Existentialism in waiting for Godot

Name: - Thakar Aneri R

Roll no: - 1

SEM: - 3

Paper no: - 9 Modern literature

Topic: Existentialism in waiting for Godot.

Guided by: - Dr.Dilip Barad

Submitted to: - Department of English,

                           Maharaja Krishanakumar sinji Bhavnagar University

Introduction:

The purpose of human life is an unanswerable question. It seems impossible to find an answer because we don't know where to begin looking or whom to ask. Existence, to us, seems to be something imposed upon us by an unknown force. There is no apparent meaning to it, and yet we suffer as a result of it. The world seems utterly chaotic. We therefore try to impose meaning on it through pattern and fabricated purposes to distract ourselves from the fact that our situation is hopelessly unfathomable. "Waiting for Godot" is a play that captures this feeling and view of the world, and characterizes it with archetypes that symbolize humanity and its behaviour when faced with this knowledge. According to the play, a human being's life is totally dependant on chance, and, by extension, time is meaningless; therefore, a human's life is also meaningless, and the realization of this drives humans to rely on nebulous, outside forces, which may be real or not, for order and direction.

§  Existentialism in Waiting for Godot

§  “Waiting for Godot” is an existentialist play because it has clear tints of existentialism in it. If we study the term existentialism we would come to know that it is a philosophical doctrine which lays stress on the existence with his concrete experience and solidities. However, “Waiting for Godot” is an existentialist play for it embodies Christian existentialism.

The word “Existentialism” stands for one’s “awareness” of one’s “beingness”. It stands for a vital principal of life. “Waiting for Godot” resembles the existentialist literature because it deals not only with existence or identity but also with the momentary and the internal time. The time mentioned in “Waiting for Godot” is related to man’s mental condition. For instance, the major problem for the tramps is to make time pass in such a way that they are least bothered by it. Vladimir and Estragon constantly complain of the slowness of time passing and do their best to hurry it with their futile diversions

Examples from the text-

  Vladimir represents the portion of humanity who trusts in religion and spiritual beliefs to guide them, and that Estragon represents the more ideal existentialist portion of humanity who chooses to stop waiting and construct the meaning of life based on experience in the tangible and physical world around them. The following is an example of dialogue which supports this concept:

Vladimir: Let’s wait and see what he says.

Estragon: Who?

Vladimir: Godot.

Estragon: Good idea.

Vladimir: Let’s wait till we know exactly how we stand.

Estragon: On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes.

Here we see that Vladimir is depending on Godot to tell him what he needs to know regarding his existence, while Estragon asserts that they do not have the time to wait and that they should take action on their own before it is too late. The metaphor of the cooling iron suggests that humanity does not have enough time to wait for their spiritual ponderings to offer them enlightenment, that the chance will pass, and their efforts will not take effect once it does. Therefore, it can be concluded from this that Estragon’s suggestion that he and Vladimir make their own way now, before it is too late, is the more ideal course of action advocated by the play. It is Estragon who follows the notion of no longer waiting on religion for answers and going to the philosophy of existentialism

  Estragon: Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts, facing auditorium.) Inspiring prospects. (He turns to Vladimir.) Let’s go:

Vladimir: We can’t.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.

Estragon: (despairingly). Ah! (8)

  Once again, the existential philosophy of human experience in the physical world is what Estragon seeks in his desire to leave for “inspiring prospects,” and the common human tendency to wait on religion to offer answers is inherent in Vladimir’s suggestion that they should stay and wait so that they can be enlightened by Godot.

“Estragon: … Let's go.
Vladimir: We can't.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot." (p.14).

             

                   

The essence of existentialism concentrates on the concept of the individual's freedom of choice, as opposed to the belief that humans are controlled by a pre-existing omnipotent being, such as God. Estragon and Vladimir have made the choice of waiting, without instruction or guidance, as Vladimir says, "He didn't say for sure he'd come" (p.14), but decides to "wait till we know exactly how we stand" (p.18)

“We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression that we exist?" (p.69).

              Albert Camus, an existentialist writer, believed that boredom or waiting, which is essentially the breakdown of routine or habit, caused people to think seriously about their identity, as Estragon and Vladimir do. In The Plague, Camus suggests that boredom or inactivity causes the individual to think. This is also similar to the idea of meditation, an almost motionless activity, allowing the individual to think with clarity. Camus, and other existential writers, suggested that attempting to answer these rhetorical questions could drive someone to the point of insanity. The tramps continually attempt to prove that they exist, in order to keep their sanity.

Waiting in the play induces boredom as a theme. Ironically Beckett attempts to create a similar nuance of boredom within the audience by the mundane repetition of dialogue and actions. Vladimir and Estragon constantly ponder and ask questions, many of which are rhetorical or are left unanswered. During the course of the play, certain unanswered questions arise: who is Godot? Where are Gogo and Didi? Who beats Gogo? All of these unanswered questions represent the rhetorical questions that individuals ask but never get answers for within their lifetime. Vis a Vis is there a God? Where do we come from? Who is responsible for our suffering? The German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger expressed clearly that human beings can never hope to understand why they are here. The tramps repetitive inspection of their empty hats perhaps symbolizes mankind's vain search for answers within the vacuum of a universe.

                  Estragon: (anxious). And we? … Where do we come in?" (p.19)

            Estragon's question is left unanswered by Vladimir. Note that these questions seem to bring pain or anxiety to Estragon. Beckett conveys a universal message that pondering the impossible questions that arise from waiting, cause pain, anxiety, inactivity and destroy people from within. Note that both Vladimir and Estragon ponder suicide, by hanging themselves from the tree, but are unable to act through to anxiety, as Estragon states, "Don't let's do anything. It's safer." (p.18).

