Arts and
Modern Society
Sound, Image & Sense
Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 1912
Responses
• Memorizing a poetic stanza or a speech
from Pygmalion (10 lines)
• Comparison: not a list of differences
(reference at the Google drive)
• No plagiarism (partial or full)!!!
Society
• Social Manners (Pygmalion)
• Politics & Social
Inequality (e.g. Race--“Harlem”;
Gender & Class Pygmalion, “A Rose for
Emily”; “Araby”…)
• Responsibility (e.g. “Stopping
by Woods” “Those Winter Sundays”)
• Individualism, Alienation
or Social Fragmentation
(“I’m Nobody” “l(a” “Musee des Beaux
Arts”)
Modern Arts
• The beauty of abstraction &
mechanical reproduction
• Artistic Invention
• Fragmentation
The Modern World
•
•
•
What is ‘Literary Modernism’? How many writers we
have read so far are “Modern” writers (i.e. 1890-1940)?
Please see here
Modern Times: under the influence of capitalism,
industrialism and some great thinkers (e.g. Darwin,
Freud, Marx and Nietzsche)
1. The beauty of abstraction and mechanical
reproduction, convenience  Cubism (立體派) 
Kaleidoscopic visions e.g. “In a Station of the Metro”
Ref.
1) British Modernism (historical changes and great thinkers);
2) Introduction to Modernism (period 2:02; 7:11 roots; 8:10 examples)
Literary and Artistic Modernism
2. Literary Modernism: a great period of artistic
invention and confirmation of “Art.” (e.g. as a religion or
Art for Art’s sake)
3. Modern Fragmentation  postmodern
Connectedness: war, capitalism & photography 
Internet: The world gets smaller, time faster, life emptier,
we—lonelier or more connected—by the flows of virus,
capital, ecological changes, natural disaster and terrorist
threats, etc.
Ref. 3) More visual examples in History of Modern Art (Aestheticism, Avant
Garde)
Outline
Subject/Title
Themes
Group
Treatments of tech.
invention,
fragmentation
3, 4
Beauty of Transience
& Science
7, 8
Art vs. Sufferings
1, 2
• The Dance (1962)
Art vs. Physical
Pleasures
11, 12
• Anecdote of a Jar (1923)
Art/Artifice vs.
Nature
5, 6
• Comparison
Views of Death
9, 10
• Modern Times
• “In a Station of the Metro”
(1916)--
• Musee des Beaux Arts (1938)
• Final Exam
• Next Week: Poetry can be Fun!!! Poetry in different shapes and
forms
Roles (*optional)
1
2
3
4
5
6
Presenter (1) Critic
Presenter (2) Poem recitation
Commentator on Poetic Language
Commentator on Sound Effects
Summarizer/Paraphraser *
Vocabulary Enricher*
In a Station of the Metro (1913)
(image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)
"In a Station of the Metro“—
Pound’s Experience
Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La
Concorde, and suddenly saw a beautiful face, then another,
and another, and then a beautiful child's face, and then
another beautiful woman, and I tried all day to find words
for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any
words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that
sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along
the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and found, suddenly,
the expression. I do not mean that I found in words, but
there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little
splotches of colour. It was just that--a "pattern" you
mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word,
the beginning, for me of a language in colour.(GaudierBrzeska: A Memoir) (video clip)
Note:
1) The Metro-- the name of the subway system in Paris. 2) This poem,
Pound claimed, describes his experience of coming out of a subway
"In a Station of the Metro“—
Pound’s Experience
1. He first wrote a 30-line poem, but was not
satisfied with it.
2. 6 months later, he reduced the poem in half.
3. A haiku(俳句)-like poem (with special
punctuation)
The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .
Pound: “I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a
certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to
record the precise instant when a thing outward and
objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and
subjective.” (source) Reference: HAIKU for PEOPLE
•
•
•
•
"In a Station of the Metro“—
Questions
Images: The poem presents, instead of a story
about this experience, two images, one in
each line. Their meanings (meanings of each
word and what they possibly represent) ?
Pattern: the relationship between the first line
and the second line?
Theme: What is this poem suggesting about
life in the modern world? Do you have similar
images about the passengers at our MRT
stations?
Note: imagism. In what ways is this poem an
example of imagism?
