All Art Must Break the Law

            On Monday morning I opened most of the windows to balance out the heat. It was raining and I think it would have been too cold without the furnace on. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Tic tac toe” by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French and English, then I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to prepare it for blog publication. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos at breakfast and at 13:00 I weighed 89 kilos. 

             A little after 14:00 I logged on to write my Brit Lit 2 exam. I had thought that there would be a time limit but it looks like we really did have 24 hours to complete it. I took just under five hours to write what was supposedly designed to be a three hour assessment. 

            Here it is: Part 1: 

            Passage Context and Significance

            Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market” 

            White and golden Lizzie stood, Like a lily in a flood,— Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone Lash’d by tides obstreperously,— Like a beacon left alone In a hoary roaring sea, Sending up a golden fire,— Like a fruit-crown’d orange-tree White with blossoms honey-sweet Sore beset by wasp and bee,— Like a royal virgin town Topp’d with gilded dome and spire 

            In this passage Lizzie has sought out the Goblin men to extract from them the cure for her sister Laura’s affliction. Laura had given in to the temptations of the merchant Goblin men and it resulted in the chronic loss of her youth. So now Lizzie is surrounded by the same men who are attempting to force her to partake of their delicious wares of exotic fruit. 

            The description of Lizzie as white and golden has its most obvious meaning in the traditions of equating the colour white with purity and gold with the highest value. But there is an undertone of this being a reference to her ethnicity as a white English girl with blond hair. The reason this is emphasized refers to another passage where the Goblin men are described with anti-Semitic tropes. In this passage Lizzie is shown to be a metaphor for the island of England itself. Just as England has been said to be a flower and an unyielding rock in the ocean, Lizzie is described as standing firm against the onslaught of the “flood”, the “tides”, “the roaring sea” of the sensations of the global backlash of colonization. The fruit that inundates England from conquered satellites of its own empire is threatening the local farmer of England that Lizzie represents. The colonizer is effectively being colonized by the colonized. 

            There is irony in the descriptions of Lizzie as being like a “fruit crowned orange tree” as she is presented as producing metaphorically the very exotic fruit with which the Goblin men are tempting her. The foreigners are reduced to insects coming for Lizzie's “white” blossoms even though they already carry ripened fruit. Lizzie becomes the object of desire for the undesirables that invade England in this xenophobic poem. 

            Charlotte Smith, “Beachy Head” 

            Hither, Ambition, come! Come and behold the nothingness of all For which you carry thro’ the oppressed Earth, War, and its train of horrors—see where tread The innumerous hoofs of flocks above the works By which the warrior sought to register His glory, and immortalize his name— The pirate Dane, who from his circular camp Bore in destructive robbery, fire and sword Down thro’ the vale, sleeps unremember’d here; And here, beneath the green sward, rests alike meadow The savage native, who his acorn meal Shar’d with the herds, that ranged the pathless woods; And the centurion, who on these wide hills Encamping, planted the Imperial Eagle. All, with the lapse of Time, have passed away, Even as the clouds, with dark and dragon shapes, Or like vast promontories crown’d with towers, Cast their broad shadows on the downs: then sail Far to the northward, and their transient gloom Is soon forgotten. 

            In this passage, as in many in “Beachy Head", Charlotte Smith is showing the status of Beachy Head, the cliffs of which are the southernmost part of England, as a geological time machine. She describes how the events of history come to this place and die while Beachy Head remains unchanged. The passage opens with the message that human “ambition" itself fades to “nothingness" or passes over like soon forgotten clouds, in the face of this forever steadfast formation. The unmarked graves of entire armies of Vikings and Romans lie beneath the flocks that graze on the grass of Beachy Head. Smith uses Beachy Head as a symbol of the permanence of England in her referencing the folly of its many invaders. But her main point is about the timelessness of nature and how all the diverse human hordes that come to England, even the earliest inhabitants, become equal in a democratic peaceful sleep that is contained by the permanence of Beachy Head. 

            Part 2: Applications

            In “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 

           John Keats reveals that it is the persistent mystery of this work of art that renders it immortal. The figures depicted as frozen in motion create intrigue and curiosity as to their lives and motives that render them timeless. 

            A counter example is “Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which describes the architectural magnificence of a palace that is already partially forgotten at the beginning of the poem. Xanadu is clearly not immortal and the end of the poem suggests that it would require a foundation certain music for it to be born again. 

            Ekphrasis is when one form of art uses another to create a new work of art. The most famous example of ekphrasis in English literature is “Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats. He creates a poem to immortalize the images that decorate a pottery artefact of ancient Greece. 

            Oscar Wilde offers many examples of ekphrasis in his essay "The Critic As Artist." He shows how the critic often creates through ekphrasis. One prominent example is when he tells us how Walter Pater’s beautiful prose description of Leonardo Da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" established the world's understanding of the work far beyond the painter's intentions. 