                    Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir; Yes, let's go.

They do not move.

Beckett infers that humans 'pass time' by habit or routine to cope with the existentialist dilemma of the dread or anxiety of their existence. Beckett believes that humans basically alleviate the pain of living or existence (which is at the crux of Existential philosophy) by habit. The idea of habit being essential for human existence substantiates Sartre's view that humans require a rational base for their lives. Beckett feels that habit protects us from whatever can neither be predicted nor controlled, as he wrote about the theme of habit in his published essay concerning Proust:

"Habit is a compromise affected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightening-conductor of his existence. Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit. Breathing is habit. Life is habit."

Estragon and Vladimir constantly 'pass the time' throughout the entire play to escape the pain of waiting and to possibly to stop themselves from thinking or contemplating too deeply. Vladimir expresses this idea at the end of the play, 'Habit is a great deadener', suggesting that habit is like an analgesic - numbing the individual. The play is mostly ritual, with Estargon and Vladimir filling the emptiness and silence. "It'll pass the time,", (p.12), explains Vladimir, offering to tell the story of the Crucifixion. Passing the time is their mutual obsession, as exhibited after the first departure of Pozzo and Lucky:

          Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly." (p.48).

The rituals by which Estragon and Vladimir combat silence and emptiness are elaborate, original and display Beckett's skill as a writer. In the play Beckett echoes patterns of question, answer and repetition which is his alternative to all the flaccid chat and triviality of the conventionally 'well-structured play'. Since his subject is habit and boredom, he has dispensed with plot; since his characters are without much history. Even the scenery is minimal - consisting of a tree and the road. Beckett deliberately employs the repetition of themes, speech and action to highlight the futility and habit of life. Gogo and Didi frequently repeat phrases, such as, "Nothing to be done". Their actions consist of ritually inspecting their hats. Nothingness is what the two tramps are essentially fighting against and reason why they talk. Beckett suggests that activity and inactivity oppose one another: thought arising from inactivity and activity terminating thought. In the second Act they admit that habit suppresses their thoughts and keeps their minimal sanity:

                      “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, and it’s awful!" (p.41).

The play consists of two acts which represent two cycles of time or two mirrors reflecting endlessly. The pattern of time appears to be circular or cyclic, as opposed to linear. Linear time seems to have broken down, as events do not develop with inevitable climaxes historically. The boy returns with the same message, Godot never comes and tomorrow never seems to arrive. Vladimir mentions that "time has stopped" (p.36). 

Estragon and Vladimir are moving relentlessly towards a presumably unobtainable event, (the coming of Godot), within their finite existence, with a continually receding end. It could be described to the curve on a graph that mathematicians would call asymptotic: all the time drawing closer to a value, while never reaching it. Estragon portrays the horror of their uneventful repetitive existence

     And no one comes in the play to the end. And the waiting becomes the ultimate way of humans.

Conclusion: - Here we find absurdity and nothingness in the play which is the reality of human existence, and it is very well put by Backett.

            

Key terms of the post colonial study

 Name: - Thakar Aneri R

Roll no: - 1

SEM: - 3

Paper no: - 11 Post colonial literature.

Topic: - Key terms of the post colonial study.

Guided by: - Dr.Dilip Barad

Submitted to: - Department of English,

                           Maharaja Krishanakumar sinji Bhavnagar University

ü Introduction:- In this assignment I am dealing with Key terms of post colonial and for that, first we have to clear the concept of post colonial.

ü What is post colonial literature

ü Postcolonial literature, a category devised to replace and expand upon what was once called Commonwealth Literature. As a label, it thus covers a very wide range of writings from countries that were once colonies or dependencies of the European powers.

I am dealing with some key terms like Anti colonialism, Anti imperialism, Other, Discourse and Hybridity.

ü Anti colonialism

                                “Anti- colonialism is an act of political struggle of colonized people against the specific ideology and practice of colonialism”
Anti colonialism signifies the point at which the various forms of opposition become articulated as a resistence to the operation of colonialism in political, economic and cultural instituation.  . It emphasizes the need to reject colonial power and restore local control. Paradoxically, anti-colonialist movements often expressed themselves in the appropriation and subversion of forms borrowed from the institutions of the colonizer and turned back on them. Thus the struggle was often articulated in terms of a discourse of anti-colonial 'nationalism' in which the form of the modern European nation-state was taken over and employed as a sign of resistance (see nation/nationalism). The sometimes arbitrary arrangements of colonial governance – such as the structures of public administration and forums for local political representation – became the spaces within which a discourse of anti-colonial nationalism was focused and a demand for an independent postcolonial nation-state was formed (see Anderson 1983; Chatterjee 1986, 1993).

Anti-colonialism has taken many forms in different colonial situations; it is sometimes associated with an ideology of racial liberation, as in the case of nineteenth-century West African nationalists such as Edward Wilmot Blyden and James Africanus Horton (ideologies that might be seen as the precursors of twentieth-century movements such as négritude). Conversely, it may accompany a demand for recognition of cultural differences on a broad and diverse front, as in the Indian National Congress which sought to unite a variety of ethnic groups with different religious and racial identities in a single, national independence movement.

In the second half of the twentieth century, anti-colonialism was often articulated in terms of a radical, Marxist discourse of liberation, and in constructions that sought to reconcile the internationalist and anti-elitist demands of Marxism with the nationalist sentiments of the period (National Liberation Fronts), in the work and theory of early national liberationist thinkers such as C.L.R.James, Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon, (see Fanonism, national liberation). Such anti-colonial, national liberation movements developed the Marxist idea of a revolutionary cadre to explain the crucial role of the European (colonial) educated intelligentsia in the anti-colonial struggle. These movements argued that the peasant/proletarian needed to be led to a practice of liberation – through various stages of local and national affiliation – by a bourgeois élite who would eventually, in Cabral's dramatic formulation, 'commit suicide' by developing a popular and local social practice in which they would be assimilated.

