To The Lighthouse Discussion Questions

1. Mrs. Ramsay is the ideal Victorian wife and mother: devoted to her children, submissive to her husband.  The term for this, based on a poem by Coventry Patmore, is "The Angel in the House." (See examples on pages 6, 32, 39, 83, 107.)
2. Compare that aspect of her character with the following scenes: Lily's perspective (48-51); Mrs. Ramsay's desire to be "an investigator, elucidating the social problem (9) and her concerns on 58 and 103; Lily's "experiment" during dinner (90-92); Mrs. Ramsay's solution to the quarrel between James and Cam (114-115); Mrs. Ramsay's "triumph" on 123-124.
3. What is revealed about Mr. Ramsay during the Q to R episode on 33-34?
4. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay represent the Victorian marriage; Paul and Minta (172-174) represent the modern marriage. Judge each.
5. Is Lily attempting to be the angel in the house in the "boot" scene on 149-154? Does she succeed? Is there a difference in her attitude between this scene and her "experiment" at the earlier dinner scene?
6. What is the purpose of the "Time Passes" section?
7. What dilemma does Cam face (165, 169, 189)?
8. What dilemma regarding his father does James face? Is he similar to his father? Is his dilemma resolved? (184-185; 202-203; 206-207)
9. What is Lily's dilemma throughout the novel regarding her wish to be an artist?
10. What is the vision that Lily has at the end of the novel? (Also see 180-182.)

All Quiet on the Western Front

 

In my elective class we will be looking at this novel and at some World War I internet sites. Here are discussion questions I have posted and several internet sites.

1. Describe Paul Baumer as a person. Compare and contrast him to Katczinsky,Muller, and Kropp.
2. Who is Kantorek and what is his importance to the book?
3. What was German warfare like in World War I as presented in the novel. Give specific details.
4. What is the main theme of the novel and how is it developed?
5. How does Baumer learn that the enemy is not just faceless and nameless?
6. What are Baumer's opinions of Military leaders?
7. What does Baumer realize on his visit home?
8. What images and symbols are used in the book? What is the purpose of each?

 

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWW.htm

http://www.greatwar.nl/

http://www.firstworldwar.com/

http://www.worldwar1.com/

http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/

Tennyson

An interesting argument developed in class about interpretations of "The Lady of Shalott."

Some believe that Tennyson's purpose is a warning to women: If they become dissatisfied and want to bring about changes, they will be punished. (The proof for these students is the fact that the Lady dies when she breaks free of her bower.) Other students feel that this is Tennyson's warning to society: If you try to control women (or any group of people), they will rebel and rebellion can bring about loss and even death. Organized social change is, therefore, necessary.

Both interpretations seem viable to me and they are not necessarily opposite.

We'll be looking at Tennyson's "Ulysses" (a "dramatic monologue") next and contrasting that character with Homer's Odysseus as well as Dante's interpretation. My question is, what do the differences reveal about the Victorian sensibility? The specific passages in Homer and Dante are:

The end of Homer's Odyssey:
"Then flashing-eyed Athena spoke to Odysseus saying: “Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, stay thy hand, and make the strife of equal war to cease, lest haply the son of Cronos be wroth with thee, even Zeus, whose voice is borne afar.”
[545] So spoke Athena, and he obeyed, and was glad at heart. Then for all time to come a solemn covenant betwixt the twain was made by Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, who bears the aegis, in the likeness of Mentor both in form and in voice."

Dante's Inferno Canto 26 (look at lines 89 to 142):
http://home.earthlink.net/~zimls/HELLXXVI.html

“The Lady of Shalott”

Tennyson’s poem clearly portrays, I think, the conditions of the Victorian female. The image of the ideal woman during much of the Nineteenth Century was the virginal, the spiritual, the mysterious woman dedicated to her feminine tasks, meaning the care of her husband, family and household.

Tennyson’s Lady is enclosed in a room in a medieval castle: “Four gray walls, and four gray towers/…And the silent isle imbowers” her. (I think it’s interesting that “imbower”—embower—is derived from the Old English bur and that “bound,” “husband” and “boudoir” are all related. The French “boudoir” literally means a place to sulk. I also find it interesting that she is encased in “gray” rather than being surrounded by color…or life?) She sits weaving all day and has been told that she will be cursed if she pauses in her work. “She knows not what the curse may be,/And so she weaveth steadily.” I’d suggest that this curse represents her indoctrination: She has been brainwashed by religious tradition and the social mores to believe that it is the Order of Nature that woman be passive.

The Lady cannot participate in the world but looks at it through a mirror “That hangs before her all the year,” and “Shadows of the world appear.” Her place is the domestic sphere—in the shadows rather than in the world which is the male sphere. Those spheres are separate and, according to the Victorian ideology, they were created for the female’s safety. At first she is content to weave these shadows while remaining passive and silent. Then Sir Lancelot “flashed into the crystal mirror” and she “left the web, she left the loom” and looks out of the window and sees Camelot, not the shadow. “The mirror cracked from side to side;/’The curse is come upon me’ cried The Lady of Shalott.” Even so, she leaves her bower and gets into a boat to go to Camelot. The boat becomes her funeral barge and she dies before reaching her destination.

There are, of course, many ways that the symbols could be interpreted: Seeing Lancelot arouses her longing for love and/or makes her aware of her loneliness and isolation; when she looks out the window and sees “the water lily bloom” she awakens sexually; her loss of innocence represents guilt which leads to death—the ultimate silence. All of these could be viewed as warnings to the Nineteenth Century woman. However, it seems to me that her “protection” is really a means of control. I think that her leaving her loom symbolizes woman’s dissatisfaction with the limits placed upon her. Her rebellion means that she can no longer be controlled and she is, therefore, feared. As she comes “Silent into Camelot” the people “crossed themselves for fear.”  What do they fear?

In one of the many conduct books she wrote, Mrs. Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799-1872) observes, “A woman’s highest duty is so often to suffer and be still.” Perhaps that says it all.

Montaigne

Reading another blog brought me back to Montaigne's Essays. I think that one of my favorite lines is in his essay "Of Solitude": "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."

I'm pondering what this means.

Reading List

Here are the reading lists for my two fall courses:

World Masterpieces 2 (19th-Century to Contemporary--Sophomore level)

 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
 Fathers and Children by Turgenev (Norton Critical Edition, translated from the Russian by Michael R. Katz)
 A Doll's House by Ibsen (Oxford World Classics, translated from the Norwegian by Jame McFarlane)
 To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
 God's Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane (Heinemann, translated from the French by Francis Price)
 Maus, Volumes I and II, by Spiegelman (graphic novels)

From Empire to Wasteland (Victorian/Modern Literature--Senior level)

Norton Anthology of English Literature--The Victorian Age (I will list the readings here after I select them)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque (translated from the German by A.W. Wheen)
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (Norton Critical Edition)
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (translated from the Italian by Eric Bentley)

Happy reading!!
 
 
  

Frankenstein...2

Near the end of Book II of Frankenstein, the creature compares himself to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.  It is during his narration of his experiences since he first "awoke" and Victor Frankenstein abandoned him. He says, "I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me" (Oxford World Classics edition, 111).  It refers to Satan's comment in Book Four, "Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell" (line 75). (See my post of June 10, 2011, "Evil Personified...Milton's Satan.")

This makes me think of another question:

Are there differences in emotions and motives between Milton's Satan and the Frankenstein creature?

A comparison/contrast would be fascinating....and, of course, means rereading Paradise Lost.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

 

In one of the courses I’ll be teaching in the fall (my last semester before I can retire full time!), we are reading Frankenstein, first published in 1818. We’re using this text as representative of the Romantic Period rather than the usual Romantic poetry. I’ve been having a great deal of fun with the novel. Here are some discussion questions that I’ve come up with so far:

1. Why is the novel subtitled “A Modern Prometheus”? (We’ll have to look at the Greek myth when considering answers.)

2. Is it Victor Frankenstein or his creature who is being referred to as Prometheus? (Melanie’s excellent comments brought up this question.)

3. This is an epistolary novel. What is the reason for the various narrative frames?

4. Is Victor Frankenstein a hero or a villain or something in between?

5. The creature doesn’t have a name but Shelley apparently referred to him as “Adam” and uses Adam’s question to God from Milton’s Paradise Lost as an epigraph. What is the significance of the epigraph?

I’ll have more questions and, hopefully, some answers before the semester starts.

What is a pronoun……

The other day in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip which I get on my igoogle page, Calvin is doing his homework and asks Hobbes what a pronoun is. Hobbes says, “A noun that lost its amateur status.” A reasonable answer it seems to me. (Calvin thinks that he might get credit for being original.) It made me start wondering about English names for the parts of speech.

“Pronoun” is from Middle French pronom, derived from Latin pronomen. Nomen translates to “name” and pro means “in place of.” As a prefix, “pro” indicates substitution. Thus, we get our meaning: A pronoun takes the place of a noun.

