Спадкоємність у американській поезії:У. Уітмен, Р. Фрост.

Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and re-writing Leaves of Grass,[1] revising it multiple times until his death. This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades—the first a small book of twelve poems and the last a compilation of over 400.

The poems of Leaves of Grass are loosely connected, with each representing Whitman's celebration of his philosophy of life and humanity. This book is notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world. Influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, much like Emerson, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise.

Whitman's collection of poems in Leaves of Grass is usually interpreted according to the individual poems contained within its individual editions. The editions were of varying length, each one larger and augmented from the previous version, until the final edition reached over 400 poems. Discussion is often focused also upon the major editions of Leaves of Grass often associated with the very early respective versions of 1855 and 1856, to the 1860 edition, and finally to editions very late in Whitman's life which also included the significant Whitman poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". The 1855 edition is particularly notable for the inclusion of the two poems "Song of Myself" and "The Sleepers". The 1856 edition included the notable Whitman poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry". In the 1860 edition, Whitman further added the major poems "A Word Out of the Sea" and "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life". The specific interpretation of many of Whitman's major poems may be found in the articles associated with those individual poems.

Particularly in "Song of Myself", Whitman emphasized an all-powerful "I" who serves as narrator. The "I" tries to relieve both social and private problems by using powerful affirmative cultural images.[27] The emphasis on American culture helped reach Whitman's intention of creating a distinctly American epic poem comparable to the works of Homer.[28] Originally written at a time of significant urbanization in America, Leaves of Grass responds to the impact urbanization has on the masses.[29] However, the title metaphor of grass indicates a pastoral vision of rural idealism. The poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is Whitman's elegy to Lincoln after his death. Whitman was a believer in phrenology (in the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass he includes the phrenologist among those he describes as "the lawgivers of poets"), and borrowed its term "adhesiveness", which referred to the propensity for friendship and camaraderie.[30]

Whitman edited, revised, and republished Leaves of Grass many times before his death, and over the years his focus and ideas were not static. One critic has identified three major "thematic drifts" in Leaves of Grass: the period 1855 to 1859, from 1859 to 1865, and from 1866 to his death. In the first period, 1855 to 1859, his major work is "Song of Myself" and it exemplifies his prevailing love for freedom. "Freedom in nature, nature which is perfect in time and place and freedom in expression, leading to the expression of love in its sensuous form. The second period, from 1859 to 1865, paints the picture of a more melancholic, sober poet. In poems like "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", the prevailing themes are of love and of death. From 1866 to his death, the ideas Whitman presented in his second period had experienced an evolution. His focus on death had grown to a focus on immortality, the major theme of this period. Whitman became more conservative in his old age, and had come to believe that the importance of law exceeded the importance of freedom. His materialistic view of the world became far more spiritual, and Whitman believed that life had no meaning outside of the context of God’s plan.

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.[2] His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century.

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors state that "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, depicting with chilling starkness the loneliness of the individual in an indifferent universe." The critic T. K. Whipple focused in on this bleakness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of his work, particularly in North of Boston, his harshest book, he emphasizes the dark background of life in rural New England, with its degeneration often sinking into total madness."

In sharp contrast, the founding publisher and editor of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, emphasized the folksy New England persona and characters in Frost's work, writing that "perhaps no other poet in our history has put the best of the Yankee spirit into a book so completely." [28] She notes his frequent use of rural settings and farm life, and she likes that in these poems, Frost is most interested in "showing the human reaction to nature's processes." She also notes that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often satirical, Frost always has a "sympathetic humor" towards his subjects.

Robert Frost’s poem, “Into My Own”, is an easily relatable poem, especially among young adults who are figuring out their place in the real world. In the poem, Frost describes a journey, both mental and physical, that the speaker longs to undertake. It is comparable to the journey taken when one finds out that he must be his own person and make his own way in the world. This poem portrays a quest, similar to that of a college-aged person, for independence and self-awareness through symbolism of a dark forest.