Cabral, in particular, developed this idea of the need to empower and recognize the local as a specific and distinct feature of post-colonial politics in ways that radicalized the more rigid and orthodox practices of post-Stalinist Marxist thought. Unlike later nationalist formulations of the new bourgeois post-independence élites, however, there is here no sentimental or mythologized attachment to an idealized pre-colonial condition. The local is perceived to be fully corrigible and involved in an inevitable process of historical change:

the working masses and in particular the peasants, who are usually illiterate sand have never moved beyond the boundaries of their village or their region, come into contact with other groups and lose those complexes of their own that constricted them in their relationships with other ethnic and social groups. They realize their crucial role in the struggle. They break the bonds of the village universe. They integrate progressively into their country and the world. … The armed liberation struggle implies, therefore, a veritable forced march along the road to cultural progress.

(Cabral, January 1969)

(See also the account offered by Edward Said (1993:264) of the contrastive and more progressive discourse of nationalism employed by these early ant colonialist figures compared with the regressive discourse of some modern post-colonial nationalists.)

Cabral's contribution has received less recognition than that of Fanon, whose political practice was arguably less developed, though his theories of the formation of colonial consciousness were among the most powerful contributions to the creation of an effective anti colonial discourse. Anti-colonialism frequently perceived resistance to be the product of a fixed and definitive relationship in which colonizer and colonized were in absolute and implacable opposition. As such it was less a feature of settler colonies, where a more obvious form of complicity occurred between the colonial power and the settler in, for example, and their suppression of the indigenous peoples. Settler colonies illustrate the power of filiative modes of cultural representation to affect a stronger and more complete hegemony of the colonial culture. In settler colonies, the struggle to articulate the underlying economic and political discriminations of a colonial relationship, that is to move to an awareness of the limited and affiliative connections of the colony and the colonial power, is central to any anti-colonial impulse. In settler colony situations, resistance at the level of cultural practice may occur before the political importance of such resistance is articulated or perceived.

ü Hybridity

                   Hybridity two different definitions

ü Catalysis: the (specifically New World) experience of several ethnic groups interacting and mixing with each other often in a contentious environment that gives way to new forms of identity and experience.

ü Creolization: societies that arise from a mixture of ethnic and racial mixing to form a new material, psychological, and spiritual self-definition.

ü Hybridity is a cross between two separate races or cultures. A hybrid is something that is mixed, and hybridity is simply mixture. As an explicative term, hybridity became a useful tool in forming a fearful discourse of racial mixing that arose toward the end of the 18th Century. Pseudo-scientific models of anatomy and craniometry were used to argue that Africans, Asians, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders were racially inferior to Europeans. The fear ofmiscegenatio that followed responds to the concern that the offspring of racial interbreeding would result in the dilution of the European race. Hybrids were seen as an aberration, worse than the inferior races, a weak and diseased mutation. Hybridity as a concern for racial purity responds clearly to the zeitgeist of colonialism where, despite the backdrop of the humanitarian age of enlightenment, social hierarchy was  

ü Beyond contention as was the position of Europeans at its summit. The social transformations that followed the ending of colonial mandates, rising immigration, and economic liberalization profoundly altered the use and understanding of the term hybridity.

ü Theorists of Hybridity

ü Homi Bhabha

ü Nester Garcia

ü Stuart Hall

ü Gayatri Spivak

ü Paul Gliroy

ü Other:-

ü Other: the social and/or psychological ways in which one group excludes or marginalizes another group. By declaring someone "Other," persons tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from or opposite of another, and this carries over into the way they represent others, especially through stereotypical images.

ü Before the modern world system where the politics  and economy of nation states are relatively interdependent, there existed what is classified as the “system of world empires” up until the 1500s in this world system political and economic affairs of different empires were fragmented and empires “provided for most of their own needs….[spreading] the influence solely through conquest or  the threat of conquest  the maintenance of this unequal relationship wholly depends on the subordination of an “Other” group or peoples, from which  resources can be taken and land can be exploited Other. Othering is “A term, advocated by Edward Said, which refers to the act of emphasizing the perceived weaknesses of marginalized groups as a way of stressing the alleged strength of those in positions of power”.

ü Discourse

ü “ It is a systems of thoughts composed of idea,attitudes,courses of action ,beliefs and practices hat systematically  constructs the subjects and the worlds  of which they speak

                              Michel Foucault

The term, discourse, generally refers to “written or spoken communication or debate. Structuralist theorists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques lacan, argue that all human actions and social formations are related to language and can be understood as systems of related elements. This means that the “…….individual elements of a system only have significance when considered in relation of the structure as a whole, and that structures are to be under stood as self-contained, self-regulated, and self-transforming entities.

                                       “French; social theorist Michel Foucault developed a notion of discourse in his early work, especially the Archaeology of knowledge (1972).

ü Anti-imperialism

ü                     Anti-imperialism is a term that may be applied to movement opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism. Anti- imperialism includes opposition to wars of conquest, particularly of non-contiguous territory or people with a different language or culture; it also includes people opposing the expansion of a country beyond earlier borders. Examples of anti imperialists include Republican senators of the roman republic, and members of anti-imperialist League that opposed the absorption of the Philippines after the Spanish- American war of 1898.

                             

 

Description of Supernatural Elements in Coleridge’s Poem

Name               :       Thakar Aneri R.

