Thinking Activity: Auden's Poems

Hello Beautiful People,

I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ?This blog is about W.H.Auden’s poem. As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The Twentieth Century Literature: From  World War II to the End of the Century (paper-107).Our professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir discussed this unit and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to interpret and given to answer this question. Here first we know some brief introductions about W. H.Auden.

Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".

Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological, and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive—treating him as a lesser figure than W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot—too strongly affirmative, as in Joseph Brodsky's statement that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century". After his death, his poems became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.

Here we are discussing about 3 poems of Auden and giving answers also to given task by professor.

• September 1,1939
• In Memory of W.B.Yeats
• Epitaph On a Tyrant

1)Which lines of 'September 1, 1939' you liked the most? Why?

✔ ORIGINAL POEM (September 1, 1939)

(1)

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

The opening lines to one of Auden’s most famous poems (albeit one he rejected later in life) attained new resonance after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Here he is referring to the time when Hitler invaded Poland, thus beginning the disastrous Second World War. The “low dishonest decade” of the 1930s was one of global depression, the rise of dictators, the failure of appeasement, and the isolationism of the United States. Auden understood that maniacal rulers were not new; he evokes the ghost of Thucydides, who wrote of dictators in the era of the Greeks, and points to one the basic psychological issues for such men: “I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.” While Europe disintegrates, the poet is safe but troubled in New York City.These opening lines also introduce the poem's speaker, a first-person voice who describes not just his location at the bar, but also his emotions as he sits there: "Uncertain and afraid." Following this forthright admission, lines 4 and 5 clarify the cause of the speaker's uncertainty, and also shed light on the poem's central concern: the rise of authoritarianism.

As the speaker sees it, the "low dishonest decade" of the 1930s, which bore witness to the rise of fascism across Europe, is about to "expire" (or end), and along with it, any "clever" but naive "hopes" that the speaker (and others) may have had for a better, less frightening time.

In keeping with the poem's dark themes, the language of these opening lines also helps create a foreboding atmosphere right from the start. A strong current of sibilance runs ominously through these early lines, in words like "sit," "second," "street," "uncertain," and "dishonest," while the alliterative /d/ sounds in "dishonest decade" create a steady drumbeat of fear. Lines 3 and 5 rhyme as well (despite the poem's overall lack of a consistent rhyme scheme) thus further linking the emotions of the speaker and the terrible times he is living in through the matching sounds of "afraid" and "decade."

(2)

“We must love one another or die.”

In the poem's most famous line, the speaker declares, “We must love one another or die.” The speaker consistently argues for the benefits of human connection, rejecting the all-too-human impulse to desire “not universal love / but to be loved alone.” It’s far better for society, the speaker argues, for people to acknowledge that “no one exists alone,” and with that knowledge, to connect with others who are “Just.” Only by overcoming selfishness and working together, the speaker insists, can people keep the “affirming flame” of hope and love burning bright. To put it bluntly, human survival itself depends on love.

2) What is so special about 'In Memory of W B Yeats'?

✔ ORIGINAL POEM ( In Memory of W B Yeats)

✔ In ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ Auden taps into themes of life after death, the power of poetry, and the human condition. The powerful and wide-ranging themes are discussed within the context of Yeats’ life and death. Auden uses an exacting tone and direct language to depict the events around Yeat’s death. The mood is at times uplifting and at others concerning and worrying. There are many dark images and many fewer hopeful ones.

If I want to tell you that what is things in this poem who impressing me that Auden says that Yeats' art lives on, as if it is an autonomous, living thing now detached from its host.Auden's poem draws on all these traditions as it focuses just on that moment when the words of a poet must begin to live on after his death.Most important, Auden understands this process of poetic after-life as taking place entirely within history.Poems about death tend to be concerned not just with loss, but also with what remains after a man or a woman dies.Auden makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’. These include enjambment, allusion, and alliteration. An allusion is an expression that’s meant to call something specific to mind without directly stating it.Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same sound. For example, “dying day” in the fourth line of the first stanza in section one, or “Silence” and “suburbs” in stanza three of the same section. Auden then describes Yeats’s death, in the third stanza, concluding that, with his passing, Yeats ‘became his admirers’: once Yeats the man had ceased to be, Yeats the poet became whatever his readers and fans decided he was. Here, we can sense Auden making a broader point about the ‘immortality’ of poets: they survive or don’t survive depending on who reads them, and how those readers read them. Yeats’s work is ‘scattered’ all over the world in those cities where people read him, often finding surprising things in his work which Yeats himself would not recognise (‘unfamiliar affections’). Auden here is prefiguring one of the most influential ideas in twentieth-century literary criticism, that of the ‘intentional fallacy’ or ‘death of the author’, where the worth and meaning of a writer lie with the reader rather than the author. Auden says that the words of a dead man are ‘modified in the guts of the living’: we cannot help but change the meaning of what a poet wrote, adapting it to suit out our times and our own feelings.
Auden concludes this first section of ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ by acknowledging that the world will go on tomorrow, but a ‘few thousand’ will think of the day Yeats died as ‘one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual’.

