My Blog on the Modernist Poetry.

In the modernist poem we have to go deep in the inside of the poem to identify the aaqaqaqmetaphors in the poem. But in the modernist poem, poet uses metaphors without realizing it. At first glance, we can’t able to find metaphors in the poems. The aim of the poet to Use metaphors in the poem is to make the writing more interesting and helping the reader to understand what the poet is trying to convey.

Here I try to identify some metaphors which are used in the poems.

1. The Embankment – T. E. Hulme.

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,

In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.

Now see I

That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.

Oh, god, make small

The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,

That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

Paraphrase of the poem i.e London’s Embankment, ‘A fallen gentlement’ reflects on his past and how he found pleasure in worldly social activity is describe in the poem. Use of fallen gentlemen is not just a men down or their luck, but those who had succumbed to sexual temptations and been subsequently ruined emotionally or financially. In the second line ‘fitness of fiddles’ suggesting musical gatherings, and beautiful women and on other hand the ‘flash of gold heels on the hard pavement’ indicate prostitute. Here, Hulme puts ‘fiddles’, ‘gold’, ‘heels’ words which are associated with luxury. It is not necessary to live a life but merely desire to achieve it. But the word ‘warmth’ is something that is not desired but needed for us to live. The poem end with description of heavens and god to make a blanket of starry sky so his wish for warmth is fulfilled. Hulme is out to question our notion that the starry sky is more appropriate to write because we think of the night sky as beautiful and romantic and moth-eaten blanket as unattractive, but to the speaker freezing to death on London’s streets, the blanket is more immediately valuable and beautiful than the sky above him. It is suitable quote of Oscar wild that, ‘we are all in the gutter, but some of us looking at the stars’. Here in the poem we as a reader presented with contrast between past and present. The poet I invoking the different physical senses in order to draw the contrast between ‘once’ and ‘now’.

2. Darkness – Joseph Campbell.

I stop to watch a star shine in the

Boghole-

A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.

I look at it, and pass on.

As we know that darkness has many meaning but here in this poem darkness has one meaning that is illusion poet experiences at one dark night. That when he passes from the street he found that star is in boghole. But when he goes near to it the reality reveals that it is not the star but a silver ribbon that is glitter when he was far from it. Same thing if we apply in real life that, ‘all that glitters is not gold.” Is well known said that not everything that looks precious or true turns out to be so as we expect from their appearance. This can also apply on people, places, or things that promise to be more than they really are.

3. Images – Edward Storer.

Forsaken lovers,

Burning to a chance white moon,

Upon strange pyres of loneliness and drought.

Here in the poem depiction of forsaken lover is described. Though there is a white moon in the sky but the loneliness and drought are there in lover’s heart. The feelings are there in between lovers. Though there is white moon and it stands for peace. But the heart of lover’s are burning.

4. In a station of the metro- Ezra Pound.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

pound describes watching faces appear in metro station. It is not clear that from which point the poet writes a poem whether he is on the train itself or on the platform. “Crowd” suggested that station is quite busy. He compares faces of people which he found in the crowd with the “petals on a wet, black bough,” suggesting that on the dark subway plateform, from there people look like flower petals that stuck on a tree branch after a rainy night. Here in the poem pound contemplating the fragility of life.

5. The pool- Hilda Doolittle.

Are you alive.?

I touch you

You quiver trembling like a sea- fish

I cover you with my net

What are you – banded one. ?

The poet is puzzled by a pool which comes alive when he touches it. He recognizes it as being a living breathing sea creature that is full of promise. The pool is banded in light and dark depending on movement much like a fish. Sometimes we can’t understand from which feelings we are gone through. We don’t know what our emotions mean. Throughout our life we can’t identify that who we are and what we want from life.? And in that situation it might be satisfying to have someone that pull us close and help us to understand as the poet says in the last line; “what are you banded one.?”

6. Insounciance- Richard Aldington.

In and out of the dreary trenches

Trudging cheerily under the stars

I make for myself little poems

Delicate as a flock of doves

They fly away like white-winged

Doves.

The poet wants to free from responsibilities and want to fly on the sky. He look at the sky and cheerful stars and think that they are freely live in the sky. and here in the earth he is suffering from dreary trenches. And for him he writes poem that can help him to fly.