Roll No.           :       01

Semester        :       02

M.A. Part         :       1

Paper No.        :       5 Romantic literature

Topic Name    :       Description of Supernatural Elements in

                                 Coleridge’s Poem

Description of Supernatural Elements in Coleridge’s Poem

S.T.Coleridge is the greatest English poet of supernatural. Imagination is controlled by thought and study. He has employed refined, suggestive and psychological methods of mystery and horror in the poem. Supernatural is often used interchangeable with preternatural or paranormal.It refers to conscious magical religious or unknown forces that cannot ordinarily perceived except through their effect. Unlike natural forces, these putative supernatural forces can’t be shown to exist by the scientific method. Supernatural claims assert phenomena beyond the relam of current scientific understanding which are often in direct conflict with current scientific theory.

Coleridge was consider to be a note worth poet of 18th century.Coleridge‘s poetic career is a very short one. Yet he has given very remarkable poems. In 1796 he published his first volume of poems on various subjects Coleridge’s best works are mainly of two

1- Supernatural poems

2- Samuel Taylor Coleridge conversational poems

(1) Supernatural poems:-Like ‘Kubla khan’, ‘The Rime of Ancient mariner’ and ‘christable’. These timeless poems are excellent example of romantic imagination.

(2)Conversational poems:-Like “A frost at midnight and Dejection –“an ode” reveals reflective side of his disposition

 Coleridge as a poet of Supernatural

Coleridge’s most outstanding contribution to romantic to romantic poetry is his treatment of the supernatural. When Coleridge and words worth wrote the “Lyrical Ballads”, Coleridge took the supernatural as his field and undertook to naturalize it. At hand is no any finer dreamer in English verse than Coleridge. His high Supernatural imagination is controlled by thought and study. Coleridge is co-founder of Romantic Movement with words worth .so, as words worth is a nature poet, Coleridge is known for his supernaturalism

Let’s discuss Coleridge as a poet of supernatural by his poems like “Kubla Khan” and “The Rim of Ancient marine”

Supernatural elements in “Kubla khan” 

Kubla Khan is the product of sheer fancy. It is a dream poem, a poem of pure magic. It is one of Coleridge’s three master pieces of supernatural poetry. The atmosphere of supernatural mystery is created in Kubla Khan mint by the description of the pleasure dome and the surrounding in which it stood

Kubla Khan is a product of pure fury, a work of sheer imagination. And is therefore a wholly Romantic composition. A reader with a rational or a neo-classical spirit would perhaps fail to find any meaning. Or logic or thought in this poem but to a romantic reader, the poem is a source of intense pleasure and wonder. Kubla Khan is delightful blend of imagination, emotion mystery sensuousness, romantic description, sweet melody and exquisite diction.

Kubla Khan is a poem of pure magic. It is one of Coleridge‘s three master pieces of supernatural poetry, and the other two are “Christabel” and “The Rim of Ancient mariner”. Through the use of vivid imagery Coleridge reproduces a paradise like vision of the landscape and kingdom created by Kubla Khan.

The atmosphere of supernatural mystery is created in Kubla Khan mainly by a description of the pleasure dome and the surrounding in which it stood. “For instance, the river Alpha flowing through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.” The immeasurable abysses and the sunless sea stir in our mind the feeling of mystery and even fear.

Then comes the deep romantic gorge which lay across a wood of cedar trees. The manner in which the water intermittently gushed forth from the spring, throwing up huge place of rock were breathing in fast, thick plants is staggering to the readers imagination. The atmosphere of mystery and fear is emphasized when another reference is made to the sunless sea or the lifeless ocean in to which the water of alpha falls with a loud roar. The whole of this description is awe-inspiring if not horrifying.

It should be noted that suggestiveness is a very important ingredient of Coleridge’s supernaturalism. Nor should we forget the closing lines which contain a picture of natural and the supernatural. A poet’s inspiration is of the well-known and natural facts of human life but there is something supernatural about the way in which this poetic inspiration and the creative power of a poet are depicted! 

“And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His fleshing eyes, his floating hair!
weave a circle round him thrice and
Close eyes with holy dread for him on
Honey – drew hath fed and drunk the
Milk of paradise”.

Every line here emphasizes the atmosphere of mystery and fear which is the key note of the poem. And yet the whole desiccation is psychologically accurate because when the poet is in the state of frenzy is really a magician: touches of realism indeed, have been added, even to the description of the chasm and mighty fountain. The two similes-rebounding hails and the chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s fail-are drawn from actual life and are the most realistic. Even in the mid of his far of, divorced from life description, Coleridge does not forget that his real purpose was to make the supernatural and to bring about that “willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith.”

Kubla Khan is triumph of supernaturalism. It transforms the world of everyday life in to world of enchantment. Indeed, this poem ranks as a master piece of supernaturalism. In the poem the images which had been deposited the unconscious mind of Coleridge from his reading about subteraneam rivers, pleasures; places and others marvelous things, emerged to his conscious mind and were exposed immediately and spontaneously in words. The caverns measureless to man, the romantic chasm the intermittent burst of water from the fountain, the sunless sea, they all create a world of wonder and enchantment. The atmosphere of strangeness and mystery has effetely and skillful been created in the poem.

Indeed, this poem ranks as a master piece of supernaturalism and is one of the three poems which brought the name of Coleridge to the forefront of the greatest English poets.

Kubla Khan is his master piece of poem of supernaturalism the description of a Dom “pleasure Dom” and how he take a support to this Dom to create his own Dom. the description of his Dom is very beautiful and it create its magical effect on reader.