"In a Station of the Metro“
The apparition of these faces in the
crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Note:
apparition: 1) ghostly figure
2) : the act of becoming visible (m-w)
(image sources: 1, 2, 3*)
"In a Station of the Metro“—
My Analysis
 Theme: In the mass transit system, where people come and go, the
faces of the passengers are beautiful images like apparition and petals
(on wet black boughs)
 Images & Pattern: * There can be different interpretations!!!
parallel
Metro
machines
Station
Crowd, people coming and going.
Faces as
apparition
Sudden appearance and detachment from the
crowd, becoming strange.
Petals on a
wet black
bough
Petals –leaving the flowers and landing on a
bough, color intensified by its contrast with black
color, and its wetness.  The people are gone,
but their beautiful faces –on the image of the
train--are imprinted on the mind.
Imagism
Pound set forth the basic tenets of Imagism:
I. direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or
objective;
II. [economical use of words]: to use absolutely no word that
does not contribute to the presentation;
III. in regard to rhythm, to compose in sequence of musical
phrase, not in sequence of the metronome (節拍器).
Pound sought to capture a pure image, or what he described
as "that which presents an intellectual and emotional
complex in an instant of time."
(March 1913 issue of Poetry)
Reference: Marisa Pagnattaro, An overview of "In a Station of the Metro," in
Poetry for Students, Gale, 1997.
Imagism: Another example
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
The poem as
an example of Imagism
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Three principles:
1. Just the image itself;
2. No excess of language; e.g. a). No verbs;
apparition combines verb and noun; b) no
conjunctions such as “are like”;
3. No traditional (monotonous) rhythm, but a
melodic one.
Note: a hypertext interpretation of the poem.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/k/x/kxk30/Poetry/index.htm
The poem as
an example of Imagism (2)
Rhythm –for your reference: (source) This scanning may not be necessary, but
it shows how irregular (like speaking) the poem is.
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
• What are the examples of human suffering in the
poem? How are they set in contrast to the daily
activities of human beings or even animals? Of all
the examples of human/animal indifference, which
is the least appreciated?
• For the speaker, these two kinds of events concur
and the "Old Masters" know it. What is the
speaker's attitude toward this concurrence, and
toward the Old Masters? Is the poem ironic about
the concurrence or open to it?
• How do you compare this poem with “Stop all the
Clocks” (or “Funeral Blues 1936-1938) by Auden?
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
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
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
10 That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
11 Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
12 Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the
torturer's horse
13 Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
14 In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns
away
15 Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
16 Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry.
17 But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
18 As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
19 Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
20 Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
21 Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Musee des beaux arts
•
Three paintings:
1. The Census at Bethlehem, based on Luke
2:1-5
2. The Massacre of the Innocents --取材于《馬
太福音》；希律王派兵逐戶搜害幼孩
3. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The
Massacre of the Innocents
• Image source
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/m
m/massacre.html
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The
Massacre of the Innocents
• Images source:
http://bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innocents_soldats
.htm
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The
Massacre of the Innocents
• Images source:
http://bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innocents_soldats
.htm
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
The Census at Bethlehem
"Musée des Beaux Art"
• Landscape with the
Fall of Icarus
"Musée des Beaux Arts"
•
•
•
•
•
Theme: human suffering vs. daily activities ??
1. daily activities: banal, trivial, and commonplace
2. Innocent: children’s play, animalistic survival,
routine work of peasants, the sun shining,
3. Indifferent: expensive delicate ship
4. Sufferings: birth, martyrdom, failed youthful
aspiration.
Structure: from the general to one specific painting.
The 2nd stanza: Icarus -- simply a splash, a cry, a
pair of "white legs“ –mixed with the daily occurrences.
Language: deliberately unpoetic + hidden rhymes
Old Masters = the speaker.
"Musée des Beaux Arts“ (Dec 1938)
•
•
•
In Historical Contexts:
Ovid’s Metamorphosis – “Some fisher …stood stock
still in astonishment” – in Bruegel’s painting, they are
oblivious of Icarus.
Written in Dec 1938 –before then, Auden went to
China and witness Sino-Japanese war (esp. Japanese
air-raid of Hankow):
Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 784
Journey to the War
qtd Nemerov 786
For your reference: “Landscape With
The Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
-- The matter-of-fact
language
-- no punctuation
--Icarus is the actual
focus.