In the first stanza, the “dark trees” symbolize a mysterious future (Frost 1). The unknown has always been revered as a subject of fascination, so it is only fitting for someone seeking independence to look where he has not yet been. The speaker hopes that the trees, and therefore the future, are “stretched away unto the edge of doom” (Frost 4). Although this image seems dark, it is somewhat comforting to imagine an endless future, full of possibilities. This never-ending forest would provide an escape for the speaker to “steal away” and hide from reality, while finding his true self without influence from society (Frost 6). The speaker also describes himself as “fearless”, which indicates that he is bold and eager to begin his new journey, regardless of the obstacles standing in his way

In the third stanza, the poem takes on a lighter tone as it switches from describing the physical landscape and impatience to begin, to considering the people in the speaker’s life. The speaker acknowledges that his journey to self awareness will be lifelong, and that once he embarks, he cannot return to his former ignorant, dependent self: “I do not see why I should e’er turn back” (Frost 9). He also expresses hope that his loved ones will follow his lead and find him when he is on his trek. This way, he can sort out those who really care and are willing to make an effort from those who are simply artificial friends. In the last couplet, the speaker assures his friends and family that they will not be disappointed by what they find: “They would not find me changed from him they knew” (Frost 13). Rather, he will be even more convinced of his beliefs and more confident in himself when his independence is fully recognized.

As a student myself, I found this poem very easy to apply to my own life. It strikes such a chord in me, in fact, that I feel it could have been written about my own ongoing search for independence. Although I do not know what the future holds, let alone how to prepare for the adventures ahead, I am eager to find what lies ahead. I feel that I have already entered the dark, foreboding forest by attending a college nine hours away from my home. Leaving my small, square mile town and modest home in the north in order to come to a very large, southern state school was a bit daunting at first. However, I knew that it would be one great adventure, as well as a much-needed way to find independence. Being this far from home has allowed me to grow up, to take responsibility for my own actions, and to take charge of my own life. I have the power to make choices that could affect my life for a week or for several years, but I also obligated to clean up the messes I make in life by myself. I have become self-reliant, something which I can never give up. My beliefs and opinions have also been strengthened, because I depend solely on my own thoughts and experiences to form my views, rather than allowing myself to be influenced by my family and friends. In the end, I hope they will be proud of me, for I have not changed as a person, only grown into a fuller, more complete version of myself.

30. Розвиток антиутопії у американській літературі. Рей Бредбері, «451° за Фаренгейтом».

Dystopia is utopia's polarized mirror image. While utilizing many of the same concepts as utopia—for example, social stability created by authoritarian regimentation—dystopia reads these ideas pessimistically. Dystopia angrily challenges utopia's fundamental assumption of human perfectibility, arguing that humanity's inherent flaws negate the possibility of constructing perfect societies, except for those that are perfectly hellish. Dystopias are solely fictional, presenting grim, oppressive societies—with the moralistic goal of preventing the horrors they illustrate.

Goals of Dystopian Fiction

Dystopia walks a fine line between evoking the sensations of fear and inducing a sense of futility. A dystopia must arouse fear, but fails if it completely overwhelms the reader, leaving no room whatsoever for hope of amelioration. Finding crumbs of hope within powerful dystopias can be difficult, but they are present: for example, both the Afterword of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and the Appendix on Newspeak in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) are written in the past tense, obliquely informing the reader that the totalitarian regimes of Gilead and Oceania were not invincible and ultimately fell. Depictions of grim futures mask dystopia's basic optimism. Dystopia is a fundamentally didactic genre, of which the old saw "the best is the enemy of the good" is truly spoken. By proving that a completely perfect society is not possible—showing the awful results of what happens if the goal is social perfection rather than incremental social improvement—dystopia shocks the reader into accepting humanity's flaws as ineradicable and thereby working toward a better society rather than an ideal one.

As one of the most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writers of the twentieth century, Ray Bradbury has been credited with ‘bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream’ by The New York Times.

Although also inspired by American greats such as Edgar Allen Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs, it was European writers like Jules Verne and HG Wells that Bradbury would cite as his greatest influences. In 1949 Bradbury took a collection of short stories to a dozen New York publishers, all of whom were uninterested in a short story collection; they only wanted novels. Bradbury recounted this to an editor at Doubleday who then queried if these short stories could be linked together. Taken aback by the idea, he started making notes on how this would work, and then typed up a brief outline of the novel. He returned to the editor the next morning with the outline and received a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars for what was to become his first novel, The Martian Chronicles (1950).