The greatness of S.T. Coleridge’s the Ancient mariner lies chiefly in the technique by which the supernatural has been made believed and convincible. There are a number of impossible, incredible, and fantastic situation in the poem. The fascinating power in mariner’s gaze. The sudden appearance of the mysterious skeleton ship the specter –woman and her mate, the coming back to life to the dead crew, the sudden sinking of the ship, the polar spirits talking to each other-all these and others supernatural incidents are scattered in the poem. With these supernatural elements the poet has artistically inter woven convincing pictures of nature like the sun shining brightly at the outset, the mist and snow surrounding the ship, the freezing cold of the artic region, slimy creatures creeping upon the sea, the moon going up the sky with a star or two beside it, the water snakes moving in the water in a variety of colors. The natural and supernatural the real and fantastic, the possible ad the impossible have been so skillfully and artistically mingled that the whole strikes us as quite convincing and credible.

The setting of the poem is natural, known to all. With a view to giving his stories an air of Plausibility, Coleridge gives accurate. Description of his nature. In the am every phase of landscape, seascape and cloudscape is touched upon. The bright sun, the “Kirk” or church the hill the light house, the cheerful on lookers at the harbor the wedding guest the marriage ceremony, the sun storm blast in the sea the mist and snow of the arctic region and many other natural elements are there in the setting of the story. All these phenomena have been made very convincing.

In this natural setting are set the supernatural incidents. A terrible storm hit and forced the ship south wards. The “storm blast” was “tyrannous and strong” and struck the ship with over taking wings”. Then the sailors reached a clam patch of sea that was “wondrous cold” full of snow and “glistering green iceberg” as tall as the ship’s mast.

The Ancient mariner is a tale of a curse which the narrator, the mariner himself and his companions by killing an Albatross without reason. Coleridge’s power of handling the supernatural is like the pure music of his verse. The moral of the poem is one of all embracing love. This poem is full of moral teachings for human beings. Humphrey house expresses his agreements with three great critics, DR.Tillyard, DR.Bowra and Robert Penn warren that the poem has a very serious moral and spiritual on human life. The moral of the poem’s story is that one should love all God’s creatures. Coleridge is regarded as the greatest poet of the supernatural in English literature and the ancient mariner is regarded as a master piece of supernatural poetry. His supernatural is controlled by thought and study. cazamian says, “the very center of Coleridge art lies in his faculty of evoking the mystery of things, and making it actual, widespread, and obsessing, even better than words worth, he knows how to handle that species of the supernatural whose essence is entirely psychological…….. The supernatural element in the ancient mariner is a hallucination, the outcome of the remorse by the most sober of method.”

 His skill in dealing with the supernatural in this poem is two-fold: first, he has fully achieved his aim of making the supernatural appear to be natural; and, second, he has employed suggestive, psychological, and refined methods of producing the feelings of mystery and horror in the poem, not crude and sensational like that of the writers before him, i.e. Horace, Walpole Mrs. Radcliffe, and Monk Lewis. The greatness of the Ancient mariner lies chiefly in the technique by which the supernatural has been made believable and convincing. There are, no doubt a number of impossible, incredible, and fantastic situation in the poem, such as: the mesmeric power in the mariner’s gaze. The sudden appearance of the mysterious skeleton ship ,the specter woman and her mate, the coming back to life of the dead crew, the seraph-band making signals to the land, the sudden sinking of the ship, and the polar spirit commenting on or influencing the course of events. But the supernatural phenomena that the whole looks real. The sun shining brightly at the outset the mist and snow the freezing cold of the Polar Regions, the floating ice bergs floating in the water, the torrid fierceness of stagnant water. The slimy things crawling on the sea, the moon going up the scythe roaring wind, the rainfall-such are the natural phenomena in the poem. The realistic effect is enhanced by a description of the state of mind of the ancient mariner: that is how he tried to pray but he could not, how lonely he felt on a wide sea how he wanted to die but in vain, how he suffered mental and spirituals anguish. 

This psychological study of the mariner adds to the realistic effect because we are made to feel that any man would suffer in the same way under similar circumstances. Again, the details of the ship’s voyage have such a diary-like air that we accept them as a faithful recording of facts, there is too, the logic of cause and effect in the poem. The punishment and torture have a convincing cause behind them. The realistic effect achieved by Coleridge. The poem is one his great achievement which makes the poem not only convincing and exciting but also in some sense a criticism of life. There are a large number of situations and episodes in the ancient mariner, which fill us either with a sense of mystery or a feeling of horror or with both. The first situation that strikes terror in the heart of the mariner (and the reader also) is the appearance of the skeleton-ship. When this skeleton-ship is sighted in the distance, the sailors feel happy to think that they will now get water to quench their burning thirst. But in a few moments they discover the reality of this ship. 

The description of the ship with its “ribs” and its “gossamer-like sails” fill us with terror. It is a strange mystery that the ship should sail on the sea without wind and without a tide, while the mariner’s ship stands still “like a painted shop upon a painted ocean”. Obviously it is a supernatural force, which drives the ship and the crew also consists of supernatural characters. The feeling of terror is heightened when a reference is made to the crew of this ship. The crew consists of death and life-in-death. But Coleridge creates the sense of horror in this poem not by describing a direct and crude description but by employing suggestive and psychological methods. For instance, he does not describe the physical features of the specter woman and her death mate or other external phenomena at length, but he simply portrays the effect of those external things on the mariner’s mind. The appearance of life-in-death is described in the following three lines: her lips were red, her looks were free, her looks were yellow as gold: her skin was as white as leprosy (lines-190-92)these three lines are followed by these two: the night-mare life-in-death was she, who thick man’s blood with cold Coleridge, after giving us only three lines of description, conveys the horror by saying that the sight of her would have the effect of freezing a man’s blood. In other words, he leaves it to us to imagine for our-selves the horrible appearance of life-in-death that personifies the unspeakable torture of a man who can’t die. Coleridge merely offers a few suggestions to be developed by the reader himself. The effect of the skeleton-ship with death and life-in-death on board again conveyed to us by the following two lines

“Fear in my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!" 