“Noun” is derived from the Latin for name, but what about “verb”? It is from the Latin verbum which means “word.” “Verbose” is word plus Latin ose meaning “full of.” And “adverb”? It’s from verbum with the Latin prefix “ad” meaning toward or about. Thus an adverb modifies (is about) a verb.

“Adjective” is from Late Latin adjectivum, from Latin jec (iacere—the “j” in Latin came about when “I” was used as a consonant) meaning throw and ad the prefix which also means attached or added. We get “project” (the verb not the noun which is pronounced differently but spelled the same in English) from the same root, with another meaning for the prefix pro meaning “to” (or “toward”). So an adjective modifies a noun, or is attached to it.

I’ve always known that language is “logical” (from the Greek meaning speech or reason).

Phrases…Cool and Collected

Gus and BooBear asked about this phrase. Both words “cool” and “collected” share the synonym “calm.” Cool in this sense has the connotation of clear judgment that is not influenced by emotion. Collected carries the sense of inner calm that has taken conscious effort.

The opposite of these terms is “distracted,” from Middle English, derived from Latin distractus, to draw apart. In other words, one has focus when one is “cool and collected” rather than having the focus drawn to something else. One is self-possessed rather than allowing something else to “possess” one. Interesting.

According to the OED, “collected” is used figuratively to mean having thoughts and feelings in order. In American usage, “collected” means self-possessed as the first definition. The OED shows that the first usage of collected as figurative is by Shakespeare in The Tempest (1610 or 1611 and possibly the last play he wrote): “Be collected. No more amazement” (I. ii. 13—Prospero to Miranda who is feeling distracted by the shipwreck, not knowing that Prospero has magically manipulated the entire situation).

It seems to me that the phrase is derived from a literally physical sensation. When one feels angry or emotional, one feels distracted and warm…hot under the collar, in fact. Now there’s another interesting phrase.

Fireworks

The summer that Brother put the stick of dynamite in the outhouse was the summer that came to be known as “The Drought of 1892.” It didn’t rain from May to September and it was so hot that the women left off wearing petticoats under their dresses—even Aunt Marie. I was ten and Brother was twelve and I told him that it was a stupid idea but he told me that I was just a kid and to stop pesterin’ him if I didn’t want to help. I had a proprietorial attitude toward Brother though and didn’t want him to think that I was afraid. He’d get that scornful look on his face that made his eyes darker and puckered up his chin and nose when he was mad at me. So I helped him.

I held the blue stick of dynamite tightly while he wound the specially waxed twine around one end of it. Then he carefully lowered it into the dark deep hole of the outhouse seat until it touched bottom. We trailed the twine twenty feet into the lilac bushes and I crouched down while he lit the match. We watched the smoldering sparks sizzle up the twine, making it look like a snake on fire. Suddenly Brother stood up and ran to the door of the outhouse. I hollered at him. “Wattya doin’?" I knew my voice was screeching.

“Hush. I wanna see what it looks like?”

“But you’ll be blown up!”

“The dynamite ain’t that strong.”

The smoldering sparks kept moving up the twine leaving a limp black tail of burnt dust. I watched with my mouth open as it neared the door. I held my breath. Brother followed it inside and stood over the hole looking down. Then there was a loud boom and I closed my eyes.

All the birds seemed to swoosh up in the air crying and fluttering around at once. The noise of the explosion seemed to go on and on, echoing with the birds’ cries. When it was still I began to smell the most awful stink. It seemed to come  in waves with the heat of the air. I turned around and ran through a gap in the bushes away from the smell. I looked over my shoulder and saw Brother running out the door, covered with brown slime, trying to wipe his eyes and his mouth but only managing to spread the muck around.

“Come on to the pond,” I yelled at him.

In a croaky voice he said that he couldn’t open his eyes so I ran back and grabbed him by the sleeve and raced to the pond in the field beyond the run-in-shed. As soon as I got the gate open he ran down to the edge and dove in, shoes and all. I could still smell the awful stench and, looking down, saw that the muck was all over the side of my dress so I dove in too.
The water was cool and sweet and I was barefoot so I could kick easily and get over to Brother in the middle of the pond.

“Wow! What a stink!”

He was laughing now and we started horsing around. Then we saw Daddy Brown running down the hill toward us. In the distance, with her skirts raised so high that her white knickers showed, Aunt Marie came in a sort of prancing run, lifting her knees up high. Behind her was Bingy, with her muslin dress bellowing so that it looked as if she were flying toward us on an umbrella.

Daddy Brown stood on the edge of the pond with his hands on his hips looking stern and puzzled at the same time. Aunt Marie and Bingy came up and stood on either side of him. “Come out of there this instant!” Aunt Marie’s voice was shrill with a sing-song elongation about the vowels that made the words wrap around our bobbing heads. It was her fiercest voice and signaled the amount of trouble we were in.

“I told you it was a stupid idea.”

Brother ignored me and we paddled toward the bank and our doom.

Evil Personified…Dante’s Satan

In the Inferno Satan, or “The Emperor of the Universe of Pain,” is trapped in ice from the waist down. His head has three faces: one is “fiery red,” another is “between white and bile” and the third is black. He has bat’s wings that keep flapping as if to help him escape but all they can do is “freeze all of Cocytus” (Dante’s name for the ninth circle). He is weeping and in his mouths he gnaws on three sinners whom he keeps “in eternal pain at his eternal dinner.” They are Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. (The center of Dante’s hell holds those “treacherous to their masters.” Judas betrayed Christ; Brutus and Cassius betrayed Caesar. Virgil  guides the character “Dante” through hell and these last two are for his benefit.)

Satan is gigantic as Dante describes him: “I am closer in size to the great mountain the Titans make around the central pit, than they to his arms.” Virgil and Dante leave the inferno by using the “Great Worm of Evil” as a stairway and “we walked out once more beneath the Stars.” (Interestingly Dante uses this word to end each of the three books of The Divine Comedy. For him “stars” are the symbol of hope and virtue in this epic poem of redemption.) And that is all that we have of Satan. He is trapped, weeping and eating for eternity.

It seems to me that he is too helpless to personify a cosmic force that produces injury. Of course in Dante’s literary universe the punishment fits the crime. Thus, he is portraying a defeated Satan.

So we have three vanquished characters: Iago arrested and standing mum; Milton’s fallen Lucifer; and Dante’s trapped  Satan. Do any of them personify evil?

The theme of good versus evil has given us some great literature and memorable characters with good usually the victor. I’ve been wondering how modern writers would compare. The work that comes to mind (possibly because the final movie is coming out in a month)  is the Harry Potter series. That would mean rereading all seven volumes. Perhaps a project for another day.

Evil Personified…Milton’s Satan

In his epic poem Paradise Lost (published in 1667), Milton created, perhaps unintentionally, one of the most compelling and complex characters in literature. His Satan is eloquently skilled in the art of rhetoric. He is also, it seems to me, very “human.” In the first book of the twelve-book epic, we learn his motives: “Th’ infernal Serpent. He it was whose guile/ Stirred up with envy and revenge deceived/ The mother of mankind” (lines 34-36). Again it is jealousy that causes “evil,” that causes “Lucifer” to fall and to seduce Adam and Eve “to that foul revolt.”

Satan (derived from the Hebrew word meaning adversary) first feels jealousy when the “Father Infinite” declares that he has a son who is exalted above the angels: “This day I have begot whom I declare/ My only Son…whom ye now behold/ At my right hand. Your head I Him appoint” (Book Five, lines 603-606). The archangel Raphael tells Adam that Satan was “fraught/ With envy against the Son of God that day” and “could not bear/ Through pride that sight and…resolved/ With all his legions to dislodge and leave unworshipped, unobeyed, the throne supreme” calling God a tyrant (lines 661-670).

He is next jealous of Adam, “a creature formed of earth” as Satan tells his fallen comrades, and given a “Magnificent…World” or paradise and angels to serve him. Satan sets out to revenge what provokes his envy and he enters paradise in the form of a serpent. “But what will not ambition and revenge/ Descend to?…Revenge, at first though sweet,/ Bitter ere long back on itself recoils./ Let it; I reck not” (Book Eight, lines 168-173). At this point jealousy has overpowered reason and Satan does not care what form he must take to accomplish his goal.

There is another time when Satan loses his “reason” by which I mean that he is overcome by emotion: when he first sees Eve, my favorite lines in Paradise Lost. “Such pleasure took the serpent to behold/ This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve…her heavenly form/ Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,/ Her graceful innocence, her every air/ Of gesture or least action overawed/ His malice…That space the evil one abstracted stood/ From his own evil, and for the time remained/ Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed/ Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge” (Book Nine, lines 455-466). However, the “hot Hell that always in him burns…soon ended his delight” and he continues with his plan of revenge.

If we understand evil as a cosmic force producing injury—that is, something that has no motive—as with Iago, I don’t consider this Satan “evil.” Like Iago, he feels betrayed and therefore believes he is  justified in the injuries he attempts to perpetrate. We may not agree with his actions but I think we can understand their cause.  Perhaps to find evil that is “thoughtless” or without purpose, we need to look at an earlier work: Dante’s Inferno.

