Approaches to Literature(week13)

Approaches to Literature(week13)

The Second Coming (by W.B. Yeats)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

>>Summary

"The Second Coming" is easily one of the most famous and frequently quoted poems in all of Western literature. Several famous prose writers have used lines from W.B. Yeats’s poems as titles to their books, and "The Second Coming" is no exception. For example, Chinua Achebe, an African writer, used part of the third line as the title of his novel, Things Fall Apart, and Woody Allen recently wrote a book called Mere Anarchy.

Yeats’s poem was first published in 1920, a year after the end of World War I, "the Great War," in which millions of European died. While many people at the time just wanted to get on with their lives, Yeats thought that European society had pretty much broken down, and the poem is a terrifying prediction of future violence. Unfortunately, the rise of Hitler and fascism in the 1930s proved him largely correct, and many find the poem disturbingly prophetic in light of the later wars of the twentieth century. However, we shouldn’t somehow think that Yeats was a depressive based on this single work, his bleakest. Many of his other poems engage with more uplifting subjects, like love and Irish folklore. Nor should we think that Yeats was defeatist. After all, he was a very active figure in Irish politics throughout his life, which was in the process of gaining its independence from England. By the time this poem was published, he had already been famous for many years, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Leda and Swan (by W.B. Yeats)

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                    Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

>>Summary

William Butler Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" retells the story from Greek mythology of the rape of a girl named Leda by Zeus, the most powerful of the Greek gods. The "twist" of the story is that Zeus is disguised as a swan. Yeats presents this tale in a relatively graphic way, so modern readers may find the language disturbing. Stories about sex with animals were fairly common in classical societies like Ancient Greece, and the myth of Leda and the swan was once well known. 

"Leda and the Swan" was published in Yeats's 1928 collection The Tower – one of the most celebrated and important literary works of the 20th century. The Tower includes other great poems like "Among Schoolchildren" and "Sailing to Byzantium." 

The Tower was published five years after Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats saved his best for last; he was in his 60s when he wrote this masterpiece. He was also serving in the Irish Senate at the time. If you're into bold statements of opinion, at least one major critic has called "Leda and the Swan" the greatest poem of the 20th century (source).

Yeats's poem was inspired by a Greek myth in which Zeus rapes Leda, the daughter of a king named Thestius. In many versions of the story, Zeus merely seduces Leda. This is definitely not the case in Yeats's graphic version. After the rape, Leda gets pregnant and gives birth to Helen of Troy. According to the story, Helen was hatched from an egg.

We need some background on Helen of Troy and the Trojan War before we get to "Leda and the Swan." Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, and her abduction by a young man named Paris led to the Battle of Troy, the centerpiece of Homer's Iliad. Yeats's poem makes dramatic reference to the destruction of Troy. Yeats would also have been familiar with the many artistic depictions of the story of Leda and the swan by sculptors and painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. 

Yeats is one of Ireland's most well-known and important poets. Some critics have interpreted "Leda and the Swan" as an allegory for the "rape" of Ireland by its colonial masters, the British. Other critics have found its depiction of rape to be tantalizing to the point of offensiveness. However you feel about it, there's no denying the beauty of Yeats's words, even if the actions they describe are horrible.

We should say a word about how we might view this poem from an ethical perspective. For one thing, if this were a poem about a sexual assault involving two human beings, there's no way that any poet could get away with using the sensual language that Yeats uses, and its unlikely that it would receive the critical reception that this poem has received. "Leda and the Swan" was probably intended to be erotic, and some scholars chose to view it that way. But that is not the only way this poem can be interpreted.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree (by W.B. Yeats)

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

>>Summary

William Butler Yeats was kind of a messy guy. By which we mean that he grew up with a lot of contradictions in his life. 

He was an Irish city boy (living mostly in Dublin, and later London), but he visited his mother's hometown in County Sligo (totally country) every summer. 

He received the best, most progressive education but was also drawn to good old fashioned Irish folklore. 

He often wrote in traditional English styles, but also understood the Irish's desire for independence, and tried to write poems that reflected that, too.

You get the picture. 

There were so many opposing forces pulling him in different directions, and it really shows in his poetry. One poem might be influenced by Greek mythology and another by Irish folklore. One might be about the end of the world, and another might be the quiet end of his career. 

He's a hodgepodge poet, and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," published in 1893, is yet another example of his tendency to compare and contrast. It's a country-lovin' poem that actually takes place in a crowded, bustling city. It's all about how the speaker's dreams for the future don't quite reconcile with his present situation. As in, he wants something really bad, but he probably won't have it anytime soon. It's all about the mishmash clash between dreams and reality.

