On Monday there was no Romantic Literature
class, nor will there be one on Wednesday because it’s reading week at U of T.
I had intended to work on my essay during the time I would have been in class
from 11:00 to 13:00, but after half an hour I got sleepy and so I took an early
siesta. I got up at 13:10 and after lunch I put in an hour and a half of work
on my paper. I’m enjoying the process and I think I’m putting in some good
writing this term. I don’t know why but it seems that Professor Karen Weinstein
brings out the best in me.
The
sea sponge that I use in my homemade humidifier is making my guitar smell like
the ocean. It doesn’t stink but I’d prefer my axe to have the fragrance of
wood.
For Blake, night
and winter go hand in hand to represent the negative aspects of nature. A land
where children are orphaned and poor exists in eternal winter, with no
sunlight, no harvest and where the pathways are overgrown with thorns. The
snowy season in the country is distinguished from winter in the city in his
Songs of Experience poem “The Chimney Sweeper". This poem paints a before
and after picture of a child, at first happy in rural snow but then
transplanted to suffer as a blackened urchin against a hoary backdrop of urban
winter without the warmth of family
love.
Blake paints
the hours after dark as a breeding ground for destructive passions, which he
calls “delights chained in night". Productive things are not done in the
darkness. An invisible worm flies in the night to inflict illness on the rose.
The rose is a woman. The sick rose has been afflicted perhaps with the curse of
venereal disease from the worm that flies in the night. The worm being either
the disease itself or the penis of the man that spreads it with his secret
night life, like the young “harlot" of London a life as a sex trade
worker.
I
worked a bit more on my essay but I also took a break from that and re-read the
poems of Charlotte Smith, this time aloud. The poem by her that I like is one
that isn’t in the required text for my Romantic Literature course. It’s a
sonnet entitled “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking
the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic”.
I
also re-read out loud John Clare’s “The Lament of Swordy Well”, which is from
the point of view of a rock quarry that used to be full of life but got
stripped of all vegetation, insect and animal life as a result of being used
for road repair.
I
grilled four frozen chicken legs and had one for dinner while watching Peter
Gunn. This story begins with a young man named Roger riding the elevator to his
girlfriend Lynn’s apartment. A man named Santano uses a knife to stop the
elevator between floors, then opens the hatch door and shoots Roger. Gunn’s
girlfriend Edie asks him to look in on Lynn at the club where she sings in
order to find out what is bothering her. They don’t know about Roger. She’s
singing The Meaning of the Blues by Bobby Troup and Leah Worth but she breaks
down crying halfway through the song. Gunn goes to talk with her in her
dressing room but they are interrupted by Santanos who threatens Gunn with a
knife. The next time Gunn finds Lynn drinking alone in the club. He tries to
talk with her again but is interrupted by her owner Kreuger and Santanos
threatens him with the knife again. Gunn goes to see Lynn at her apartment,
smells gas and busts down the door. He saves Lynn from suicide just in time. He
is taking Lynn to stay with Edie but the elevator stops and Santanos opens the
hatch but Gunn shoots him. The cops apprehend Kreuger. Lynn finishes the show
by singing the same song in a better mood at the club.
Lynn
was played by Linda Lawson. She’s technically a better singer than Lola
Albright.
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