That is, instead of giving us a detailed description of the whole horrible sight, Coleridge refers to the effect of that horrible sight upon the mind of the mariner and says that fear sipped his life-blood. Another situation that produces horror in the poem is the death of the two hundred sailors who dropped down one by one, and each of them looked at the ancient mariner.

Conclusion:-

Here we saw Coleridge’s power of language, description of the different elements like nature, supernatural, horror and the high priest of romanticism.

salient feature of the Victorian age

Name               :       Thakar Aneri R.

Roll No.           :       01

Semester        :       02

M.A. Part         :       1

Paper No.        :       6 Victorian literature

Topic Name    :       salient feature of the Victorian age

• Salient features of the Victorian age.

Introduction

The modern period of progress and unrest when Victoria become queen in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age which we have just studied. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats Byron and scot had passed away and it seemed as if there were no writers in England to fill their place. Words worth had written in 1835.

“Like clouds that rake the mountain summits or waves that own no Curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, from sunshine to the sunless land I”

In these lines is reflected the sorrowful spirit of a literary man of the early nineteenth century who remembered the glory that had passed away from the earth. But the leanness of their first year is more apparent than real. Keats and Shelley were dead, it is true but already there had appeared three disciples of these poets who were destined to be far more widely read then were their masters Tennyson had been publishing poetry since 1827 his first poems appearing almost simultaneously with the list work of Byron Shelley and Keats. Moreover even as romanticism seemed passing away, a group of great prose writers – Dickens, Thackerdy, Carlyle and Ruskin – had already begum to proclaim the literary glory of a new age which now seems to rank only just below the Elizabethan and the romantic periods.

The salient features of the age are mentioned here.

1. Democracy : Amid the multitude of social and political forces of this great age, four things stemd out clearly. First the long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for personal liberty is definitely settled and democracy becomes the established order of the day. The king who appeared in an age of popular weakness and ignorance, and the peers who came with the Normans in triumph are both stripped of their power and left as figure-heads of a past civilization. The last vestige of personal government and the divine right of rulers disappears; the house of commons becomes the ruling power in England; and a series of new reforms bills rapidly extend the people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them.

2. Social Unrest : Second because it is an age of democracy, it is an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood, and of profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in 1833 but in the middle of the century England a work to the fact that slaves are not necessarily negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of men, women, and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. To free this competitive method, has been the growing purpose of the Victorian age until the present day.

3. The ideal of Peace : Third, because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an age of comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and false glitter of fighting and more of its moral evils, as the nation realizes that it is the common people who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty of war, while the privilege classes reap most of the financial and political rewards. Moreover, with the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it becomes evident that the social equality for which England was contending at home belongs to the whole race of men that brother hood is universal, not insular that a question of justice is never settled by fighting and that war is generally unmitigated horror and bar barusm. Tennyson, who came of age when the great reform bill occupied attention, expresses the ideas of the liberals of his day who proposed to spread the gospel of peace. Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled in the parliament of man the federation of the world.

4. Arts and sciences : Fourth, the Victorian age is especially remarkable because of its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inventions. A glance at any record of the industrial achievements of the nineteenth century will show how vast the are and it is unnecessary to repeat here the list of the inventions, from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric lights. All these material things, as well as the growth of education have their influence upon the life of a people and it is inevitable that they should react upon its prose and poetry thought as yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and machines to determine accurately their influence upon literature. When these new things shall by long use have become familiar as country roads or have been replaced by newer and better things, then they also will have their associations and memories and a poem on the rail roads may be as suggestive as words worth’s sonnet on Westminster bridge and the busy, practical working men who today throng our stress and factories may seem to a future and greater age as quaint and poetical as to us seem the slow toilers of the middle ages.

5. An era of peace : The few colonial wars that broke out during the Victorian approach did not seriously disturb the national life. There was one continental war that directly affected Britain the Crimean war and one that affected her indirectly though strongly the Franco german struggle yet neither of these caused any profound changes. In America the great civil struggle left scars that were soon to be obliterated by the wise statesmanship of her rulers. The whole age may be not unfairly described as one of peaceful activity. In the earlier stages the lessening surges of the French revolution were still felt but by the middle of the century they had almost completely died down, and other hopes and ideals largely specific were gradually taking their place.

6. Material Developments : It was an age alive with new activity. There was a revolution in commercial enterprise, due to the great increase of available markets and as a result of this an immense advance in the use of mechanical devices. The new commercial energy was reflected in the great exhibition of 1851. Which was greeted as the inauguration of a new era of prosperity on the other side of this picture of commercial expansion we see the appalling social conditions of the new industrial cities, the squalid slums and the exploitation of cheap labor (often of children), the painful flight by the enlightened few to introduce social legislation and the slow extension of the franchise. The evils of the industrial revolution were vividly painted by such writers as dickens and Mrs. Gaskell and they called forth the missionary efforts of men like Kingsley.

7. Intellectual developments : There can be little doubt that in many cases material wealth produced a hardness of temper and an impatience of projects and ideas that brought no return in hard case yet it is to the credit of this age that intellectual activities were so numerous. There was quite a revolution in scientific thought following upon the works of Darwin and his school, and an immense outburst of social and political throrizing which was represented in this country by the writings of men like Herbert Spencer and john Stuart mill. In addition, popular education became a practical thing. This in its turn produced a new hunger for intellectual food and resulted in a great increase in the production of the press and of other more durable species of literature.

Literary features of the age:

The sixty years commonly included under the name of the Victorian age present many dissimilar features. Yet in several respects we can safely generalize.