Evil Personified…Iago

In the New York Times Sunday Book Review of June 5, 2011, in his review of Sarah Winman’s When God Was A Rabbit, Henry Alford gives as an example of one of life’s biggest questions, “What makes Iago evil?” It is a question that scholars have debated for a long time but I’ve always found the answer simple: Jealousy.

From the very first scene of the play we know that Iago resents the fact that Othello has made Cassio a lieutenant when he claims that “Preferment goes by letter and affection.” In other words, he thinks that favoritism is Othello’s motive and that “there’s no remedy. ‘Tis the curse of service.” Iago feels that he is the victim of an injustice; he feels frustrated because he is helpless to right the “wrong.”

Not only is Iago jealous because Othello promoted Cassio over him, but also he thinks that there is a possibility that Othello “slept” with his wife, Emilia. In his soliloquy closing Act I he says:

  “I hate the Moor,/ And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/ [H’as] done my office. I know not if’t be true,/ But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,/ Will do as if for surety.”

Even though the infidelity is merely rumor, Iago will act as though it is a fact, giving himself an excuse to “tenderly” lead Othello “by th’ nose/ As asses are.” His jealously and resentment of Othello probably have a racist foundation. One of his actions is to create discord between Othello and Brabantio, Desdemona’s father. He tells Brabantio “an old black ram/ Is tupping your white ewe.” An underlying cause of racism is a feeling of superiority. The fact that Othello is his superior in rank feeds Iago’s resentment.

At the end of the play after he has killed Desdemona and learns from Emilia the truth about the handkerchief,  Othello asks why Iago, “that demi-devil,” has “ensnar’d my soul and body?” It seems to me that Iago’s answer shows that he regrets nothing: “Demand me nothing; what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word.” His unwillingness to apologize, in either sense of that word, proves to me that he feels his actions are justified.

Jealousy is a malicious intolerance that blinds one to anything beyond that emotion. It makes Iago a schemer and a manipulator who deceives and betrays everyone. Is he the personification of evil?  One of the definitions of evil (noun) is “a cosmic force producing " injury. Perhaps that is what Shakespeare had in mind when creating Iago, who has more lines in the play than Othello does. However, if it is a “cosmic force,” evil needs no motive. I see in Iago all too human motives.  Instead of personifying evil, Iago may be Shakespeare’s depiction of all that is negative in the human character when emotion is uncontrolled by reason.

Another literary “personification of evil” is Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, the character I’d like to consider next.

Meanderings of the Mind……Poppies

The other day as I was making lemon poppy seed bread (delicious with homemade lemon curd), I wondered if these were in fact the poppy seeds I could use to grow the brilliantly colored flowers. I did some research via Google.

These tiny black seeds are from the opium poppy. (The species name—papaver somniferum—means sleep inducing.) However the seeds used in my bread are from the ripened flower’s dried seed pod. Opium is derived from the “latex” of the unripe fruit. The seeds were used by many ancient civilizations. For example, the Egyptians used them as sedatives. Others thought the seeds had magical powers of invisibility. (Pondering how that belief came about.) It is said that the seeds help to alleviate asthma, whooping cough and insomnia. Today many countries use them to make a paste for such dishes as puddings, cakes and pastries.

Thinking of poppies brought to mind John McCrae’s World War I poem, “In Flanders Fields.” It’s in the form of a French rondeau: thirteen lines of eight syllables, plus two half line refrains of four syllables, in three stanzas using only three rhymes in a  scheme of AABBA, AAB with the C refrain, AABBA with the C refrain. The refrain is identical with the beginning of the first line of the poem.

http://public.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mccrae.html

John McCrae (1872-1918) was a Canadian physician and became Lieutenant Colonel and commander of the Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne during the war. He wrote the poem after a friend of his was killed in the fighting. He was apparently sitting in a dressing station and looking out at the fields of poppies growing on the graves. Scholars have been arguing whether the poem is pro or anti-war ever since it was published in Punch in December, 1915. (The poem seems to me to be a lament about war and lost lives. The speaker is dead, one of the many buried beneath the poppies.)

In my research I did find how to grow poppies. The seeds like the chill of winter so you need to spread them on prepared soil in the fall and come spring you will have a field of vibrant-colored petals.

Word-Hoard…Moveable Feast

The other day I was reading a review in the New York Times of David McCullough’s The Greater Journey Americans in Paris, tales of 19th-century American travelers to Paris. In her conclusion to the review, Stacy Schiff contrasts these with later American visitors when she writes that, “the movable feast came later.” I immediately thought of Hemingway.

His memoir of 1920s Paris, published posthumously in 1964, was given the title A Moveable Feast by his widow who used a remark Hemingway had made to a friend, Aaron Hotchner:  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast” (from the “Foreword” of the Restored Edition by Patrick Hemingway, 2009). (Both spellings, moveable and movable are accepted. The OED prefers the latter.) According to his son, Patrick, Hemingway used the term in the metaphorical sense similar to the feast of St. Crispin speech of Henry V in Shakespeare: an experience that becomes part of you. It also carries the connotation of things which change over time.

The term’s etymology has religious associations.  In 325 CE, the First Council of Nicaea set the dates for both Easter and Christmas. The latter is not a moveable feast since it always occurs on December 25. Easter, on the other hand, is a moveable feast because it’s always on the same day of the week but the date varies. It is on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox and it is the date used to organize other Christian feasts or fasts (Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday for example). Before 325 CE Easter was associated with Passover, 14 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Interestingly, “Easter” is derived from the Old English name for the goddess of spring, Eostre. “Feast” is derived from Latin festa meaning festive, joyful, merry, and is associated with feriae, holiday (holy day) and fanum, temple. It’s connection with food goes even further back to agrarian cultures when food was used as sacrifices to the gods.

I always connect “feast” with Paris where I rented an apartment for a month several years ago and experienced probably the best food in the world—better than the food in New Orleans, which, of course, has a French connection. Even “fast food” is good there.  I remember getting a ham sandwich off of a mobile food truck outside the Grand Palais. The truck had a route up and down the Champs-Elysees. That meal was the best combination of bread, butter and ham that I’ve ever tasted.

All of which brings me nicely back to the moveable feast which is Paris.

“La Belle” Influences (Concluded)

In a letter to his brother George dated April, 1819, Keats wrote: “The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more—it is the one in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca—I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life—I floated about the whirling atmosphere as it is described with a beautiful figure to whose lips mine were joined at it seem’d for an age—and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm—even flowery tree tops sprung up and we rested on them sometimes with the lightness of a cloud till the wind blew us away again….O that I could dream it every night” (The Oxford Authors John Keats, 1990). A few days later he sent a draft of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” to George.

Keats’ dream was probably induced by opium which he took in the form of laudanum, a mixture of wine or brandy and opium. At that time it could be purchased “over-the-counter” and was taken as we take aspirin for pain. (Regulation began with the foundation of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1841 which sponsored the Pharmacy and Poisons Acts of 1868.) At any rate, in his dream Keats completely missed Dante’s point.

For Dante the punishments in his Inferno fit the crime. Thus, though Paulo and Francesca are with one another for eternity, swept in a great whirlwind, they are “shades” rather than bodies and can never touch. Francesca tells Dante that they began their “dalliance” after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. (The lovers were caught by her husband—his brother—who killed them. Canto V, Circle Two The Carnal.)

Since the knight in “La Belle” is not gleeful as Keats was in his dream, I’m wondering if we could read the poem as Keats’ version of an inferno.

Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”-- Influences

It would be interesting to read the poem as an autobiographical statement. Keats met Fanny Brawne in 1819, the year in which he produced some of his greatest poetry: “La Belle,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “Ode on Indolence,” “To Autumn.”

In the first of the thirty-seven surviving letters to Fanny from Keats, dated July 1, 1819, he writes: “Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom….I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”  In another letter to Fanny (July 15, 1819), Keats tells of a dream he had after reading an “oriental tale.” The dream is of an enchanting lady in a garden “of Paradise.” After men fall in love with her she makes them close their eyes “and on opening their eyes again [they] find themselves descending to the earth in a magic basket” and are “melancholy ever after.”  Keats tells Fanny that he compared the enchantress with her but “could not bear you should be so” and concludes that, though as beautiful, Fanny is not as “talismanic as that Lady.” (Letters are from The Oxford Authors John Keats, 1990.)

His friend Charles Brown feared that Fanny would entrap Keats and didn’t want a relationship to develop. (Brown’s “protection” of Keats would be another interesting exploration.)  After Keats died, Fanny wore mourning for three years and did not marry until she was thirty-three. All of this, I think, speaks of a strong but doomed love.

There is another influence on the poem, however, that should be explored: Dante’s Inferno.