Bradbury went on to write twenty six other novels, as well as over six hundred short stories, often about his childhood and the places of his youth. It was with the science fiction genre however that he made a name for himself. Despite this, Bradbury resisted the categorization of sci-fi writer stating:

Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time — because it’s a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.

The author himself claimed to have only ever written one science fiction novel, disputing the technical differences between the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Perhaps it was the success and enduring appeal of that novel which saw him branded with the undesired title.

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel set in an American society where reading is banned and books, considered contraband items, are set alight and burned by the fire service. The title of the novel refers to the auto ignition point of book paper. Having received a positive reception on release, it slowly grew into a classic of its genre. The novel was significant as social commentary on the ever increasing importance placed on technology, as well on the effects of television and other mass media on literature. In fact, so passionate about this cause was Bradbury that for a long period he refused to have his work published in an electronic format. In 2010 he told the Los Angeles Times ‘I was approached three times during the last year by internet companies wanting to put my books on an electronic reading device, I said to Yahoo: ‘Prick up your ears and go to hell.’ Bradbury even went so far as to claim electronic books ‘smell like burned fuel’ in a direct reference to Fahrenheit 451. It wasn’t until 2011 that Bradbury relented and agreed to an e-book when the renewal of his almost expired contract became dependent upon his consent. A great supporter of public libraries, Bradbury conceded only on the condition that the e-book be available for digital download by any library patron.

Themes

Censorship

Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t provide a single, clear explanation of why books are banned in the future. Instead, it suggests that many different factors could combine to create this result. These factors can be broken into two groups: factors that lead to a general lack of interest in reading and factors that make people actively hostile toward books. The novel doesn’t clearly distinguish these two developments. Apparently, they simply support one another.

The first group of factors includes the popularity of competing forms of entertainment such as television and radio. More broadly, Bradbury thinks that the presence of fast cars, loud music, and advertisements creates a lifestyle with too much stimulation in which no one has the time to concentrate. Also, the huge mass of published material is too overwhelming to think about, leading to a society that reads condensed books (which were very popular at the time Bradbury was writing) rather than the real thing.

The second group of factors, those that make people hostile toward books, involves envy. People don’t like to feel inferior to those who have read more than they have. But the novel implies that the most important factor leading to censorship is the objections of special-interest groups and “minorities” to things in books that offend them. Bradbury is careful to refrain from referring specifically to racial minorities—Beatty mentions dog lovers and cat lovers, for instance. The reader can only try to infer which special-interest groups he really has in mind.

 

As the Afterword to Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely sensitive to any attempts to restrict his free speech; for instance, he objects strongly to letters he has received suggesting that he revise his treatment of female or black characters. He sees such interventions as essentially hostile and intolerant—as the first step on the road to book burning.

Knowledge versus Ignorance

Montag, Faber, and Beatty’s struggle revolves around the tension between knowledge and ignorance. The fireman’s duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance in order to equalize the population and promote sameness. Montag’s encounters with Clarisse, the old woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt about this approach. His resultant search for knowledge destroys the unquestioning ignorance he used to share with nearly everyone else, and he battles the basic beliefs of his society.

Motifs

Paradoxes

In the beginning of “The Hearth and the Salamander,” Montag’s bedroom is described first as “not empty” and then as “indeed empty,” because Mildred is physically there, but her thoughts and feelings are elsewhere. Bradbury’s repeated use of such paradoxical statements—especially that a character or thing is dead and alive or there and not there—is frequently applied to Mildred, suggesting her empty, half-alive condition. Bradbury also uses these paradoxical statements to describe the “Electric-Eyed Snake” stomach pump and, later, the Mechanical Hound. These paradoxes question the reality of beings that are apparently living but spiritually dead. Ultimately, Mildred and the rest of her society seem to be not much more than machines, thinking only what they are told to think. The culture of Fahrenheit 451 is a culture of insubstantiality and unreality, and Montag desperately seeks more substantial truths in the books he hoards.

Animal and Nature Imagery

Animal and nature imagery pervades the novel. Nature is presented as a force of innocence and truth, beginning with Clarisse’s adolescent, reverent love for nature. She convinces Montag to taste the rain, and the experience changes him irrevocably. His escape from the city into the country is a revelation to him, showing him the enlightening power of unspoiled nature.