3) Is there any contemporary relevance of 'Epitaph on a Tyrant'?

✔ ORIGINAL POEM (Epitaph on a Tyrant)

✔ Firstly, in simple term what is the meaning of Tyrant so..Tyrant, Greek tyrannos, a cruel and oppressive ruler or, in ancient Greece, a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power.

The poem “Epitaph on a Tyrant” by W. H. Auden was written in 1939 and describes an unnamed tyrant. “Epitaph on a tyrant is written and rhyme and utilizes a refreshingly deviant tone ad a subtle sort of symbolism to get the point across.In the poem “Epitaph of a Tyrant”, Auden uses distinct words like “perfection” to express the common goal of tyrants and their political schemes of reaching the stage of perfection in a society. “Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after / And the poetry he invented was easy to understand”

We can find so many tyrants like Adolf Hitler nowadays. Who wants power, money and wants  to create utopia and his own world or country. We can find  so many leaders who are purely called tyrants in contemporary times.

⭐Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party,Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which gave him significant popular support.Historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil".Under Hitler's leadership and racially motivated ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of about 6 million Jews and millions of other victims whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen (subhumans) or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. The number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties constitute the deadliest conflict in history.

⭐Donald Trump

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American media personality and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.Mueller also investigated Trump for obstruction of justice and neither indicted nor exonerated him. The House of Representatives impeached Trump on December 18, 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he solicited Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. The Senate acquitted him of both charges on February 5, 2020.Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden, but refused to concede defeat. He attempted to overturn the results by making false claims of electoral fraud, pressuring government officials, mounting scores of unsuccessful legal challenges and obstructing the presidential transition.

THAN YOU..😍

Thinking Activity:On Being Asked for War Poem by W.B.Yeats

 Hello Beautiful People,

I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ?This blog is about W B Yeats - Poems giving. As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II (paper-106).Our professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir discussed this unit and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to interpret and given to answer this question. Here first we know some brief introductions about W B Yeats.

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.Throughout his long literary career, Yeats continued to mature and grow like an artisan, and this the most admirable thing about Yeats. His poetry is characterized by the dreamy flourishing style dull of lulling rhythms. … He started using brief and terse diction, and consequently, his poetry matured in density

Evaluate 'On Being Asked for a War Poem :

"On being asked for a War Poem" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written on February 6, 1915 in response to a request by Henry James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I.Yeats changed the poem's title from "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" to "A Reason for Keeping Silent" before sending it in a letter to James.It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a ‘war poem’ for publication.

On being asked for a War Poem

I think it better that in times like these

A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of meddling who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

Structure Note of this poem : 

This poem is a sextet, with a rhyme scheme ABC, ABC. The first three lines refer to the poet’s attitude to writing about war; the next three lines write on the self-imposed limits of the poet’s interventions in the world.In terms of its form, the poem is written in iambic pentameter, rhymed abcabc. The final two lines are the only ones which might cause some real head-scratching from readers (and critics), but Yeats appears to be making an appeal to the broad readership that poetry (including his poetry, by 1915) enjoyed: young girls might enjoy his romantic verses about old Ireland, while an old man might enjoy the ballads.

Who has ‘asked [Yeats] for a war poem’? :

t was the American novelists, Henry James and Edith Wharton – who were good friends and who both came to live in Britain – who approached him: Wharton was editing an anthology, The Book of the Homeless, the profits from which would go towards helping refugees of the war. That anthology appeared in 1916, complete with Yeats’s contribution, which appeared under the alternative title ‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’.