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations (4)

The final painting of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” that I want to consider is by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).

http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh48.htm

According to Christopher Wood, Waterhouse’s typical enchantress is “not a witch, but a beautiful girl with long hair and a seductive, child-like expression. This was the distinctive femme fatale…the beautiful, wistful nymph who lures men to their doom, almost apologetically, because she simply cannot help it” (Victorian Painting). And that is another possible answer to my question about La Belle’s reason for giving “sweet moan,” weeping and sighing “full sore”: She is the unmerciful seducer because she must be; it is her purpose. She doesn’t want to hurt the knight and feels sympathy for him. However, her very existence necessitates her betrayal of men. Waterhouse’s interpretation of La Belle depicts this haunting dilemma.

The two are in a forest with flowers and brambles surrounding them. She is sitting on the ground and her feet are bare, an image of helplessness. La Belle’s pale face, with its sensitive intensity and bright red lips, is the lightest thing in the painting. She looks at the knight almost as if she were pleading with him. He is trying to get support from the trees and branches around him but they ensnare him just as La Belle does. She has her long, silky straight hair wrapped around his neck and seems to be pulling him toward her. He is in full armor with his visor up and his face dim. His expression and posture show that he is desperately trying to withstand the temptation that La Belle offers. But even as we look, he seems about to fall into her arms.

This was painted in 1893. Wood writes that “from the 1890s onwards, all Waterhouse’s pictures are of women; men only appear as victims.” It was during that decade, according to Peter Trippi, that “a panoply of menacing females [were painted] triggered by the perceived threat of the New Woman” (J.W. Waterhouse).  A very interesting cause and effect that I want to explore further. 

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations (3)

In Frank Dicksee’s (1853-1928) painted interpretation of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” we definitely see the knight “in thrall.”

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=228&size=large

La Belle is on the knight’s horse but seems to be in full control of the situation. She is leaning over toward him with her red hair lush and flowing behind his head—enveloping him.  She is holding the horse’s elaborate reins with one hand. Although she seems to be in control of him as well, the horse is stomping with one foot and has his head thrown down as if in nervous rejection.

The knight, however, sees nothing but La Belle. He is looking directly into her eyes and seems unable to look anywhere else. His arms are thrown out as if to balance against a fall, emphasizing his abandonment to the “lady in the meads.” He’s in full armor except that his helmet is attached to the horse’s harness. There is a long red scarf wound around the helmet, the favor given to the knight by La Belle. The scarf is a metaphor of courtly love: The damsel gives her knight a gift of clothing before he goes into battle. However, what is represented here is not courtly love because the damsel is neither virtuously modest nor in distress. The opposite seems to be in case: The knight looks innocent though ignorant of any distress. (A good book, in part dealing with the stages of courtly love in the Medieval Period, is Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror.)

The landscape around the couple indicates spring, a literary metaphor of awakening. However, the sky off in the distance seems to be of a setting sun which connects to a theme of loss. La Belle is bewitching the knight and the helplessness of the man makes us want to come to his aid . In a sense, Dicksee has forced the viewer into the position of the warning ghosts in the poem.

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations (2)

Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) is described by Timothy Hilton in The Pre-Raphaelites as a “sentimentalist….a painter of trysts and tristesse, of sweet sadness rather than grief, and rarely of happiness.” His painting of La Belle comes closest to the non-traditional interpretation of her as victim.

http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/hughes/p-hughes19.htm

In this painting it is La Belle who is woebegone. She doesn’t look wistful or sweetly sad. She looks exhausted. Sitting on the horse, her shoulders are slumped; her arms seem to be bound and are hanging uselessly in front of her. The look on her face is intense misery.

The knight is standing, holding onto the horse’s harness. He’s dressed in armor and chain mail covered by a tunic. Flowers and leaves and debris are at his feet. He’s not looking at the woman on the horse but seems to be gazing at the floating ghosts behind her back. There are three phantom figures. The “king” wearing a crown is pointing upwards with one hand. His other hand is on his sheathed sword. If this is the “horrid warning” in the poem, it has not fazed the knight whose expression seems still. There is more motion and emotion in the figures of the ghosts than in either La Belle or the knight. He does not look “in thrall” and it is the woman who looks ill.

According to Christopher Wood, Hughes used “landscape setting to heighten and intensify the emotional situation of the figures” (Victorian Painting). There is a great deal of detail in the setting of flowers, leaves and trees. The trees in silhouette against the sky seem to be blowing while the ghosts hover. The brightly mottled yellow sky is the most intense part of the painting, perhaps contrasting with the tristesse and mysterious mood beneath.

La Belle is the focus of the painting. She is in the center and light seems to illuminate her body. She does not appear to be a woman without mercy. It is she whom I pity.

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations

Frank Cowper (1877-1958) was a Pre-Raphaelite painter (considered one of the last). His “La Belle” is probably my favorite.

http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=75

We see La Belle apparently while the knight is sleeping and dreaming. The image is one that is not in Keats’ poem. She has accomplished her goal and is preparing to leave. Her arms are raised as she puts her hair back up, having taken it down to help in her seduction of the knight. (In the poem, “Her hair was long.” The notion of a woman letting down her hair as a sexual signal has always seemed to me to be a male fantasy but it is a metaphor found in literature and art going back centuries.) Her arms form the shape of a “V” for victory.

In his book Victorian Painting, Christopher Wood uses this painting as an example of  Cowper’s “lush, highly romantic Arthurian subjects, with a strong emphasis on richly coloured materials.” It is Pre-Raphaelite in its combination of a theatrical Romanticism with intricate realism. La Belle’s gown echoes the flowers in the field surrounding her—possibly poppies. It has the “touch” of velvet, that most seductive of materials. Her flowing shawl seems to represent the ease that she feels. The red could, of course, symbolize blood or the color of the siren.

The knight is lying helpless at her feet. (I always question how he could walk at all given the shape of the “shoes” that he’s wearing.) He is in full armor but that proved to be no protection against the power of La Belle. I don’t believe that she is looking at him. Her gaze is off to the side and she seems to be concentrating on her hair. Her entire air is one of self-congratulatory nonchalance. This is the traditional femme fatale who enthralls men and shows no mercy.

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" Non-Traditional Reading

In this reading La Belle is the victim and the knight is an unreliable narrator rather than being authoritative, the way we normally think of a narrator. The "questioner" describes him as loitering. The word is probably derived from Old English lutian which means "lurk." That can carry the connotation of ambush. In any case, loitering is not the activity that we usually associate with a knight. The poem, of course, "begins" at the "end" and we have only the knight's interpretation of events. However, as a fallible narrator his views are flawed and his tale is distorted.

In the fifth stanza La Belle is described as moaning which the knight claims is "sweet." He tells us that it is because she is in love with him. Could she be moaning out of fear or pain? The sixth stanza could be describing a kidnapping and, if "steed" is read as a double entendre, a rape. The knight quotes La Belle as saying "I love thee true" in the next stanza. That is his perspective of her "language strange" which could be translated as "no" instead. We only have his word for it. To him her "elfin grot" is her home. Perhaps she's trying to get away from him. She is crying and sighing "full sore." The knight is using the term in the sense of sorrow but doesn't question what is causing her sorrow. "Sore" could be interpreted as pain, physical or mental.

He next tells of her lulling him to sleep. Perhaps she is able to drug him with what he sees as "roots of relish sweet,/ And honey wild, and manna dew" in the seventh stanza. Then she escapes. His dream is part of his delusion and his portrayal of himself as deserted victim. Somehow the seasons have changed very quickly from spring to winter. He is still "loitering." A Medieval case of He Says, She Says?

Next we'll look at the interpretations of the artists.

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" Traditional Reading

The Beautiful Woman without Mercy is a ballad--a short narrative poem. Some read it as a Medieval love story in which La Belle is dominant and demonic in the tradition of Morgan le Fay (Morgana the Magician).  Some readers think that the first three stanzas are spoken by another character--the questioner--who comes upon the knight in the wilderness. The remaining stanzas in that reading are the knight's answer.

It is important to note that the season in the first three stanzas is autumn or winter: the sedge has withered, no birds sing, the squirrel has food stored and the harvest is in.  The knight is obviously ill: he's pale--there is a lilly on his brow--and feverish; he's withering as is the color on his cheeks; he's haggard and sad. He's also alone and interestingly he's "loitering." (I'll get back to that word in the non-traditional analysis of the poem.)

In the fourth stanza the knight is speaking in first person and answering the question posed: "What can ail thee?" He describes La Belle as a sylph, a beautiful young woman who is free and mysterious--perhaps the personification of young love. It is spring time and he gives her gifts of flowered "jewelry." She seems to be in love with him. He takes her up onto his horse and she is singing and filled with happiness. She feeds him and tells him that she loves him--in language strange since she seems other-worldly. La Belle is now the temptress. She takes him to her home--her "elfin grot"--and he kisses away her tears without questioning their cause. She lulls him to sleep and he dreams.

Stanzas ten and eleven describe his dream about previous victims who warn him that he is "in thrall" to La Belle. In other words, her spell has worked and he is enslaved and helpless. The dream seems to turn into a nightmare. These death-pale kings, princes and warriors caution him that La Belle is, in fact, a femme fatale. She deliberately leads men to their own destruction. Are they the ghosts of men who also found her irresistible? Is the same thing going to happen to this knight? When he awakens he is in a type of wasteland alone. Has this knight's quest failed through no fault of his own? Is the poem his warning to other potential targets of La Belle? Or was he searching for something unattainable?