7. Morning at the Window – T.S.Eliot.

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaid

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer- by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

Morning at the window is an image of poverty. The picture is that of a slum where people lead miserable lives. The speaker is at the window. The images in the poem correlate with the idea of poverty and feelings of sympathy. The poet says nothing but shows them; the poor people are making sound for breakfast plates. It is and obligation for poor people to go to work early and work till late. The speaker says that he is aware of the condition of the households minds and souls or their psychology. Such housemaids are appearing one after another at the city gate. May be they come from villages. So that, they have no identity, dignity, and meaningful life. They are despondent or extremely sad. Further away ‘waves of brown fog’ come up to poet this is perhaps because the city air is so polluted. Twisted faces of depressed people pass by. A passerby has tears in the eyes. The speaker takes another glance and sees her dirty skirts. Another person comes up and tries to smile, but fails the smile vanishes among the city roofs. All these disjointed images can be put together to build up a general picture of the people’s plight. The focus is on poor servant girls whose souls themselves are dirty. The poet evokes our emotion without telling his emotions. He arouses pity without telling his pity for the people. eliot crafts a simple, observational poem that captures and communicates the dreariness of everyday existence.

8. The Red Wheelbarrow- William carols Williams.

So much depends

Upon

A red wheel

Barrow

Glazed with rain

Water

Beside the white

Chicken.

The speaker sees that wheelbarrow is red. Red probably suggests things like life, blood, courage and zeal that are part of what the farmer sustains and support. The wheel barrow is one thing to us. The poet has separated the wheel and barrow here barrow consider as a body. The barrow depends on the wheel. The wheel consider as a life. The theme of dependence and interdependence can be extended in every direction. The chickens are white, it suggested that it is pureand sacred. There is also peace in this natural and simple mode of a farmer. It may also remind readers of innocence. The word ‘rainwater’ is split into two to make us see them separately and in turns, and appreciate them. The gazing wheelbarrow bathed with natural water of rain and white chickens create a simple but significant imagery. If we look at the poem with different angle that A christian reader may interpret the red as the blood of Christ. And the white relates with sacredness.

9. Anecdote of the Jar- 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 domain everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Stevens explores the question of superiority between art and nature. Is nature superior to human creations or does human creativity surpasses nature in some way.? This poem solves riddle by recognizing the unique differences between art and nature. The poem begins by telling us of an incident in the past. Once he kept a big and beautiful jar upon an untidy hill in Tennessee. The jar is an art object made by a human being, whereas the hill on which it is placed is natural. Stevens truly does a wonderful job of portraying the relationship of humans to nature. By using the jar to represent man, he was successful in creating an environment not only expressed in the poem, but also felt by the reader. He used irregular rhymes and role changes to express the complex relationship. The reader is left with confusion but slight understanding of the relationship. Stevens expressed the relationship of humans to nature very well in this piece of work.

10)‘I’- E.E.Cummings

I(a

le

af

fa

II

s)

one

I

iness

I (a is arranged vertically in groups of one to five letters. When the text is laid out horizontally, it either reads as I (a leaf falls) oneliness and in other words, a leaf falls inserted between the first two letters of loneliness or one illness with a leaf falls between a I and one. The image of a single falling leaf is a common symbol for loneliness. The fragmentation of the word loneliness is especially significant, since it highlights the fact that word contains the word one. Oneliness whole within itself even after it is isolated from the tree. Here in the poem use of leaf as a symbol of loneliness.

Thank you.

The Birthday Party

Here are my views regarding the play   “The Birthday Party”
                   
                                         

                   
1)The two scene of the Lulu from the play is omitted in the film. We often contradict with what we have said in past and what we realize at present. May be this is the reason why Harold Pinter has removed those two scene while writing a script for the movie.  The second thing is that a writer will always try to make his work perfect in the film version of the play he might find it unnecessary thus he removed it. These scenes were not of importance because though these scenes were removed in the movie it doesn’t make any difference in its effect. 

2.)It has been said that technology always provides better things than it was. The same is the result with the play Birthday Party.  In reading you may not feel the same kind of menace and fear, the fear of unknown dangers. But while watching movie the menace remain there on the screen as well as in the mind of the audience. As simply reading will not provide the same kind of the effect, the movie is successful in making of the menace, we constantly remains in the fear that what the two stranger will do with Stanley, the sound, the sound of the paper torn out by McCann, the drum played by Stanley until it he break it out. The real menace In the play arise in the black out scene, imagine you are out of your home in dark night, nothing is visible, especially in dark we feel more fear. And yes it is the scene where all the harmful actions took place. Stanley beaten, Lulu seduced, Maccan Kicked..etc..

3)Yes in the movie the camera angle give the constant feeling of lurking dangers, the camera move from above the heads of the characters. While reading we did not feel this effect of lurking dangers. 

4.)At the very beginning of the play we see the one of the old character in the play, Petey is reading news paper. News paper reading as a technique used by many writer to hide the face, in a way hiding self from the reality. Here in the news paper there is news that somebody had a baby.  The same news paper is torn by Maccan signifies the insignificant of the news paper, it also signify that Petey is helpless against the two strangers, tearing the news paper it can be seen as tearing out of the characters. 