Why did Yeats refuse to write a ‘war poem’? :

In February 1915, Yeats had written to his friend Lady Gregory: ‘I suppose, like most wars it is at root a bagman’s war, a sacrifice of the best for the worst. I feel strangely enough most for the young Germans who are now being killed.’ Yeats goes on to say that the ‘bespectacled’ Germans he has seen remind him more of himself than the English soldiers (‘footballers’) or the French troops.

↳

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem about refusing to write a war poem when asked to produce one. This odd act of refusal-as-assent – writing a poem, but a poem which takes a stand against writing a certain kind of poem – has the air of irony about it, and Yeats probably intended his poem to be taken as a brief ‘thanks, but no thanks’

The opening statement is forthright and conversational about “times like these”, or times of war- the enjambment, or running over the end of line, mimics everyday speech. When the poet writes of “a poet’s mouth” being silent, he is using a technique called metonymy. Like metaphor, metonymy substitutes one thing for another. Metaphor does this by contrasting different things (“He was an animal”) but in metonymy, something closely related to something else is substituted. For example: “the crown” may refer to the Queen or royalty, or “the press” may to refer to the newspapers. Both are closely connected. Here, the “poet’s mouth” represents (because it speaks) his poetry.

“meddling”: Another word for interfering. This key word in the poem gives us a hint of the poet’s attitude to those who try and write activist or political poems: they are ‘meddlers’, troublesome interferers. The tone is obviously negative. “Meddling” in the lives of old men and young girls carries a lighter and happier tone however- a sense of play.A quick change in imagery and reference point, from the macrocosm to the microcosm, from the world of politics to the world of intimate acquaintances.

“an old man on a winter’s night”: this completes the scope of the poet’s influence. Does this mean that poetry is suited to everyday lessons and life? That the poet’s role is to appeal to beauty and wisdom, youth and age? These certainly seem narrower limits to the role of poetry than ‘setting statesmen right’. Yeats, however, would surely argue that poetry’s concerns are higher than political contingency.

The mention of the word "silent" in the title published in Wharton's collection, appears contrary to the construction of poetry or the poetic voice. In the poem "Politics", Yeats begins the poem where "On being asked for a War Poem" finishes with the opening lines:

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics?

Although "Politics" describes a different political situation facing the world in the 1930s, Yeats again chooses not to focus on politics but the "girl standing there."

Here I am putting video of our class discussion on  this poem....

THANK YOU....

Thinking Activity: The Second Coming by W.B.Yeats

 Hello Beautiful People,

    I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ?This blog is about W B Yeats - Poems giving. As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II (paper-106).Our professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir discussed this unit and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to explain that Yeats poem 'The Second Coming as Pandemic Poem'. Here first we know some brief introductions about W B Yeats.

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Throughout his long literary career, Yeats continued to mature and grow like an artisan, and this the most admirable thing about Yeats. His poetry is characterized by the dreamy flourishing style dull of lulling rhythms. … He started using brief and terse diction, and consequently, his poetry matured in density.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensityI.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Analysis of "The Second Coming” as a Pandemic Poem :

“The Second Coming” is an allegorical poem that W. B. Yeats penned in 1919 and published in The Dial in 1920. The poem describes a declining, violent present and an impending apocalyptic future, marked by the approach of a sphinxlike monster. The poem is often considered an allegory for the fraught times Yeats was living in—namely, the end of World War I, the midst of the Spanish flu pandemic, and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. More broadly, some scholars believe the poem bemoans the devolution of Europe and European culture.

“The Second Coming” is also indicative of Yeats’s interest in the occult. Yeats and his wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees, believed in a universal spirit world which they contacted for artistic inspiration. Yeats references this spirit world in “The Second Coming” (Spiritus Mundi). He frequently used “automatic writing,”

The poem opens to the image of a falcon flying in a spiral, or “gyre,” that keeps widening, but the falcon can’t hear its master, the falconer. The rest of the lines in the first stanza Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; We can say that Yeats's poem was published in November 1920. And over the century since, perhaps no poem has been more invoked for vexing times, to convey,

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 examine the decaying state of the world: anarchy prevails, blood flows like a tide, and blood drowns all semblance of innocence. The surviving good people lack all conviction, and the “worst” people are excited and ambitious. Just as the speaker makes his prediction, he sees a disturbing image from Spiritus Mundi, the spiritual, universal consciousness: a sphinxlike shape with a lion’s body and a man’s head somewhere in a desert. The sphinx has a vacant, merciless expression and moves slowly, rousing desert birds.