            Aesthetic beauty creates a sense of peaceful affinity with the object being observed while the aesthetic sublime evokes a feeling of terror of one's own mortality. Stanzas 4 and 5 of “La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats is an example of aesthetic beauty in the description of the lady that the knight at arms encountered. Stanzas 10 and 11 of the same poem offer a sublime rendering of the same fairy woman after she has taken the knight in thrall. 

            The titular character in Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko is shown to have hybrid identity in the way she describes him as being an African prince but with European features, such as his nose and lips, that render him, according to the speaker, as beautiful. Another example of Oroonoko's hybridity is how he is shown to be admirably noble but also as a monster who trades in African slaves. 

            In Robert Browning’s "Fra Lippo Lippi" the monk is plagued by the hybridity of his life as a painter of religious artwork but also his own love of the pleasures of the world. He tries to insert that same hybridity into his art. 

            In E. M. Forster’s story "The Machine Stops" the character of Vashti feels torn between motherly instincts towards her son and her sterile servitude of the Machine. 

            The ballad is one of the oldest forms of poetry because it predates the printing press and maintained itself in the world’s memory by usually being sung. An example of this is "La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats. 

            The Petrarchan sonnet is the form from which the English sonnet was adapted but some writers in English still worked with the Petrarchan form. It consists of a questioning octave followed by a resolving sestet with a volta indicating a turn towards the solution usually between the octave and the sestet, but not always. "My country! in thy days of glory past" by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is an example. 

            Part 3: Essay

            When Oscar Wilde declares that “all art is immoral” he means that nothing new can be created unless it breaks the boundaries established by what we know as morality. The purpose of art is to elevate everything to a state of beauty. Morality strictly defines the limits of beauty based on what art has already rendered beautiful. Any new art must sin against the established structures of morality in order to exist as something new that adds new gods to the pantheon of beauty. 

            We will look at two examples of poetry that tries to break the bounds of morality as Wilde urges. The first is “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold and the other is “Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson. 

            Matthew Arnold describes in “Dover Beach" the mournful sound of the waves dragging pebbles out to sea. He uses this as a metaphor for the receding of Christian faith and morality. He suggests that something more personal and tangible should replace an oceanically vast religion that was too large and ambiguous for creative thinkers to relate to. He reflects this in his rhyme scheme that breaks through the traditional structures. The rhymes in the first stanza create a deliberate disconnection like humanity’s alienation from established morality. The rhymes are there and noticeable but there is no rhythm to connect them, whereas in the final stanza the rhymes tighten up to indicate togetherness, or one could say the lines become true to one another just as he concludes to his love that they and we all should do independent of religion. 

            Another example can be found in Alfred Tennyson’s "Ulysses" where the poet establishes two distinct and equal moralities: that of Ulysses and that of his son Telemachas. In this poem Ulysses makes it clear that he does not have the talent and the patience “by slow prudence to make mild / A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees / Subdue them to the useful and the good.” Ulysses understands that he himself represents the old morality that has only nobility to support it and that his son represents a transition to democracy that must send out to sea the stifling power that nobility held. “Ulysses” represents a peaceful transition of power that rarely occurs. 

            We see in both of these examples and many more, illustrations of Oscar Wilde’s idea that art must be free of morality. For Arnold and for Tennyson it becomes evident that old morals are being sent out to sea, with something more beautiful remaining to take their places. In both cases art pushes itself free of morality-producing factories that hold the artist and the world back. In Arnold’s case it is religion and for Tennyson the culprit is nobility. Both old school religion and nobility in the form of monarchy contain established beauty but they cannot extend themselves into new forms. 

            Wilde would say that it is not that religion and nobility are consciously targeted for elimination by the artist. They and other examples of morality only become named when art is seeking beauty and they get in the way. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos at 19:30. 

            I had a potato and a small piece of chicken with gravy for dinner while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story Opie and his friends are playing Robin Hood when they come across a hobo living in the woods. He tells them about Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving to the poor and how the sheriff was a bad guy. He says he’s especially poor because his bad leg won’t allow him to work. Opie steals an apple pie from Aunt Bee and the other boys take food from home for him as well. When Andy learns that things have gone missing he asks Opie about it. Opie says they took the food but only because the man was needy. Andy says he wants to help the man too and so he is led to the man’s shelter. Andy offers to get the hobo a job where he won’t have to strain his leg but he makes excuses. He then says he has a room for him to stay at the court house and then the man begins to run with no limp at all. 

            In the second story Barney becomes the laughing stock of the town when he pulls his gun on someone with a handkerchief over his face trying to get into the bank on a Saturday. It turns out to be the bank president with a cold. Barney is embarrassed and doesn’t want to go to the annual picnic. Andy convinces him to go if they stay away from the crowd. Andy, Helen, Barney and Thelma Lou are out on the edge of town when Andy and Helen decide to explore the old mine. It caves in and Barney organizes the whole town to help dig them out. Meanwhile they find a back way out and go home. On the radio they hear about Barney’s rescue effort and they realize that Barney will be ridiculed forever if they don’t go back into the cave to be rescued and so they do so. They pretend to be helpless when Barney finally breaks through. .