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173740

Mother

Standing by the window with the bright sun shining into the room, mother was in silhouette, the wisps of hair straying around her head mingled, in my vision, with the straying mists of the curtains. She held them apart with her right hand and her long delicate fingers played with the folds of gossamer. Her left had touched the pendant that lay upon her chest, its lace framework of white contrasting with the dark cotton bodice of her dress. The gold band on her finger caught the light as she felt the sculpted cameo, and knobs of gold bounced off the ceiling and far wall with every movement of her fingers. She did this unconsciously, touching the cameo. She often did it. The design of its bas relief was of a girl standing on a shore, her hair blowing behind her and becoming entwined with the beams of a silver moon.

Mother was gazing out the window but her thoughts were not on the summer scene outside. Her eyes reflected the green lawn and large trees and the yellow swaying field beyond. But these reflections were not on her mind. She was thinking of me…and that the eggs gathered that morning were still in her basket in the hall, covered with the red checkered cloth…that the front fence really needed another whitewash…that she must make sure Amelia had the silver polished for the dinner guests. These things flitted in and out of her mind as the gold knob moved back and forth from ceiling to floor, ceiling to floor, in a gliding motion synchronized to the motion of her fingers slowly swinging the pendant on its gold chain. And the breeze moved the curtains and in the same rhythm the wisps of hair blew around her neck. I knew one strand would blow across her cheek soon and that she would take her hand from the curtains and turn back to me where I lay on my bed on top of the pink chintz cover that matched the valance above the gauze curtains she held. She was thinking of me and wondering what she could do to help; what she could say to ease my pain and confusion. I couldn’t hold the tears back and they fell down my face onto the pink coverlet; they made the knob of gold blur into a soft yellow and the woman in silhouette become even softer, iridescent, as the gauze curtains.

Outside the window insects were buzzing. In the distance a train groaned out its long lonely whistle. It was the sound I listened to at night and woke up to in the mornings. The sound of peace, a part of my world, like the woman standing in front of the window. They all belonged together. Outside the oak leaves rattled and the curtains again billowed, as a wisp of hair slipped onto her cheek and into her gray eyes. I heard her sigh. The fingers let go of the curtains and went to her face to catch the escaped strand. The fragile and capable fingers fastened it again into place. In the next movement she turned and came toward me. The long folds of her dress flowed against her legs and the rustle of petticoats underneath replaced the echoes of the whistling train. She bent down and placed a cool hand on my forehead. She was smiling and her hair looked like spun sugar around her face. “Now you’re as much of a woman as I am.” She lifted the pendant in her left hand and with the right pulled the chain over her head. Then she put it around my neck and laid the lace frame carefully on the yellow muslin of my blouse. She cocked her head to one side as an artist critically gazing before her easel. Then her eyes looked into mine. “There, I think it’s time you had this.” She smiled at me for a long moment and I smiled back as I touched the gold chain, the ivory, and the lace. And my shattered world was mended.
　

Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci"

After Wordsworth, Keats is my favorite English Romantic Poet. I like to use this poem to show students that one text can be interpreted in opposite ways. I think it's important to learn different sides of an issue especially for the current "millennial generation" of students who prefer to think things are black or white. Life, of course, is not that simple and a belief in absolutes can lead to intolerance. I also use pieces of artwork which give "painted" interpretations of the poem. It's interesting to note the variety of these "translations."

Keats was born in London, England in 1795. His father was the manager of a pub and died in a riding accident when Keats was eight. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was fourteen, as did one of his brothers, Thomas, eight years later. Keats had nursed them both. Keats himself died of the disease in 1821, eight months before his twenty-sixth birthday.  He accomplished a great deal in his short life, though his poetry was not universally appreciated during his lifetime. One critic writing for Blackwoods Magazine coined the term "Cockney School" of poetry for his work. The real criticism of course was aimed at the fact that he was not "upper class." The movie Bright Star that came out a few years ago based on his love affair with Fanny Brawne is a good introduction to Keats. At the end of the film, during the credits, Ben Whishaw, who plays Keats, recites "Ode to a Nightingale." Sitting in the audience I felt that Keats was speaking the words of that very lovely poem.

Here is the link to "La Belle": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173740


And here are links to four Nineteenth Century paintings which interpret the poem:

Cowper:  http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=75


Arthur Hughes:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/hughes/p-hughes19.htm


Waterhouse:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh48.htm


Frank Dicksee:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/d/p-dicksee1.htm

Word-Hoard...Insidious (Facebook)

A few days ago I was having lunch with a friend when she told me that she has a Facebook account but hardly ever uses it because Facebook is so "insidious."

Let's see. According to Random House Dictionary, insidious means something "intended to entrap or beguile; stealthily treacherous or deceitful; operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect." Synonyms are corrupting, artful, cunning, wily, subtle crafty. I suppose one grave effect is the amount of time one can spend on Facebook. However, I find it a nice way to talk with friends without having to dress for the occasion.

"Insidious" is derived from the Latin insidiosus which means deceitful or treacherous. Interestingly that is a form of insido which means to sit, settle or perch upon. Curious. I suppose "to sit on it" can mean to hide something which can be deceitful...or just  private...or when one is pondering.

I know that there have been complaints about Facebook making information available to advertisers. I never pay attention to the advertisements on my "Wall." They aren't as irritating as some of the advertisements in the New York Times online newspaper. I usually keep the computer screen on minimum when reading the Times so as to avoid all of those flashing, moving, bouncing messages. I sometimes accidently "roll over" a portion of the screen and get a pulsing advertisement for iPhone4 or tickets to a MOMA exhibit. But I like looking at some of the slide shows and listening to some of the podcasts, so I'll put up with those inconvenient ads.  At least Facebook ads don't move. As for Facebook making my information available....They can only give information that I put in my profile and minimal is a choice.

Perhaps I'm missing some dire threat. Then again, I like the idea of being beguiled.

Icarus Unbound

While doing research on Brueghel, I read John Canaday’s thoughtful and articulate summary biography of Brueghel in his The Lives of the Painters. He calls Brueghel an “extraordinarily complex painter-philosopher” who believed that man was one part of an organically connected universe. He writes that Brueghel’s paintings are “reflections upon the nature of man, his relationship to himself and his small world and to the cosmos as his world turned through its seasons.” Unlike the Romantic poets, Brueghel did not personify nature or endow it with emotions. In other words, Brueghel painted the harmony between working man and living nature.

Canaday goes on to state that Brueghel has shown in his paintings that “when man breaks from nature, he becomes the victim of his own frailties.” Unlike the ancient Greeks who believed that man is noble but fated with a tragic flaw, for Brueghel “the flaw is no longer tragic but contemptible because remediable.” I see a connection between this philosophy and Brueghel’s “treatment” of Daedalus in leaving him out of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. It is the landscape that gets top billing and Daedalus who gets none. What Daedalus did in making wings was not in harmony with nature as Ovid pointed out. It gets more complicated, however, when we consider that Brueghel was living during the Reformation--a time of great social, political and religious upheaval.

Specifically it was a time when Brueghel’s Netherlands were being devastated by the Spanish military force of Phillip II. (Husband of “Bloody” Mary, Queen of England until her death in 1558; the king who sent the Spanish Armada to England in 1588 to overthrow Elizabeth I and her Protestant regime; that Phillip II.) He sent one of his generals, the Duke of Alba to the Netherlands for the purpose of seeking out heretics. Alba had unlimited power and set up the Council of Troubles which condemned without trial those suspected of heresy and rebellion. Calvinists called it the Council of Blood. This occurred in 1567, two years before Brueghel’s death but the atmosphere of intolerance had been brewing for decades (probably since Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses perhaps on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. Interestingly that is the Wittenberg where Hamlet and his friend Horatio attended university; but I digress.)

In such an atmosphere, it seems to me, the mythical manipulations of Daedalus could be associated with those of Alba. Thus, as Auden contends, the death of Icarus is “not an important failure” since there were worse failures closer to home. And when we consider that Auden writes his poem in 1938, in an atmosphere of the impending catastrophe that was World War II, we can’t blame him for feeling empathy at the indifference Brueghel’s painting shows toward Icarus’s tragedy.

Daedalus

In Greek "Daedalus" means cunning worker. (The word is not of Hellenic origin and was borrowed by the Greeks from another culture.) In Latin it means skillful. "Daedalean" or "Daedalic" has come to mean something that is ingenious, complicated or convoluted.