In the ending of poem the speaker can no longer see the image, but he realizes that after 20 centuries of calm, a rocking cradle has turned the world into a nightmare. The speaker ends the last two lines with a question: What is this monster? As he asks, the monster “slouches” to Bethlehem to be born. His wife caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the 1918–19 pandemic were among pregnant women—in some areas, it was an up to 70 percent death rate for these women.So here we found this poem as pandemic.It was a very terrible situation as we are facing today because of CORONA pandemic.To conclude we can say that the poem 'The Second Coming' is a Pandemic Poem.

Here I putting a video of our class discussion poem ' The Second Coming' :

THANK YOU....

Thinking Activity : Bob Dylan and Robert Frost

 Hello Beautiful People,

I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ?This blog is about giving Bob Dylan and Robert Frost.As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The American Literature (paper-108).our professor Ms. Vaidehi Hariyaani discussed this unit and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to interpret and given to answer this question.BUt first we know some brief introduction about Bob Dylan & Robert Frost.

✅Bob Dylan :

"How many roads must a man walk down Before you can call him a man? . .  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, The answer is blowin' in the wind."

-Bob Dylon

Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning nearly 60 years.American folksinger who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold tens of millions of albums, wrote more than 500 songs recorded by more than 2,000 artists, performed all over the world, and set the standard for lyric writing. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.

"Don't criticize what you can't understand."

✅Robert Frost :

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

-Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime and is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution."

"I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.."

Now I am trying to answers of the questions who given to as blog task.

1.)  Which song of Bob Dylan has made an impact on you? Why? Can you find a song similar to the same theme in other language?

⟶

Make You Feel My Love

When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case

I could offer you a warm embrace

To make you feel my love

When the evening shadows and the stars appear

And there is no one there to dry your tears

I could hold you for a million years

To make you feel my love

I know you haven't made your mind up yet

But I would never do you wrong

I've known it from the moment that we met

No doubt in my mind where you belong

I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue

I'd go crawling down the avenue

No, there's nothing that I wouldn't do

To make you feel my love

The storms are raging on the rolling sea

And on the highway of regret

Though winds of change are throwing wild and free

You ain't seen nothing like me yet

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true

Nothing that I wouldn't do

Go to the ends of the Earth for you

To make you feel my love

To make you feel my love

There are hit songs, and then, there are classics. Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” off his 1997 studio album, Time Out of Mind, has reportedly been covered by nearly 500 artists. The original version features Dylan’s signature tone, a bit rough around the edges, and a nice counterbalance to the twinkling of piano and the melody’s gentle sweetness.

“When the rain is blowing in your face / And the whole world is on your case / I could offer you a warm embrace / To make you feel my love,” he extends on the opening verse. His voice guides the barebones arrangement, relying solely on the power of the lyrics.

Over the years, many have speculated the song draws parallels to Christian imagery, namely the figure of Jesus Christ. The second half of the chorus is often cited as a reference to the crucifixion: “I’d go hungry / I’d go black and blue / I’d go crawling down the avenue / No, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do / To make you feel my love.” Of course, this is all speculation ─ but it has neither been confirmed nor denied outright.Now I tell you why i like this because of The narrator’s egocentricity comes out fully in the first verse. The opening lines have him sympathising with his lover, but for being in  a situation which is near to what he sees as his own:

‘When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case’

‘In your face’, in its colloquial sense, might seem to apply to what she sees as him in his relationship with her, rather than the other way about. Also what, we might ask, is meant by ‘your case’? The expression has a pathological feel to it, and would therefore be more obviously appropriate to the narrator whose ‘hearing voices’ in Cold Irons Bound suggested he was becoming insane. Also, rain imagery seems more apposite to him than to her. As early as Love Sick he was complaining that the ‘clouds are weeping’, and in Dirt Road Blues he was ‘rolling through the rain and hail’. In applying his situation to her, it’s as if he’s found an opportunity to feel sorry for himself. It’s wrong, he thinks, that the sympathy he gives her hasn’t been extended to him .

A further consequence of seeing his lover as a version of himself is that he makes her lot out to be as bad as he thinks his own is. This is presented in the song by his references to things associated with night – shadows and stars:

‘When the evening shadows and the stars appear

And there is no one there to dry your tears’

But why stars? Stars are beautiful and not a cause for tears, as the lines imply. Their inclusion is an indication of the narrator’s pessimism – his failure to recognise when things are going well. And we’ve been given no reason to suppose that his lover should be attributed with a similar one-sided outlook.

