly frog appears from the depths, a threshold guardian figure that may be likened to fairytale dragons. He will retrieve her ball, if she gives him something in return, something of equal value. And that, he says, is her love. He wants to live with her, “eat from [her] golden plate, and sleep on [her] bed.”
And so the princess agrees, thinking him “silly” and not intending to keep her promises. He retrieves her ball and off she runs with it. But the story does not end there, for the ugly frog will have what was promised, and the princess’s father will hold her to the promise she made as well. The frog is importunate and by and by, in a fit of wrath, as some versions of the story have it, she throws the frog against her bedroom wall as if to kill it, and a handsome prince springs forth, magically released from the enchantment of a “spiteful fairy.” Princess and Prince thus unite and by doing so leave adolescence and child’s play behind. They come into their own together, and the Prince’s faithful servant arrives to bring them home to the kingdom, which has suffered in the prince’s long absence.
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Response Option:
Response Option:
Having had you watch the film Howl (starring James Franco in the role of the poet Allen Ginsberg, author of the poem “Howl”) I am interested in your response to the content of the poem, the poet’s explanations of his work and why he wrote it, and the critical responses expressed during the trial scenes. In your own words, relate what the poem is about, what you thought of Ginsberg’s discussion of the work, and the opinions aired in court on the matter of its obscenity or no, its artistic merit, the advisability of censoring its publication, etcetera (350 words).
Several links posted here may be useful:
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