Referring to the story of King Minos and the labyrinth that Daedalus built for him, Ovid calls Daedalus "an artist/ Famous in building, who could set in stone/ Confusion and conflict, and deceive the eye/ With devious aisles and passages." (In another myth it is Daedalus who builds the wooden bull in which Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, can hide in order to fulfill her passion for the bull that Minos refused to sacrifice to Poseidon. The result of that god's punishment is the Minotaur which Minos needs to hide and thus the labyrinth. Perhaps a myth for another day.) As mentioned in another post, Ovid describes Daedalus' invention of the wings as "changing the laws of nature" and later relates the murder of Talos Perdix as "the story [that] reflects no credit on Daedalus." (A bit of an understatement.) Ovid, it seems to me, describes an amoral man.  If we look beyond the creations of Daedalus, we have a schemer whose pride goes beyond arrogance. Perhaps as with those who view his flight, Daedalus believes that he must be a god.

Omitting Daedalus from Landscape with the Fall of Icarus could be interpreted as Brueghel's statement that Daedalus is a failure as both inventor and father. Since he includes the partridge in the painting, Brueghel seems to be emphasizing a contrast: The goddess put feathers on Talos Perdix and he lived; Daedalus put feathers on himself and his son and Icarus died. Perhaps the painting shows more than universal indifference to human suffering.

Interpretations of Icarus Continued

Auden's answer to the reason for the human indifference to Icarus' tragedy in Brueghel's painting is that "it was not an important failure." I'm not sure what to make of that. The obvious question is, why wasn't it important? The next is, what failure or whose failure? As Auden writes, the ship "had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on." Also the sun "shone/ As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green/ Water." Are both poem and painting studies of a universe apathetic to suffering?

There is an interesting part of the painting that is difficult to see. On a branch coming out of the cliff just above the fisherman, there is a partridge, apparently the only thing looking at Icarus. The partridge is connected to the second story associated with Daedalus in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  While Daedalus is burying his son, "A noisy partridge...drummed with her wings in loud approval." The bird is Talos Perdix (genus of partridge), the pupil and nephew whom Daedalus killed out of envy. However, Minerva (the Roman name of the Greek goddess Athena) had saved Talos and turned him into a partridge. So does this then become a story of revenge?

All of which makes me return to Daedalus, the character missing from poem and painting. He was after all, the instigator of events. What does he represent to Ovid, Brueghel, Auden?

Brueghel's Icarus

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (he removed the "h" from his name) was a Flemish painter born around 1525. Many of his works are panoramic landscapes crowded with people, painted with detailed precision and realistically depicting individual stories of rustic life.  His Landscape With the Fall of Icarus is a bit different. (http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/bruegel1/p-brue1-10.htm)

He has each of the individuals mentioned in Ovid's story: Down the bank a man is fishing and seems to be looking at his rod as it "dips and trembles over the water."  In the middle ground there is a shepherd  who "rests his weight upon his crook,"  his right leg folded over his left, with his sheep scattered about on a narrow strip. There is a dog sitting next to him and he is gazing upward caught up in a daydream.  The ploughman in the foreground is concentrating on his work rather than resting "on the handles of the ploughshare."  A large ship is sailing away from the shore. In the distance are a port town and ragged cliffs. The sun is setting into the water and giving the sky a yellow hazy glow. Down in the right-hand corner legs are sticking up awkwardly out of the water.  They seem to be kicking in the air. That is the fallen Icarus. However none of the peasants are looking up "in absolute amazement," nor are they exclaiming, "They must be gods!" In fact, Daedalus is not in sight.

Herein lies the difference between Ovid and Brueghel's versions of the story. For Brueghel, Icarus's tragedy is recognized by no one except the viewer of the painting and then only as a small detail. The painting depicts a Flemish proverb: "No plough stops because a man dies." Of course the "man" in this instance is a boy and his death is not "natural" but something that could have been avoided. It seems that any one of the men could save him. In Ovid's case, the men are in awe thinking they are viewing gods. The complete lack of awareness of the men in Brueghel's painting seems to be saying something else about "humanity."  

Ovid's Icarus

According to Greek mythology, Daedalus was an Athenian engineer and inventor. He was afraid that his pupil, Talos, who invented the saw and potter's wheel, would become greater than he was so he threw Talos into the sea. He was condemned by the council and fled to Crete. There he made his famous labyrinth for King Minos who wouldn't let him leave. Daedalus, according to Ovid, thought "Minos' dominion/ Does not include the air" so he made wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son, Icarus, and flew away, "changing the laws of nature."

Ovid gives details of the invention and has Daedalus warning Icarus to fly a middle course: "Don't go too low, or water will weigh the wings down;/ Don't go too high, or the suns' fire will burn them." Ovid next describes the scene below the flyers: "Far off, far down, some fisherman is watching/ As the rod dips and trembles over the water,/ Some shepherd rests his weight upon his crook,/ Some ploughman on the handles of the ploughshare,/ And all look up, in absolute amazement,/ At those air-borne above. They must be gods!"

And therein lies the rub for the ancient Greeks and for Ovid. Daedalus is guilty of hubris when he "turned his thinking / Toward unknown arts" and invents wings. He must be punished. Icarus "soared higher, higher, drawn to the vast heaven,/ Nearer the sun, and the wax that held the wings/ Melted in that fierce heat, and the bare arms/ Beat up and down in the air...Until the blue sea hushed him."  While burying his drowned son, Daedalus "cursed his talents."

W.H. Auden 's "Musee des Beaux Arts" and "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"

"About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."

This poem was written after Auden had visited the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussel in 1938. The first stanza makes a general statement about paintings Auden viewed. Some argue that Pieter Brueghel the Elder's Census at Bethlehem is the painting being described. Auden names the Brueghel painting being interpreted in the second stanza: Landscape With the Fall of Icarus is the full title. It can be seen here:
http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/bruegel1/p-brue1-10.htm

Just as Auden's poem uses a painting to make a statement, Brueghel translates one of the stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses into painting.  (Ovid, of course, takes his "Story of Daedalus and Icarus" from Greek mythology.) I want to compare and contrast all three works looking specifically at differences and possible reasons for the changes of interpretation.
　

Authors...Yeats "Politics"

"How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms."

This is one of my favorite poems by Yeats. It was one of the last that he wrote before he died, age 73, on January 28, 1939. In his revised edition of the poems, Richard J. Finneran places it last among the "Last Poems," apparently following the order Yeats had intended. R.F. Foster, one of Yeats' biographers,  describes the "message" in the poem as "poignant, resigned, and regretful."  It was written in May, 1938, more than a year before the beginning of World War II, yet it was a time of rising panic over Germany's troop movements. 

However, if the poem is read outside of its historical context (as perhaps it should be), I think we get a truer sense of the "message," one that is universal.  It's a poem describing old age and the pathos that accompanies a recognition of one's mortality. What is important in life is not power and the greed that seems to accompany it. What is important is kindness and companionship and the happiness they bring. The pity is that one always seems so lost in the turmoils of living that one doesn't recognize what is important until it's too late...too late to hold life in one's arms.

Word-Hoard...Tins or Cans

Liz from Australia recently used the word "tins" which I immediately translated into American English usage: "cans." Then I wondered how the difference occurred.

Tin, of course, is an alloy of silver and lead. The chemical symbol is Sn (Latin stannum). The word is derived from the Old English tin and a variety of meanings attach to it. In British slang it means money. In cricket it refers to the scoreboard: "on the tins." A squash court is fitted with tin at the bottom of the front wall which resounds when struck. So "tin" means out of play. In Australian slang, "tin-back" means lucky man. A "tin plate" is iron or steel that has been coated with tin so that it is resistent to oxidation. In other words, it's hermetically sealed which is closest to the meaning of Liz's "tins."

Can (the noun) also has a variety of meanings. It is American slang for toilet. (The Oxford English Dictionary states that this is American slang for "water-closet" the derivation of which we'll save for another day.) To "carry the can" means to take responsibility or to take the blame, rather opposite usages. In the U.S. Navy it means to be reprimanded. According to the OED, the origin of the "take responsibility" usage is unknown but it may have referred to the beer can one soldier carried for his companions. "Can" is derived from the Old English canne from Latin canna meaning "small vessel."  The OED defines it as a vessel for holding liquids, made from various materials but now usually made of tin.

All very interesting but does it answer the original question? In the Eighteenth Century "tin can" in U.S. slang referred to a destroyer. I'm going to put forward a theory: At one time the term used when referring to a hermetically sealed small vessel of food was "tin can." As usual, being language-lazy, that was too much of a mouthful so we split the terms. The Brits (also adopted by the Australians) made the first term plural. For some reason the Americans took the second term and made it plural. Why? Contrariness? Any other theories?

Word-Hoard...Nitpicker

Barb and Maggie brought up this term wondering its origin. As usual I've been having fun delving into language. According to the Wikipedia article on "nitpicking," this means removing lice from hair: "A slow and laborious process, as the root of each individual hair must be examined for infestation."

"Nit" is derived from the Old English hnitu meaning "louse egg." Of course, nitpicker has come to mean one overly concerned with unimportant details (unimportant to whom, I ask!).  One of the usage examples in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1672 is this: "The scold...stretched up her hands with her two thumb-nails in the nit-cracking posture." That's an interesting image and it led me from "scold" to "scold's bridle." (If you go to Google images and type in Scold's Bridle Medieval you find a variety of examples.)