Sure, it probably wasn't too much of a stretch for Yeats to write about a city slicker who longs for the peace of the countryside, considering that as a boy he lived in Dublin and London and visited County Sligo (where the actual island of Innisfree is located) every summer for some much needed rural R and R. But this isn't just a poem about wanting some peace and quiet, and being stuck in the city. It's a whole lot more.

It's about the contradiction we have to live every day. We're stuck in one place, while we long for another. The grass is always, always, always greener on the other side of the fence, and Yeats was no stranger to that idea. His speaker is on the cusp of crossing that fence, but in the poem at least, he never quite gets there. So he lives the dream in his mind, while his body's stuck in the lackluster reality.

Anecdote of the Jar    (by Wallace Stevens)

I placed a jar in Tennessee,   

And round it was, upon a hill.   

It made the slovenly wilderness   

Surround that hill. 

The wilderness rose up to it, 

And sprawled around, no longer wild.   

The jar was round upon the ground   

And tall and of a port in air. 

It took dominion everywhere.   

The jar was gray and bare. 

It did not give of bird or bush,   

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

"Anecdote of the Jar" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. First published in 1919, it is in the public domain.

Anecdote of the Jar

 I placed a jar in Tennessee,

 And round it was, upon a hill.

 It made the slovenly wilderness

 Surround that hill.

 The wilderness rose up to it,

 And sprawled around, no longer wild.

 The jar was round upon the ground

 And tall and of a port in air.

 It took dominion everywhere.

 The jar was gray and bare.

 It did not give of bird or bush,

 Like nothing else in Tennessee.

This famous, much-anthologized poem succinctly accommodates a remarkable number of different and plausible interpretations, as Jacqueline Brogan observes in a discussion of how she teaches it to her students. It can be approached from a New Critical perspective as a poem about writing poetry and making art generally. From a poststructuralist perspective the poem is concerned with temporal and linguistic disjunction, especially in the convoluted syntax of the last two lines. A feminist perspective reveals a poem concerned with male dominance over a traditionally feminized landscape. A cultural critic might find a sense of industrial imperialism. Brogan concludes: "When the debate gets particularly intense, I introduce Roy Harvey Pearce's discovery of the Dominion canning jars (a picture of which is then passed around)."

Buttel suggests that the speaker would arrange the wild landscape into the order of a still life, and though his success is qualified, art and imagination do at least impose an idea of order on the sprawling reality.

Helen Vendler, in a reading that contradicts Brogan's and Buttel's, asserts that the poem is incomprehensible except as understood as a commentary on Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." The poem alludes to Keats, she argues, as a way of discussing the predicament of the American artist "who cannot feel confidently the possessor, as Keats felt, of the Western cultural tradition." Shall he use language imported from Europe ("of a port in air", to "give of"), or "plain American that cats and dogs can read" (as Marianne Moore put it), like "The jar was round upon the ground"? The poem is a palinode, retracting the Keatsian conceits of "Sunday Morning" and vowing "to stop imitating Keats and seek a native American language that will not take the wild out of the wilderness."

Wallace Stevens wrote the poem in 1918 when he was in the town of Elizabethton, Tennessee.

Ode on a Grecian Urn  (by John Keats)

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, 

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape 

       Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? 

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? 

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; 

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, 

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; 

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 

And, happy melodist, unwearied, 

         For ever piping songs for ever new; 

More happy love! more happy, happy love! 

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 

                For ever panting, and for ever young; 

All breathing human passion far above, 

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 

                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? 

What little town by river or sea shore, 

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 

And, little town, thy streets for evermore 

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 

                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede 

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 

With forest branches and the trodden weed; 

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 

         When old age shall this generation waste, 

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all 

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

>>Summary

In the first stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He is preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the “still unravish’d bride of quietness,” the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” He also describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legend they depict and from where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of women and wonders what their story could be: “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not grieve, because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees surrounding the lovers and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves. He is happy for the piper because his songs will be “for ever new,” and happy that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love, which lapses into “breathing human passion” and eventually vanishes, leaving behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are going (“To what green altar, O mysterious priest...”) and from where they have come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have left it, frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza, the speaker again addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of thought.” He thinks that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain, telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and the only thing it needs to know.

               




The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships

"The face that launched a thousand ships" is a well-known figure of speech and a snippet of 17th-century poetry that refers to Helen of Troy.

The poetry of Shakespeare's contemporary English playwright Christopher Marlowe is responsible for what is among the most lovely and famous lines in English literature.

• Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
• And burnt the topless towers of Illium?
• Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss...

The line comes from Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, published in 1604. In the play, Faustus is an ambitious man, who has decided that necromancy--speaking to the dead--is the only path to the power he seeks. The risk of communing with dead spirits, however, is that raising them can make you their master, or their slave. Faustus, conjuring on his own, makes a deal with the demon Mephistopheles, and one of the spirits Faustus raises is Helen of Troy. Because he cannot resist her, he makes her his paramour and is damned forever.

HELEN IN THE ILIAD

According to Homer's The Iliad, Helen was the wife of the king of Sparta, Menelaus. She was so beautiful that Greek men went to Troy and fought the Trojan War to win her back from her lover Paris. The "thousand ships" in Marlowe's play refer to the Greek army who set sail from Aulis to war with the Trojans and burn down Troy (Greek name=Illium).

But the immortality requested results in the curse of Mephistopheles and the damnation of Faustus.

Helen had been abducted before she married Menelaus, so Menelaus knew it could happen again. Before Helen of Sparta married Menelaus, all the Greek suitors, and she had had quite a few, swore an oath to aid Menelaus should he ever need their help retrieving his wife.

Those suitors or their sons brought their own troops and ships to Troy.

The Trojan War may have actually happened. The stories about it, best known from the author known as Homer, say it lasted 10 years. At the end of the Trojan War, the belly of the Trojan Horse (from which we get the expression "beware of Greeks bearing gifts") sneakily transported Greeks into Troy where they set fire to the city, killed the Trojan men, and took many of the Trojan women as concubines. Helen of Troy returned to her original husband, Menelaus.

Helen as an Icon; Marlowe's Play on Words

Marlowe's phrase is not to be taken literally, of course, it's an example of what English scholars call metalepsis, a stylistic flourish that skips from X to Z, bypassing Y: of course, Helen's face didn't launch any ships, Marlowe is saying she caused the Trojan War. Today the phrase is most commonly used as a metaphor for beauty and its seductive and destructive force. There have been several books exploring the feminist considerations of Helen and her treacherous beauty, including the well-received one from historian Bettany Hughes (Helen of Troy: The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, 2009, Knopf Doubleday).

The phrase has also been used to describe women from the first lady of the Phillippines Imelda Marcos ("the face that launched a thousand votes") to consumer spokesperson Betty Furness ("the face that launched a thousand refrigerators"). You're starting to think Marlowe's quote is not entirely friendly, aren't you? And you'd be right.

FUN WITH HELEN

Communications scholars such as J.A. DeVito have long used Marlowe's phrase to illustrate how the use of stress on a single word of a sentence can change the meaning. Practice the following, stressing the italicized word and you'll see what we mean.

• Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
• Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
• Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
• Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
• Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

Finally, says mathematician Ed Barbeau: If a face could launch a thousand ships, what would it take to launch five? Of course, the answer is 0.0005 face.

Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation, often called the Revelation to John, the Apocalypse of John, The Revelation, or simply Revelation or Apocalypse, is a book of the New Testament that occupies a central place in Christian eschatology. Its title is derived from the first word of the text, written in Koine Greek: apokalypsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". (Before title pages, books were commonly known by their first words, as is also the case of the Hebrew Five Books of Moses (Torah)). The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic document in the New Testament canon (although there are short apocalyptic passages in various places in the Gospels and the Epistles).

The author names himself in the text as "John", but his precise identity remains a point of academic debate. Second century Christian writers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Melito the bishop of Sardis, and Clement of Alexandria and the author of the Muratorian fragment identify John the Apostle as the "John" of Revelation.^[1]Modern scholarship generally takes a different view,and many consider that nothing can be known about the author except that he was a Christian prophet. Some modern scholars characterise Revelation's author as a putative figure whom they call "John of Patmos". The bulk of traditional sources date the book to the reign of the emperor Domitian (AD 81-96), and the evidence tends to confirm this.

The book spans three literary genres: the epistolary, the apocalyptic, and the prophetic.It begins with John, on the island of Patmos in the Aegean, addressing a letter to the "Seven Churches of Asia". He then describes a series of prophetic visions, including figures such as the Whore of Babylon and the Beast, culminating in the Second Coming of Jesus.