Much of the novel’s animal imagery is ironic. Although this society is obsessed with technology and ignores nature, many frightening mechanical devices are modeled after or named for animals, such as the Electric-Eyed Snake machine and the Mechanical Hound.

Religion

Fahrenheit 451 contains a number of religious references. Mildred’s friends remind Montag of icons he once saw in a church and did not understand. The language Bradbury uses to describe the enameled, painted features of the artifacts Montag saw is similar to the language he uses to describe the firemen’s permanent smiles. Faber invokes the Christian value of forgiveness: after Montag turns against society, Faber reminds him that since he was once one of the faithful, he should demonstrate pity rather than fury.

The narrative also contains references to the miracle at Canaa, where Christ transformed water into wine. Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine. In the biblical story, Jesus Christ’s transformation of water into wine was one of the miracles that proved his identity and instilled faith in his role as the savior. Montag longs to confirm his own identity through a similar self-transformation.

The references to fire are more complex. In the Christian tradition, fire has several meanings: from the pagan blaze in which the golden calf was made to Moses’ burning bush, it symbolizes both blatant heresy and divine presence. Fire in Fahrenheit 451 also possesses contradictory meanings. At the beginning it is the vehicle of a restrictive society, but Montag turns it upon his oppressor, using it to burn Beatty and win his freedom.

Finally, Bradbury uses language and imagery from the Bible to resolve the novel. In the last pages, as Montag and Granger’s group walk upriver to find survivors after the bombing of the city, Montag knows they will eventually talk, and he tries to remember appropriate passages from the Bible. He brings to mind Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season,” and also Revelations 22:2, “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life... and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,” which he decides to save for when they reach the city. The verse from Revelations also speaks of the holy city of God, and the last line of the book, “When we reach the city,” implies a strong symbolic connection between the atomic holocaust of Montag’s world and the Apocalypse of the Bible.

Symbols

Blood

Blood appears throughout the novel as a symbol of a human being’s repressed soul or primal, instinctive self. Montag often “feels” his most revolutionary thoughts welling and circulating in his blood. Mildred, whose primal self has been irretrievably lost, remains unchanged when her poisoned blood is replaced with fresh, mechanically administered blood by the Electric-Eyed Snake machine. The symbol of blood is intimately related to the Snake machine. Bradbury uses the electronic device to reveal Mildred’s corrupted insides and the thick sediment of delusion, misery, and self-hatred within her. The Snake has explored “the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water,” but its replacement of her blood could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned, replaceable blood signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless others like her.

“The Hearth and the Salamander”

Bradbury uses this conjunction of images as the title of the first part of Fahrenheit 451. The hearth, or fireplace, is a traditional symbol of the home; the salamander is one of the official symbols of the firemen, as well as the name they give to their fire trucks. Both of these symbols have to do with fire, the dominant image of Montag’s life—the hearth because it contains the fire that heats a home, and the salamander because of ancient beliefs that it lives in fire and is unaffected by flames.

“The Sieve and the Sand”

The title of the second part of Fahrenheit 451, “The Sieve and the Sand,” is taken from Montag’s childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from a mischievous cousin and crying at the futility of the task. He compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible as quickly as possible on the subway in the hope that, if he reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory.

Simply put, the sand is a symbol of the tangible truth Montag seeks, and the sieve the human mind seeking a truth that remains elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any permanent way.

The Phoenix

After the bombing of the city, Granger compares mankind to a phoenix that burns itself up and then rises out of its ashes over and over again. Man’s advantage is his ability to recognize when he has made a mistake, so that eventually he will learn not to make that mistake anymore. Remembering the mistakes of the past is the task Granger and his group have set for themselves. They believe that individuals are not as important as the collective mass of culture and history. The symbol of the phoenix’s rebirth refers not only to the cyclical nature of history and the collective rebirth of humankind but also to Montag’s spiritual resurrection.

Mirrors

At the very end of the novel, Granger says they must build a mirror factory to take a long look at themselves; this remark recalls Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in “The Hearth and the Salamander.” Mirrors here are symbols of self-understanding, of seeing oneself clearly.