1. Its morality : Nearly all observers of the Victorian age are struck by its extreme deference to the conventions. To a later age these seem ludicrous. It was thought indecorous for a man to smoke in public and for a lady to ride a bicycle. To a great extent the new morality was a natural revolt against the grossness of the earlier regency, and the influence of the Victorian court was all in its favor. In literature it is amply reflected. Tennyson is the most conspicuous co placement sir Galahad and King Arthur, dickens, perhaps the most representative of the Victorian novelists took for his model the old picaresque novel. But it is almost laughable to observe his anxiety to be ‘moral’. This type of writing is quite blameless but it produced the king of public that denounced the innocuous jane eyre as wicked because it dealt with the harmless affection of a girl for a married man.


2. The Revolt : Many writers protest against the deadening effect of the conventions. Carlyle and Matthew Arnold in their different accents were loud in their denunciations thackerary never tired of satirizing the snobbishness of the age and bowing’s cobbly mannerisms were an indirect challenge to the velvety diction and the smooth self  satisfaction of the Tennysonian School. As the age proceeded the reaction
strengthened. In poetry the Pre-Raphaelites, by Swinburne and William Morris proclaimed no morality but that of the crtist’s regard for his art. By the vigour of his method Swinburne horrified the timorous and made himself rather ridiculous in the eyes of sensible people. It remained for Thomas hardy to pull a side. The Victorian veils and shutters and with the large tolerances of the master to regards men’s actions
with open gaze.

2. Intellectual developments : The literary product was inevitably affected by the new ideas in science, religion and politics. On the origin of species (1859) of Darwin shook to its foundation scientific thought. We can perceive the influence of such a work in Tennyson’s. in memoriam in Matthew Arnold’s meditative poetry and in the works of Carlyle. In religious and ethical thought the Oxford movement as it was called was the most note warthy advance. This movement had its source among the young and eager thinkers of the old university and was headed by the great Newman who ultimately (1854) joined the church of Rome, as a religious portent it marked the widespread discontent with the existing belief of the church of England as a literary influence it affected many writers of note, including Newman himself, roude, Maurice kingsley and glad stone.

3. The new education : The new education acts, making a cetian measure of education compulsory, rapidly produced and enormous reading public. The cheapening of printing and paper increased the demand for books so that the production was multiplied. The most popular form of literature was the novel and the novelists responded with a will. Much of their work was of a high standard so much so that it has been asserted by competent critics that the middle years of the nineteenth century were the richest in the whole history of the novel.

4. International influences : During the nineteenth century the interaction among American and European writers was remarkably fresh and strong. In Britain the influences of the great german writers was continuous and it was championed by Carlyle and Mathew Arnold. Subject nations in particular the Italians, were a sympathetic theme for prose and verse. The browning Swinburne, morris and Meredith were deeply absorbed in the long struggle of the followers of garibaldi and Cavour and when Italian freedom was gained the rejoicings were genuine.

5. The achievement of the age : With all its immense production, the age produced no supreme writer. It revealed no Shakespeare no Shelley nor a Byron or a Scott. The general literary level was however very high and it was an age moreover of spacious intellectual horizons, noble endeavor and bright aspirations.

Conclusion :
To conclude this point we can see that basically in this age the most beneficial things is the cheapening of printing and paper. They increased the demand for books. This age is also known as the age of peace. In these ages there is also one important development of material and during that time there was a revolution happened in commercial enterprise.

T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

NAME:-THAKAR. ANERI. R

ROLL NO:-01

SEMESTER:-2

M.A.PART:-1

TOPIC: - T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT.

PAPER NO:-7 LITERARY CRITICISM.

 

•     T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

            In his essay “Tradition and individual talent” Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He opines that tradition gives the reader something new, something arresting something intellectual and something vital for literary conception.

            Tradition according to Eliot is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. Eliot maintains that tradition is bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past is not something lost and invalid.

                 According to Eliot, is the part of living culture which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in forming the present. Historical sense is a perception that past is not something that is lost or invalid. Rather it has a function in the present.

                   It exits with the present. It exerts its influence in our ideas, thoughts and consciousness. This is historical sense. It is an awareness not only of the pastness of the past but the presence of the past. On this sense the past is our contemporary as the present is. Eliot’s view of tradition is not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past is followed by the presence and succession of a line. On the contrary, the past and the present life side by side in the space .Thus it is spatial. Then Eliot holds that not only the past influences the present but the present, too, influences the past. To prove this idea, he conceives of all literature as a total, indivisible order. All existing literary works belong to an order like the member of a family. Any new work of literature is like the arrival of a member or a new relative or a new acquaintance. It arrival and presence bring about a readjustment of the previous relationship of the old members. A new works takes its place in the order. Its arrival and inclusion modifies the order and relationship among all works. The order is then modified. A new work art influences all the existing-literary work, as a new relative influences the old member of a family. It is this sense that the present modifies the past as the past modifies the present. The past is modified by the present also in the sense that we can look at the past literature always through ever renewing perceptive of the present. A new work of art cannot be evaluated in isolation without reference to past literature and tradition. Evaluation is always comparative and relative. It calls for a comparison with the past that is with tradition. No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone. You must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.

                             A work of art has two dimensions-it is at once personal and universal. It is an individual composition, but at the same time, its inclusion into tradition determines its worth and universal appeal. A writer must be aware that he belongs to a larger tradition and there is always an impact of tradition on him. Individual is an element formed by and forming the culture to which he belongs. He should surrender his personality to something larger and more significant.