"Scold" is derived from Old Norse skald meaning poet and author of insulting poems. In English it means a woman who uses loud abusive speech and who always finds fault. The bridle, or branks, was used in the Middle Ages as a device of punishment for such women. It was an iron muzzle in an iron frame that fit over the head. The bridle bit was about two inches long with spikes that pressed into the tongue.  Some had a bell that rang while the woman was paraded by leash in town.

I'm certainly glad that I didn't live then! There is a mystery novel by Minette Walters titled The Scold's Bridle which the victim is wearing when found. I read it when it first came out in 1994. That was how I first became aware of such a device. And I suppose "nitpicker" and "scold" do have an association. Fascinating!

"Ozymandias"

Reading about metamorphosis, change and immortality, I, of course, thought of Shelley's sonnet published in 1818. Here's a link to it:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/ozy.shelley.html

I love the satire. Ozymandias is the Greek name of Ramses II of Egypt (13th Century BCE). Not only do his mighty works no long exist; the statue of him that was supposed to immortalize him and his reign ("Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!") is in ruins. The legs remain but not the body. His face has become buried in sand and only the frown, wrinkled lips and sneer can be seen on the "visage."  The unknown sculptor knew his subject and mocked him and his arrogant "heart that fed" his passions. Other than this, only sand remains. (Shelley is using poetic license in his description of the statue.) 

Ovid hoped that his poetry would make him immortal. Both Ozymandias the man and statue "decay." We do, however, still have Shelley's poem. Will that give the king, sculptor and poet immortality? Perhaps a better question is, why does man seek immortality?

Metamorphoses..."The Epilogue"

Of course justice has not been served and I suspect that that is the point behind Ovid's masterpiece. Feasting on a relative, often in ignorance, is a story that runs through several Greek myths. Check out the family of Pelops, specifically the Descendants of Atreus. Part of that story is in the Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus performed in 458 BCE. (It's the only complete trilogy to survive.) The theme of revenge runs throughout. The final play concludes that revenge leads to further revenge through several generations and is not a substitute for justice. That third play, Eumenides (The Furies), is the legendary foundation of the Areopagus court--the Greek court that judged cases of homicide. In other words, justice can only be obtained through judicial procedure using objective citeria.

I think that Ovid uses satire to get the justice he did not receive from Augustus. Near the end of the Metamorphoses is the tale titled "Pythagoras." (He was a sixth century BCE philosopher and mystic who preached vegetarianism based on the belief that we can be reincarnated into any living form. An animal may be an ancestor--too bad Tereus was not a vegetarian. He also believed that the universe could be explained through numbers and their relations to other numbers. Abstracts, such as injustice, were numbers and part of the cosmos within his system.) Near the end of this tale Ovid writes:

  The eras change, nations grow strong, or weaken,
  Like Troy, magnificent in men and riches,
  For ten years lavish with her blood, and now
  Displaying only ruins and for wealth
  The old ancestral tombs. Sparta, Mycenae,
  Athens, and Thebes, all flourished once, and now
  What are they more than names?

He is saying that even the greatness of Imperial Rome will not last. He gives tribute to both Julius Caesar (ending with the "Deification of Caesar") and to Augustus stating "far be the day,/ Later than our own era, when Augustus/ Shall leave the world he rules, ascent to Heaven,/ And there, beyond our presence, hear our prayers!"  (Ovid outlived Augustus by four years but was forced to remain in exile.) However, no matter how great their status and achievements they and their work will not last.

In his twelve-line "Epilogue," Ovid makes it clear that what will last is his poem. Even though metamorphosis, transformation, is the essence of life, works of art will endure. "I shall be read, and through all centuries,/ If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,/ I shall be living, always." He does have the final say.

"The Story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela"

This is one of the most gruesome tales in the Metamorphoses. Tereus, king of Thrace, sent an army to help Pandion, king of Athens, win a war. Because Tereus was the son of Mars (Ares, Greek god of war and only son of Zeus and Hera) and was very wealthy, Pandion "made him a son as well as ally" by having his daughter Procne marry him. Ovid gives foreshadowing: None of the gods attended or blessed the marriage and the Furies "brandished torches/ Snatched from a funeral." Above the bridal chamber "Brooded the evil hoot-owl."

After five years, Procne misses and wants to see her sister, Philomela, so Tereus journeys to Athens to bring her back. As soon as Tereus sees Philomela he "took fire, as ripe grain burns, or dry leaves burn....He was a passionate man, and all the Tracians/ Are all too quick at loving; a double fire/ Burnt in him, his own passion and his nations." (I assume Ovid is offering this an excuse.) After they land, Tereus "dragged her with him/ To the deep woods, to some ramshackle building/ Dark in that darkness" and rapes her repeatedly.

Philomela feels guilty: "I am/ My sister's rival" and says she will tell everyone what Tereus has done. He pulls out his sword and she welcomes the thought of death. However, instead of killing her he cuts out her tongue. "The mangled root/ Quivered, the severed tongue along the ground/ Lay quivering, making a little murmur/ Jerking and twitching, the way a serpent does/ Run over by a wheel, and with its dying movement/ Came to its mistress' feet." Tereus leaves her there and goes home to Procne and weeps saying that Philomela is dead.

Unlike the other stories that include loss of speech, Philomela finds a solution. After a year she weaves a tapestry telling her story and has the tapestry taken to Procne who sees it and understands. She brings Philomela back to the palace and takes her in her arms. "But Philomela could not/ So much as lift her eyes to face her sister,/ Her sister, whom she knew she had wronged." Procne tells her that it isn't the time to cry. She wants revenge: "To burn the palace, and into the flaming ruin/ Hurl Tereus, the author of our evils./ I would cut out his tongue, his eyes, cut off/ The parts which brought you shame, inflict a thousand/ Wounds on his guilty soul." (The original castrating female--the woman scorned.)

At that moment her young son, Itys, comes in and Procne thinks, "How like his father he is."  She stabs him to death and the sisters cut up his body and "this was the feast they served to Tereus." When he asks to have his son brought in, Procne tells him that his son is already there. Philomela "with hair all bloody,/ Springs at him, and hurls the bloody head of Itys/ Full in his father's face." (A painting by Rubens, Tereus Confronted by the Head of His Son Itylus, depicts this scene dramatically. http://www.paintingall.com/peter-paul-rubens-tereus-confronted-with-the-head-of-his-son-itylus.html.) Tereus wishes he could "open up his belly,/ Eject the terrible feast: all he can do/ Is weep, call himslf the pitiful resting-place/ Of his dear son."  He draws his sword and the two sisters run away. The metamorphosis then takes place with all three turning into birds.

Ovid does not actually say which birds the sisters become. He has one flying into the woods--where nightingales dwell. Since "Philomel" is from the Greek words meaning love of song, in literature Philomela is the nightingale. The other sister/bird flies under the cover of a roof--where the swallow builds its nest. Thus, Procne changes into a swallow. ( Some stories switch these identities.) For Tereus "a stiff crest rises/ Upon his head, and a huge beak juts forward,/ Not too unlike a sword. He is the hoopoe,/ The bird who looks like war."

Has justice been served?

"The Story of Actaeon" Continued

I've been pondering loss of speech as a symbol. Melanie's comment about Actaeon losing his identity because speech differentiates us from other animals is interesting. Diana's action has caused the hunter to know what it's like to be hunted. In this way she is able to use his company of friends and his own hounds to accomplish her revenge. His friends have urged the dogs on. (I think it's interesting to note that "company" is from the Latin com meaning "with" and panis meaning "bread."  The root is "a group that shares bread.")  In other words, those very close to him have killed him not knowing that he is Actaeon. What will they feel when they find him missing?  Actaeon's loss of speech causes him to lose his identity, his power and his life.

T&G wonder why Diana "did not exact revenge on his eyes." That would seem the logical thing to do. However, he'd still have the power of communication since he retains his human mind even in his metamorphosis.  And as T&G indicated, perhaps retaining thought but being unable to express any thought is a worse form of punishment. Another thing to consider is that when these myths and legends were evolving, the majority of people were illiterate. Not being able to speak or gesture would cause almost total isolation. An earlier audience may have been able to empathize even more than we can.

What Diana seems to fear is that Actaeon will tell what he has seen; that he will make what is private public. Common, community and communicate all have the same derivation. Latin communis means to share something. (Munus is "duty.")  The opposite of communis is proprius or "one's own." In other words, in seeing her bathing (whether by accident or intention), Actaeon has appropriated  something that belongs exclusively to the goddess: her identity. (To make the symbols even more interesting: What if Actaeon replaces Ovid and Diana replaces Julia, Augustus' granddaughter, or even Augustus himself?)

The last story I'd like to look at in Metamorphoses also includes loss of speech but with a different solution: "The Story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela" in Book Six.