For your
reference:
Icarus Atop Empire State
Building, 1931
• Some other poems:
http://www.eaglesweb.com/IMAGE
S/icarus.htm
• -- “WAITING FOR ICARUS” – the
wife’s perspective
• -- “TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK
HAS COME TO TRIUMPH” –
passion and idealism vs.
pragmatism
• “Icarus” by Carolyn Leaf (an
animation at Intro2Lit)
Photo by Lewis Hine
Courtesy George Eastman House
The Dance
William Carlos Williams
1. This poem is a good example of "free verse.“ What
patterns of sound can you find,
i.e. rhyme, alliteration, assonance, etc.? How do the
rhythm and sounds support the poem's meaning?
2. Why do you think the last line of the poem repeats the
first line?
3. Describe the tone and mood of the painting by Bruegel
that this poem is based on. How would you characterize
the relationship of the poem to the painting? How are they
similar and how are they different? (Which part of the
painting is not dealt with in the poem?)
4. What does this poem suggest about the meanings of art?
The Dance
William Carlos Williams
In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thicksided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess
For meter, a combination of dactyls & amphibrach; check the
explanation here: http://www.shmoop.com/the-dance-poem/rhyme-
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com
mons/b/b5/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder__The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpg
Not in
the Poem…
• Three men arguing; one
with a peacock feather
hat (suggesting vanity)
• A couple kissing
The Dance
William Carlos Williams
• A free verse that uses internal rhymes (such
as alliteration, assonance, consonance) to present the
merry movements and sounds out of the still painting.
• Meter: a combination of dactyls and Amphibrach, suggesting
the drunken dance movements
• The last line of the poem brings the movement to a circle,
suggesting the beginning of another circle.
• The painting by Bruegel the elder: depict the merry peasant
dance on a religious festival (a saint’s day). The peasants are
fully indulged in their materialist pleasures so that they are
oblivious of the religious background (the church, the virgin
Mary picture)
• The poem: only focuses on the sensual pleasure of the
dance, suggesting that a poem can retain a moment of life as
vividly as a painting, by adding music and movement to it.
Anecdote of the Jar (1923 p. 1043)
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Stevens, Wallace
Discussion Questions
• What is the “jar” symbolic of? Why is the poem
about its “anecdote”?
• How is the jar opposed to nature? How do the
two respond to each other?
• How is art treated (similarly and differently) in
this poem and “The Dance”?
jar
wilderness
1
round
Slovenly, surround
2
tall and of a port in air
Rose up &
sprawled around
3
took dominion, gray
and bare
give of bird or bush
Anecdote of the Jar
• The jar -- symbolic of art or artifice, which
provides an organization or interpretation
of nature (or human world).
• the jar vs. nature
• Art: organizing, sense-making, but “dead”
• Nature: living, active and on-going.
• Sound Pattern:
• mostly iambic tetrameter
• occasional rhymes (where the jar is described)
Sound and Rhythm
• repetition: "round“; opening and closing
lines end with “Tennessee.”
• The use of the other open vowels around
the word "round“ vs. “grey and bare” “bird
and bush” in the last quatrain.
“Vincent” by Don McLean
• An sympathetic view with belief in his sanity and
passion;
• Vision of colors –
– “Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze”;
• Lonely but sympathetic with ordinary people and
their tortures:
– “Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow “
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QiZQYPtI7c&tran
slated=1
Conclusion
• Modern Soceity – Beauty of Advanced
Technology vs. Inequality & Human
Sufferings (“In a Station of the Metro”
“Harlem” and “Musee des beaux arts”)
• Human Suffering/Aspiration and Art:
Abstraction & Understanding of Human Position
(“Musees des beaux arts”), Human Sympathy (“Vincent”)
Reference
• Alexander Nemerov. “The Flight of Form:
Auden, Bruegel, and the
Turn to Abstraction in the 1940s.” Critical
Inquiry / Summer 2005: 780-810.
Literature Time Line
Meter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibrach
Disyllables
˘ ˘
pyrrhus, dibrach
˘ ¯
iamb
¯ ˘
trochee, choree
¯ ¯
spondee
Trisyllables
˘ ˘ ˘
tribrach
¯ ˘ ˘
dactyl
˘ ¯ ˘
amphibrach
˘ ˘ ¯
anapaest, antidactylus
Final Exam (3 hours)
• Close Analysis 30% (each 15%) – the
poems and the play
• Short Essay Questions (each 15%) -- 30%
• Essay Questions 40% (each 20%)
– A. comparison
– B. Why is Pygmalion a Romance? What does
the play mean if it ends at the end of Act 3,
Act 5, and w/ the postscript?