The obscure and extravagant imagery has led to a wide variety of Christian interpretations: historicistinterpretations see in Revelation a broad view of history; preterist interpretations treat Revelation as mostly referring to the events of the apostolic era (1st century), or, at the latest, the fall of the Roman Empire; futuristsbelieve that Revelation describes future events; and idealist or symbolic interpretations consider that Revelation does not refer to actual people or events, but is an allegory of the spiritual path and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

                

Ode to the West Wind   (by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

I 

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, 

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 

Each like a corpse within its grave, until 

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 

With living hues and odours plain and hill: 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; 

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! 

II 

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, 

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread 

On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, 

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 

Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! 

III 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 

Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, 

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! 

IV 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even 

I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 

Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. 

V 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 

What if my leaves are falling like its own! 

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! 

And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth 

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! 

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

>>Summary

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "Ode to the West Wind" in 1819 while living in Florence, Italy. To be exact, when he published the poem with his unperformable play Prometheus Unbound in 1820, he claimed in a footnote to have written "Ode to the West Wind" while sitting in the woods near the Arno River on a windy day in October. Lucky man, we say, but although he loved Italy, he was feeling depressed about being detached from the political and social scene back in his native England. Many critics have suggested that this poem relates to that sense of powerlessness.

As a political, religious, and literary radical, Shelley was heavily invested in his own ability to influence society. Some poets need solitude and privacy and a retreat in the woods to do their best work, but Shelley needed stimulating arguments and social action. "Ode to the West Wind" is one of the poems in which he considers the role and power of the poet or philosopher to spread new ideas and effect change. It’s also, though you might find this difficult to believe, one of Shelley’s more accessible poems. Its brevity, smooth tone, and straightforward use of natural imagery present his abstract ideas about philosophy and poetry in a compact way. Think of it as Shelley’s own summary of himself – or at least one aspect of himself.

12 Labours of Hercules
>>http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html

The twelve labours of Heracles or Hercules (Greek: οἱ Ἡρακλέους ἆθλοι, hoi Hērakleous athloi) are a series of episodes concerning a penance carried out by Heracles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, whose name was later Romanised as Hercules. They were accomplished over 12 years at the service of King Eurystheus. The episodes were later connected by a continuous narrative. The establishment of a fixed cycle of twelve labours was attributed by the Greeks to an epic poem, now lost, written by Peisander, dated about 600 BC. After Hercules killed his wife and children, he went to the oracle at Delphi. He prayed to the god Apollo for guidance. Hercules was told to serve the king of Mycenae, Eurystheus, for 12 years. During these 12 years, Hercules is sent to perform twelve difficult feats, called labors.

Perseus

In Greek mythology, Perseus , the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans, was, alongside Cadmus and Bellerophon, the greatest Greek hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles.^[1] Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. Perseus was the son of the mortal Danaë and the god Zeus. He was also the half-brother and great grandfather of Heracles.

>>Origin at Argos

Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. Disappointed by his lack of luck in having a son, Acrisius consulted the oracle at Delphi, who warned him that he would one day be killed by his daughter's son. In order to keep Danaë childless, Acrisius imprisoned her in a bronze chamber, open to the sky, in the courtyard of his palace: This mytheme is also connected to Ares, Oenopion, Eurystheus, etc. Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold, and impregnated her Soon after, their child was born; Perseus—"Perseus Eurymedon, for his mother gave him this name as well" (Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica IV).

Fearful for his future, but unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods by killing the offspring of Zeus and his daughter, Acrisius cast the two into the sea in a wooden chest. Danaë's fearful prayer, made while afloat in the darkness, has been expressed by the poet Simonides of Ceos. Mother and child washed ashore on the island of Serifos, where they were taken in by the fisherman Dictys ("fishing net"), who raised the boy to manhood. The brother of Dictys was Polydectes ("he who receives/welcomes many"), the king of the island.

>>King of Mycenae

The two main sources regarding the legendary life of Perseus—for he was an authentic historical figure to the Greeks— are Pausanias and the Bibliotheca, but from them we obtain mainly folk-etymology concerning the founding of Mycenae. Pausanias asserts that the Greeks believed Perseus founded Mycenae. He mentions the shrine to Perseus that stood on the left-hand side of the road from Mycenae to Argos, and also a sacred fountain at Mycenae called Persea. Located outside the walls, this was perhaps the spring that filled the citadel's underground cistern. He states also that Atreus stored his treasures in an underground chamber there, which is why Heinrich Schliemann named the largest tholos tomb the Treasury of Atreus.