"The Story of Actaeon"

As with most myths there are different versions of the story. In the original Greek version, Actaeon is not innocent. Upon seeing Diana--the Roman version of the Greek Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt--he is overcome by her beauty, hides behind a tree, and deliberately spies upon her while she bathes.  According to Ovid, Actaeon's encounter with the goddess is accidental. He is "guiltless; put the blame/ On luck, not crime: what crime is there in error?" Interestingly, this is the same way Ovid described the reason for his own exile.

In the story, Actaeon has finished the day's hunt and he tells his "company" to "Give up the labor,/ Bring home the nets." Somehow he ends up "wandering, far from certain,/ Through unfamiliar woodland till he entered/ Diana's grove, as fate seemed bound to have it." Note that fate is to blame. It's also interesting that Actaeon seems to be wandering the "pathless woods" just as Daphne had done. When Diana, bathing with her nymphs or handmaidens, sees him she blushes "As the clouds/ Grow red at sunset, as the daybreak reddens" and throws water into his face, crying, "'Tell people you have seen me,/ Diana, naked! Tell them if you can!'" Note that her punishment is directed at his voice.

At that moment, Actaeon sprouts horns and turns into a stag. "There is one thing only/ Left him, his former mind." Again, as with Daphne, the metamorphosis involves appearance and not mind.  He still thinks like a human, making the punishment somehow worse. He is too ashamed to go back home and too fearful to remain in the forest. However, it's too late. His hounds have seen him. We are next given a "catalog" of his hounds, their names and characteristics as they attack him. "Actaeon, once pursuer/ Over this very ground, is now pursued."

He tries to cry out to tell the hounds and his companions who he is but he cannot speak. "He groans,/ Making a sound not human, but a sound/ No stag could utter either, and the ridges/ Are filled with that heart-breaking kind of moaning." He kneels on the ground "like a man praying" but since he has no arms his pleading is in vain. He is mangled and torn. "And so he died, and so Diana's anger/ Was satisfied at last."

What does loss of speech symbolize?

"Apollo and Daphne" Artworks

The three examples of artwork that I posted earlier depicting the story, show the moment of metamorphosis. Poussin’s painting of 1625, includes all of the elements of the story: Cupid with bow, Peneus the river god who seems to be weeping in sorrow, Apollo holding Daphne as she becomes the laurel. He seems to be seated with his arms raised up to Daphne and with an imploring look on his face. Daphne looks dazed and emotionless. The subject has been described as “poetic melancholy” with the theme being the victory of chastity over love. I don’t buy that since I find no victory for anyone, with the possible exception of Cupid. This painting does not depict the story that Ovid has given us.

The Waterhouse painting was exhibited in 1908. The art critic, Peter Trippi, feels that the painting centers on the “gaze exchanged.” Daphne in deshabille looks back over her shoulder on the verge of becoming hysterical. Apollo, on the other hand, doesn’t seem at all emotional. He’s holding his lyre with the other arm stretched out to Daphne but he doesn’t appear to be seeing her. Perhaps this is the expression that the god or reason would have when he’s been overpowered by emotion: a helpless stoicism. I don’t buy this either given the things that Apollo says to Daphne in Ovid’s account.

Probably the most famous piece of artwork based on this story is Bernini’s sculpture (1625). It is in the Galleria Borghese in Rome and was commissioned by Cardinal Borghese who was a patron of Bernini. It is made from marble. Daphne, her mouth in the shape of a scream, is covered in bark from the waist down except for her right leg. Her arms are raised and she is twisting while her hair and hands are turning into leaves and limbs. The “rushing movement” of the running pair causes Apollo’s robe to flow backward and around him. As Bluecat mentioned, when she saw the piece and looked at it long enough, it seemed to move. If you Google the sculpture you will get images from various angles. They almost look as though they are different sculptures. Apollo’s left leg is out behind him and one hand is holding Daphne on her waist which has become covered with bark. Some find the look on his face one of empathy as he finally realizes how she feels. I interpret it as a look of satisfaction: He thinks he has her in his grasp at last.

Ovid’s “portrait” of Apollo making the laurel tree his own as a symbol of “triumph and ovation” does not reveal an empathetic god. It seems more like blind arrogance. And the “Yes” at the end of the story reinforces that presumption. It is Apollo at the end who interprets the “stirring” of the laurel as “consent.” Ovid’s portrayal demonstrates absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Next: “The Story of Actaeon” from Book Three.

"Apollo and Daphne"...3

Daphne is frightened. Apollo is described as preying on her: “When a hound starts a rabbit,/ In an open field, one runs for game, one safety/…So ran the god and girl, one swift in hope,/ The other in terror.” She is “deathly pale” and when she sees her father she cries, “O help me,/ If there is any power in the rivers,/ Change and destroy the body which has given/ Too much delight!” I find it interesting that Daphne feels guilty: She thinks that it is her fault for being too beautiful. What we have portrayed here is power and vulnerability. Why does the one being terrorized feel that she is to blame?

It gets worse: Her father turns her into a tree. “Her limbs grew numb and heavy, her soft breasts/ Were closed with delicate bark, her hair was leaves,/ Her arms were branches, and her speedy feet/ Rooted and held, and her head became a tree top.” Apollo loves her still and he “placed his hand/ Where he had hoped and felt the heart still beating/ Under the bark; and he embraced the branches/ As if they still were limbs, and kissed the wood,/ And the wood shrank from his kisses.” Terrified, Daphne literally becomes petrified; she is trapped in her metamorphosis. The beating heart shows that inside the tree there is still a young woman. Her shrinking from the unwanted kisses shows that she still feels repugnance but she’s trapped and helpless to stop Apollo‘s attentions.

Apollo exclaims that if she can’t be his bride she will be his tree. “Let the laurel/ Adorn, henceforth, my hair, my lyre, my quiver/…And as my head/ Is always youthful, let the laurel always/ Be green and shining!” Daphne, then, has been given immortality. However, is this a prize or a punishment? It seems to me that what Ovid has portrayed is endless torment. He may also be making a social statement: Apollo, the god of order and stability, has been overpowered by passion; it is uncontrollable emotion that can destabilize the social and moral order. The question, of course, is what or who does Apollo symbolize?

"Apollo and Daphne"...2

To answer my question, I think the blame is Apollo’s. Cupid’s ego has been hurt by Apollo’s comment and that is the reason for his revenge. Daphne is the victim of both male egos.

Ovid gives us the cause in the first few lines of the poem: Apollo falls in love/lust with Daphne because of Cupid. Many translators use “malice” to describe Cupid’s behavior. Humphries translates the line as, “And this was no blind chance, but Cupid’s malice.” Frank Justus Miller, translator of the Harvard University Press edition, renders it, “It was no blind chance that gave this love, but the malicious wrath of Cupid.” In the original, Ovid uses the Latin “saeva Cupidinis ira.” Ira means wrath or anger. We derive “ire” from it. Saeva means violent or fierce. “Malice” is the desire to inflict injury because of hostility or meanness. In other words, it carries a connotation of some ignoble, petty or small-minded act. “Wrath” on the other hand has the connotation of indignation.

It seems to me that Cupid feels indignant because he is offended by the way Apollo speaks to him. “The torch, my boy, is enough for you to play with/…Do not meddle/ With honors that are mine.” Apollo is not only demonstrating the overweening pride of hubris (which in Greek means “insolence”); he is showing contempt for someone who does not have his strength and power. In other words, he is not wielding authority wisely.

We see the same arrogance in Apollo when Daphne flees from him: “I am no shepherd,/ No mountain-dweller, I am not a ploughboy,/ Uncouth and stinking of cattle. You foolish girl,/ You don’t know who it is you run away from.” It is inconceivable to Apollo that Daphne wants nothing to do with him. And what does Daphne feel?
　

"Apollo and Daphne"

Ovid's story of "Apollo and Daphne" is taken from Greek myth. Apollo is the Greek god of prophecy, music, reason and light. He is sometimes identified with the sun. In Homer's Iliad Apollo is against the Greeks and on the side of the Trojans. This is appropriate for Ovid's purposes since, according to legend, the Romans are directly descended from the Trojans. (See Virgil's Aeneid.) In fact, Apollo was taken by Augustus as his special patron.

Daphne is a nymph. In Greek myth nymphs are female personifications of natural objects who are always young and beautiful but are not immortal. Daphne is the daughter of the river-god, Peneus, and she is a huntress. According to Ovid she is a rival of Diana, the virgin goddess. (Diana is the Roman name for Artemis who is the twin sister of Apollo.) Though her father urges Daphne to get married and give him grandsons, she charms him into allowing her to remain a virgin. She is not interested in love. (It is interesting to note that under the rule of Augustus, Roman marriage law required women between twenty and fifty years of age to marry and bear children. There were penalties imposed against those who did not.)

Cupid, or Eros in Greek myth, is the boy-god of love, son of Venus and Vulcan. One thing to keep in mind when reading this story is the clash of egos. Cupid's curse and revenge make the god of reason lustful and this brings about the "action" of the story. Who is at fault?

Again, there are many artworks depicting "Apollo and Daphne."  Here are three:

Bernini sculpture:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=1872

Poussin painting:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=2882

Waterhouse painting:  http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=838