                          In his conscious cultivation of historical sense, a writer reduces the magnification of personal self, which leads to depersonalization and impersonal act. When a writer is aware the historical sense, it doesn’t mean that he influenced by the past or his own self. Rather the writer should minimize the importance of his personal self, which will lead him to depersonalization and impersonal act. Tradition is a living stream. It is not a lump or dead mass. But the main current does not always flow through the most noted authoress. Eliot regrets that tradition in English world of letters is used in prerogative sense. This is one reason of the undeveloped critical sense of the English nation. They are too individualistic on intellectual habits. Eliot criticizes the English intellectuals. According to Eliot to the English intellectual tradition is something that should be avoided. They give much more importance on individualism and are critical about the historical sense or tradition.

                                 Like Arnold, Eliot views tradition as something living. For both the word “tradition” implies growth. Eliot recalls Edmund Burke what burke did for political thought, by glorifying the idea of inheritance; Eliot has done for English literary criticism. Burke, famous English politician, gave emphasis on the experience of the past in politics. In the same Eliot also gives emphasis on the past regarding English criticism.

                      Tradition does not mean uncritical imitation of the past. Nor does it mean only erudition. A writer draws on only the necessary knowledge of tradition. He must use his freedom according to his needs. He cannot be completely detached. Often the most original moments of a work of art echo the mind of earlier writers. Though it sounds paradoxical it is true. It is paradoxical but true that even the most original writings sometimes reflect the thinking of the past or earlier writers. So, there is nothing which is absolutely original.

                       A partial or complete break with the literary past is a danger. An awareness of what has gone before is necessary to know what is there to be done in the present or future. A balance between the control of tradition and the freedom of an individual is essential to art. Eliot said elsewhere that by losing tradition we lose our held on the present. Hence, a writer should be aware of the importance of tradition.

                  The essay gives voice to the fact that modernist experiments seldom simply destroyed or rejected traditional methods of   representation or traditional literary forms; rather, the modernists sought to enter into a sort of conversation with the art of the past, sometimes reverently, sometimes mockingly. No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervening  of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered…… the past[is] altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.

                                 Eliot emphasis both the way that tradition shapes the modern artist and the way that a “really new” work of art makes us see that tradition anew.

                                   Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the SUSURRUS of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek no Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for poem, we shall seldom find it. I have tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that he mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.

                        The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely if you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of “sublimity” misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness,” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore than the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.

“It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoke by
Particular events in his life that the poet is in any way
Remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may
Simple, crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a
Very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the
Emotions of people who have very complex or unusual
Emotions in life.”

                According to this quote he told that the emotions which are described in the poetry by poets it shows the emotions of the poet which related with the particular event of his life which is remarkable or interesting for poet. It is possible that poetry is a complex thing but the complexity of emotions of poet is not Acceptable in poetry.

“The business of the poet is not to find new emotions; But to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never Experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquility” is an in exact formula.”

                 According to this quote the business of the poet is not to find new emotion but to use of an ordinary emotions in new way and create a new emotions from the ordinary one.

                 T.S.Eliot’s ‘tradition and individual is one of the critical essay in which Eliot has described with concept of tradition, individual talent, emotion and poetry as well as his concept of depersonalized art. In the opening of the essay, Eliot’s defines tradition, which is the literary history. He says that each and every nation has its individual genius who creates literature. So many such individual writers produce a big bulk of writing which is tradition. In other words, tradition is the matter of past that is even related to present because it is in the process of formation. Eliot gives an example of English literature produced from the Anglo Saxon period up to the present day. It is like a wall where there are so many bricks working commonly. Eliot also says that when a writer comes to write at present. He should be aware of the tradition. To learn the tradition he should have a great labor but he should not imitate it. Learning the tradition is also called historical sense that is necessary to the present writer, because tradition as the past influences.

                    Eliot even says that the new writer writing at present becomes the part of tradition so he has to learn tradition but to imitate it. No writers and writings have value in isolation, the writer and his writing would not be evaluated with the writers of the past, he should be compared and contrasted with the tradition, it is possible to examine his individual talent. If the new writer has imitated the tradition, blindly such slavish imitation should be discouraged because it has not individual talent. Individual talent is the novelty or newness. If the present writer has brought something novelty in his writing, it is called individual talent such novelty should be encourage because it suggests the genius of the writer.

      Eliot has also given his personal idea about the depersonalization of art, which is also called impersonal poetry. He says that emotions and feelings are related to poetry but they should be expressed indirectly and objectively. In other words, Eliot says that emotions of the poet are expressed in poetry but the poet should in personified them. His concept is against the concept of words being involved in poetry. Instead, the poet should not be identified as the direct speaker in poetry but he should indirectly through the characters or other object, which is called objective correlative. So Eliot says “poetry is not the turning loose of emotions but escape from emotion. It is not the expression of personality but escape from it

             In order to support his concept of depersonalized art, Eliot use and analogy related to a gas chamber. In a gas chamber during the process of forming sulpheric asid, sulpheris dioxide and Oxygen are needed but they do not react until a plate of platinum is kept. When the platinum is kept there, it causes reaction between them so that, sulpheric acid is formed. In the acid platinum does not become present. This analogy is applied in the process of poetic creation.

                   The poet and his mind is catalyst like the platinum to change others, medium but as if the platinum is not present in the acid, the poet also should not be present in poetry. His role is very crucial because without the poet, poetry is not possible to create but, in the creation he should be totally dead or absent like the platinum absent in acid. It is his concept of impersonal art and he criticizes many English poets including Wordsworth who have not become impersonal. He appreciates metaphysical such as a John Donne is to be impersonal in poetry.

      Conclusion:-

              

                   T.S.Eliot spread his concept of Tradition which reflects his reaction against Romantic subjectivism and emotionalism.He describes the concept of historical senses very useful for better understanding of poetic sense or literary sense.