Apart from these more historical references, the only accounts of him are from folk-etymology: Perseus dropped his cap or found a mushroom (both named myces) at Mycenae, or perhaps the place was named from the lady Mycene, daughter of Inachus, mentioned in a now-fragmentary poem, the Megalai Ehoiai. For whatever reasons, perhaps as outposts, Perseus fortified Mycenae according to Apollodorus along with Midea, an action that implies that they both previously existed. It is unlikely, however, that Apollodorus knew who walled in Mycenae; he was only conjecturing. In any case, Perseus took up official residence in Mycenae with Andromeda. Here, after a long and prosperous reign, Perseus died of old age. The gods whom he had served loyally, placed him in the skies, among the stars. And there he still shines, together with Andromeda and Cassiopeia.

   

 





 





Ode to a Nightmare  (by John Keats)

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 

         But being too happy in thine happiness,— 

                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees 

                        In some melodious plot 

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 

                Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been 

         Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 

Tasting of Flora and the country green, 

         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! 

O for a beaker full of the warm South, 

         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 

                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 

                        And purple-stained mouth; 

         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 

                And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

         What thou among the leaves hast never known, 

The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 

         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; 

                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 

                        And leaden-eyed despairs, 

         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 

                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, 

         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 

But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 

         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: 

Already with thee! tender is the night, 

         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 

                Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; 

                        But here there is no light, 

         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 

                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 

         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

         Wherewith the seasonable month endows 

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 

         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 

                Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; 

                        And mid-May's eldest child, 

         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 

                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time 

         I have been half in love with easeful Death, 

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 

         To take into the air my quiet breath; 

                Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 

         To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 

                        In such an ecstasy! 

         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— 

                   To thy high requiem become a sod. 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! 

         No hungry generations tread thee down; 

The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

         In ancient days by emperor and clown: 

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 

                        The same that oft-times hath 

         Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 

                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell 

         To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well 

         As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. 

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 

                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep 

                        In the next valley-glades: 

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? 

>>Summary

The speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his “drowsy numbness” is not from envy of the nightingale’s happiness, but rather from sharing it too completely; he is “too happy” that the nightingale sings the music of summer from amid some unseen plot of green trees and shadows.

In the second stanza, the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, “a draught of vintage,” that would taste like the country and like peasant dances, and let him “leave the world unseen” and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale. In the third stanza, he explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known: “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts. Youth “grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,” and “beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale to fly away, and he will follow, not through alcohol (“Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards”), but through poetry, which will give him “viewless wings.” He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when the breezes blow the branches. In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he cannot see the flowers in the glade, but can guess them “in embalmed darkness”: white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose, “the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been “half in love” with the idea of dying and called Death soft names in many rhymes. Surrounded by the nightingale’s song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever, and he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the nightingale pours its soul ecstatically forth. If he were to die, the nightingale would continue to sing, he says, but he would “have ears in vain” and be no longer able to hear.

In the seventh stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it is immortal, that it was not “born for death.” He says that the voice he hears singing has always been heard, by ancient emperors and clowns, by homesick Ruth; he even says the song has often charmed open magic windows looking out over “the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” In the eighth stanza, the word forlorn tolls like a bell to restore the speaker from his preoccupation with the nightingale and back into himself. As the nightingale flies farther away from him, he laments that his imagination has failed him and says that he can no longer recall whether the nightingale’s music was “a vision, or a waking dream.” Now that the music is gone, the speaker cannot recall whether he himself is awake or asleep.

                

A Psalm of Life  (by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 

   Life is but an empty dream! 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 

   And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 

   And the grave is not its goal; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

   Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

   Is our destined end or way; 

But to act, that each to-morrow 

   Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

   And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 

   Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world’s broad field of battle, 

   In the bivouac of Life, 

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 

   Be a hero in the strife! 

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! 

   Let the dead Past bury its dead! 

Act,— act in the living Present! 

   Heart within, and God o’erhead! 

Lives of great men all remind us 

   We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

   Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

   Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

   With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

   Learn to labor and to wait.

>>Summary

“A Psalm of Life,” by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), was once very widely read and just as widely admired. Today, however, the poem is often mocked for its allegedly incoherent imagery and its supposedly empty rhetoric. In the poem, the speaker responds to Biblical (specifically, Old Testament) teachings that all human life is vain and that human beings, made of dust, eventually return to dust. The poem’s subtitle, “What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist,” is significant. First, the subtitle implies that the speaker of the poem is willing to question traditional wisdom, or at least some interpretations of that wisdom. Second, the subtitle identifies the speaker as a person in an early stage of life, so that his apparent rejoinder to parts of the Bible can be read (if one so chooses) as a reflection of his youth, particularly given the passion and enthusiasm with which his views are expressed. In any case, the poem was widely read, often memorized, and broadly influential, particularly in the nineteenth century.