5 )Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind Man's Buff and is positioned at the top with a view of room like a cage (trap) when Stanley is playing it. It shows the dangers lurking over the head. We feel Stanley is hovered by unknown threats, more than that camera positioned over McCann means something is going to happen with him, we don’t know at that time but as play proceeds we understood that Stanley is going to kick him.

6)"Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretense crumbles. Yes I agree with this point. It happens in the movie as the whole movie use only a single small room, where Stanley lives with Mag and Petey, we see these characters are living on the mercy of each other they could not pretend any more the reality automatically comes out.

7) Obviously movie helps very much in understanding the play in better way, it also gives good understanding of the features of Harold Pinter’s dramatic art and techniques, like picturesque, pause, silence, menace, lurking danger. These terms are very difficult to feel while reading but while watching movie it becomes easy to understand. The thing of a pleasure becomes irritating if it repeatedly used. The pause and the silence are the key to create menace silence is awful in the play, the long pause after terrains of dialogue. Sometimes pause gives audience time to think what is next, the waiting for next dialogue.

8) I agree with this observation “It probably wasn't possible to make a satisfactory film of "The Birthday Party.".. still it can be better than it is.
9) I still didn’t think about it… but more menace can be created by making two strangers more dangerous looking.

  

Here are my views regarding to 'the Light House'

Here are my views regarding to 'the Light House'

1) The time in which she was living was not that much grown that could favor women. Woolf’s experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived: the turn of the century was marked by bold scientific developments. The rise of psychoanalysis, a movement led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea of an unconscious mind. Such innovation in ways of scientific thinking had great influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artists and writers like those in the Bloomsbury Group. To the Lighthouse exemplifies Woolf’s style and many of her concerns as a novelist (Sparknotes). Novel not only explores the complexity of human relationships in day to day life and struggle of a woman artist in patriarchal society, but with the help of stream of consciousness she allowed readers to realize the complexity of human mind, and its perceptions, each and every individual has its own perceptions and perspectives to live life happily, with that it also provides deep insight over human motives. The novel by many a considered as biographical one, as its characters based on her own parents and siblings, it is certainly her most autobiographical fictional statement, and in the characters of Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay, and Lily Briscoe, Woolf offers some of her most penetrating explorations of the workings of the human consciousness as it perceives and analyzes, feels and interacts.

2) Yes I agree with the comment that the novel is both tribute and the critic of the character of Mrs Ramsay. Firstly the painting which is painted by Lily Briscoe is in reality character portrayed by Virginia Woolf, by creating such character she give tribute to Mrs Ramsay. By painting Lily immortalize her it is not less than tribute. But with the second point which says that in a way Mrs Ramsay is helping to perpetuate the patriarchy in society, for example her treatment to her girl child and boy child are different in a way it helps patriarchy for its continuation. In Lily’s point of view she is suffering in life where she is, but still she wants others to live like her (get married).
Yes in my opinion she is the perfect example of typical Indian woman as prescribed in Hindu scriptures, she works like a maid, know what her husband wants, listen to everybody with sympathy, she cooks very delicious- thus guest like to visit again and again, and praise her foods, she satisfied sexual need of her husband, she is very beautiful- Mr. Banks, Tansley, and other guest also gave complement on her beauty, adheres to the tradition and customs, and over all she has everything which are attributes of good wives in India. 

3)yes Light house symbolize both the female Mrs Ramsay and Lily Briscoe as Virginia Woolf , as both struggles a lot in the society. As character of Mrs Ramsay lights others life by making other happy even guide people, she worked as light in the life of Mr Ramsay whenever he felt need of that. The statement that women can’t paint and woman can’t write’ are applicable to both. Lily and Virginia the completion of both the painting as well as the work To the light house is the symbol victory against patriarchy. 

Que.no. 5. Yes we can see this novel as artistic growth of Virginia Woolf as well as of Lily Briscoe, the painter in the novel finally she has painted, she becomes painter from the innocent but self determined girl to the Lily of the last scene. Novel is the record of a amateur painter to the mature one, in the same way it applicable to Virginia too that the novel itself is the progression of Virginia to became Virginia Woolf a writer.
5.
Que. No. 8. The end the viewer who had no background information of Virginia Woolf, interpret as Lily’s submission to Mr Ramsay she accepted what he wants, but it is not so actually she closed herself in the room to celebrate her feminity, thus she say ‘you were stupid Mrs. Ramsay’, windows are symbol of feminism, thus she recalls this dialogue to celebrate her feminism.