Kathleen's Class Summary Essay

Kathleen Nelson

Professor Foss

English 336

19 March 2011

What’s the Point? Aestheticism in Victorian Literature On Saint Patrick’s Day, Professor Foss entered the class and declared himself in such good spirits that he could only express his exuberance through a reward quiz. This time, however, Professor Foss rewarded us with a surprise by having question five relate to the festivities of the day, therefore letting us all inch one point closer to the enthusiastic “5!” that we all want to see at the top of our quizzes. After going over the answers of the quiz (and playing with the pronunciation of some of the poem titles, such as “Itylus” and “Compagna”), Professor Foss had us settle in for our small group discussion for the day, the focal point of which was aestheticism. Primarily, we were to go over the poems assigned for the day and, instead of focusing on the message of the poem, see what one can “glean” from Victorian aestheticism (with the sub-category of the role of art). Mainly, we were to think of the poems in terms of the themes of love, life, time and art.

Elaborating on that point, Professor Foss took up a few minutes describing that aestheticism is slightly more difficult to discuss than our other focal points due to the fact that we are not supposed to search for meaning within a text. He described the subsection of the role of Art in Victorian society, referring to page 1071 in the textbook. Foss asked us to think in terms of “art for art’s sake” – that though many of the texts in the time period may consist of controversial material, we (and Victorians of the time) should not interpret them in one way or another, but view them simply as works of art.

After “wasting time,” as Professor Foss called it, he broke us into three small groups in which we analyzed the poems for the day Fire Drill style – Foss gave each group approximately ten to fifteen minutes to work on their given poems before switching with the next group and working on the next set. My group happened to start with the two Matthew Arnold poems assigned for the day, and we started by reviewing and discussing “The Buried Life.”

In this poem my group primarily looked at the idea of outward appearance speaking more than inward emotion, and the idea that expressing meaning and feelings is in vain. We looked at lines 12 through 14, in which the speaker asks “is even love too weak / to unlock the heart, and let it speak? / Are even lovers powerless to reveal” emotions? (Arnold 12-14). We thought those lines especially expressed aesthetic mentality, that love, as powerful as it is, cannot find meaning to express in “nameless feelings that course through our breast” (62). We looked at lines 69 and 70, in which the speaker says people demand “of all the little nothings of the hour/ their stupefying power” and thought of how people seem easily distracted by external “nothings” that lead away from expressing inner meaning. On a whole, we thought the poem expressed aesthetic elements by discussing the inability to conveying meaning in love, one of the themes Professor Foss asked us to consider in our groups.

The next Arnold poem, “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” we read in terms of art, and its role in society. In many stanzas toward the beginning of the poem, the speaker describes the scenery of the monastery without making any profound comments. He mentions monks praying with “bare / and white” faces (40-41), the “suffering Son of Man / upon the wall – the knee worn floor” (45-46), the “fragrant herbs” in the garden (56), and the halls, with their “pilgrim hosts[s] of old, / from England, Germany, or Spain,” among other sights in the monastery (62-63). He also notes that the monks “paint [their] souls,” using an artistic manner in describing their holy life (53). Soon afterward, however, the speaker addresses his “masters of the mind,” claiming that he invests no meaning in this holy place, but rather as one “in pity and mournful awe might stand/ before some fallen Runic stone” (73, 82-83). By giving nor taking any meaning in his visit to the monastery, the speaker simply views the Grande Chartreuse as an artistic and interesting environment, but contemplates no further.

At this point Professor Foss had us switch poems, moving us on to the Robert Browning readings. We started with “Love Among the Ruins,” in which we felt that the speaker gave meaning to art, but said that love was better still than art. We discussed how in the speaker’s vision of what the ruins once contained, the “city great… our country’s very capital,” gave meaning to the ruins and showed that they were not only beautiful remains of ancient architecture, but important in terms of history (Browning 7, 9). We noted, however, that after gazing at his love in the ruins the speaker ends with “love is best” (84). My group concluded from this line that love is even more important than art, or meaning in art, and needs no interpretation.

The next poem, “The Last Ride Together,” we viewed in a Carpe Diem sort of light: the speaker concentrates on the joy of riding, and of the nearness of his love. He scolds the artists that he addresses in the poem, accusing the sculptor of giving “a scare of years to Art,” calling him a “slave,” informing the musician that all “fashions end,” and asking the poet, “what does it all mean?” (80, 87, 67). We read the poem as one that advocates pleasures of the now instead of slaving for appreciation in art.

As we read “Two in the Campagna” we noticed another tone of Carpe Diem with some pastoral Romanticism. Lines 21 and 22, especially, struck us with the imagery of the Campagna, speaker describing it as “champagne with its fleece / of feathery grasses everywhere” (21-22), making the poem feel lighthearted and Romantic. The Carpe Diem aspect felt most noticeable in stanza VII, in which the speaker suggests to his love to be “unashamed of soul… / how is it in our control / to love or not to love?” (32, 34-35). Before we could discuss further, however, Fire Drill session two had ended, and my group moved onto Rossetti’s poem, “The Blessed Damozel.”

In this poem we noticed how the speaker expressed holiness in terms of appearance, as if holiness is a work of art. The “damozel” in Heaven has “eyes… deeper than the depth,” and seven stars in her hair, which happens to be “yellow like ripe corn” (Rossetti 3, 12). Heaven, too, has rich furnishings, with a “gold bar” looking over the sun and the earth (2). The poem interested us because while Heaven and beings in Heaven (the damozel) are beautiful works of art, the damozel is sad because her existence lacks the meaning she craves to be happy. She needs to “live as once on earth / with Love” to be happy, which seems to show love as more powerful than art, and to have more meaning that art. We thought the poem advocated meaning for true happiness.

We switched to Swinburne’s poem “A Forsaken Garden” spending almost all of the remaining time on trying to understand the last line of the poem, “Death lies dead” (Swinburne 80). We attempted to view the line in several different lights (As we got further into the discussions we seemed to forget the rule of no meaning, just gleaning), including that since nothing seems to grow in the garden, nothing can die, therefore killing death, which “may not deal again for ever” in the garden (65). After minutes of fruitless suggestions, we remembered that Professor Foss said some of aesthetic writing was very controversial, and decided that this line was purposely controversial, and was a perfect example of “art for art’s sake.”

Unfortunately, having spent too much time trying to find meaning in “A Forsaken Garden” before realizing that was beside the point of the assignment, we had little time to discuss “Itylus.” What we did manage to discuss, before Professor Foss leaned toward our group and taunted us by counting down the seconds, was that this poem is much invested in art, in the sense that it is based off of a Greek story, and that the curse of the swallow is to sing her sorrows for what she had done to her son.

Though my group did attempt to delve into the meanings of the poems, wasting some time, we managed to recognize common traits between the poems we discussed. In each of the poems we noticed an aesthetic theme of art, love, life, or time (in terms of Carpe Diem), although the two former were most prevalent. While my group was unsure as to whether some of the poems advocated some meaning within art, we found a definite appreciation for art society that survives without a necessary analysis of the poet’s motives, if there are any at all.