2.)  Which poem of Robert Frost has made an impact on you? Why?

➝

Acceptance

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud

And goes down burning into the gulf below,

No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud

At what has happened. Birds, at least must know

It is the change to darkness in the sky.

Murmuring something quiet in her breast,

One bird begins to close a faded eye;

Or overtaken too far from his nest,

Hurrying low above the grove, some waif

Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.

At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!

Now let the night be dark for all of me.

Let the night be too dark for me to see

Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

I like this poem most because when we see this entire poem.He says that nothing is disturbed by “what has happened.” Frost’s choice of “happened” almost suggests that the sun’s going down is something that has happened to someone or something.First appearing in West Running Brook, this sonnet represents a sense of both yielding to nature and exhibiting a healthy respect for it. Near the beginning of the poem the speaker points out that no voice in nature gives a cry when the sun goes down.

But nothing is ever as simple as it seems in Frost. The title, “Acceptance,” alerts the reader that the poem is about anything but. While it seems that the bird is accepting of the darkness, he too is haunted by it. There is a touch of sarcasm in the phrase, “Let what will be, be.” The bird says, “Now let the night be dark for all of me. / Let the night be too dark for me to see.” This darkness is unpleasant and enveloping. It is not so much acceptance that is being witnessed, but a sort of repression. Ultimately, the bird is no better equipped to accept the scheme of things than humans are, and the irony of the title is that the poem is really about the inability to accept. In “Acceptance,” nature’s power is evident, but so is the desire to accept that power as a given and not to resist it. Frost is, however, uncomfortable with nature’s powers, despite the assertion in the poem that those powers should not be challenged.

THANK YOU .....

Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

 Hello Beautiful People,

    I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ? This blog is about giving interpretation of a thirty-second play, 'Breath'. This shortest play written by Samuel Beckett.Martin Esslin first gave the term 'Theatre of the Absurd.' He was awarded with Nobel Prize in 1969.As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The Twentieth Century Literature : From World War 2 to the End of the Century(paper-107),So while studying ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ our professor Prof. Dr.Dilip Barad sir discussed the film version of Beckett’s shortest play ‘Breath’ - thirty-seconds play and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to interpret this shortest play and shoot a small video.

"Absurdist drama asks its viewer to 

draw his own conclusions, 

make his own errors"

-Martin Esslin 

 Theatre of the Absurd or absurdism is a movement where theatre was less concerned with a plot that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, but dealt with the human condition. A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development. In philosophy, "the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find these with any certainty.Absurdism shares some concepts, and a common theoretical template, with existentialism and nihilism.

Ok so we take some brief intro about Theatre of Absurd and also Absurdity. Now we see Samuel becket’s shortest play ‘BREATH’. If we look at the script of the play, it is as follows.

CURTAIN Up 1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.                                                           2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum - together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds. 3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds.  Rubbish. No verticals, all scattered and lying. Cry. Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off strictly synchronized light and breath. Breath. Amplified recording. CURTAIN Down

There are many adaptations of the play and all seem very creative and worthy to watch on different parallels. You can watch some of the videos which are attached in our teacher's blog.

Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

Picturization of the play :

Samuel Beckett's ‘Breath’ by Riddhi Bhatt

Interpretation of the play :

    As we know that Samuel Beckett is associated with Theatre of Absurd, his another play, "Waiting for Godot" is also an absurd play.If one tries to interpret such a short play, it can be said that it covers much absurdity and is meaningless.

    To begin with the above picturization revolves around the journey of Human beings from Birth to Death and in between these two polls the activities which are done, And raise the question Whether these activities are significant or meaningless?. To answer this question we can take help of different philosophies about life. If we apply Nihilism then it seems that all the things which we do life has no purpose, goal or meaning, life is totally  absurd.

    But if we answer the same question from existentialist think about life Existentialism is the philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Our individual purpose and meaning is not given to us by Gods, governments, teachers or other authorities. Existentialists believe that society should not restrict an individual's life or actions and that these restrictions inhibit free will and the development of that person's potential.

“I'd come to realize that all our troubles

spring from our failure to use plain,

clear-cut language.”

-Jean-Paul Sartre

    The video begins with some toys like teddy bear and doll and  dark and scary music while crying shows the birth of a person. Toys symbolize our childhood where we used to play, there is another phase of learning life lessons and getting knowledge which is reflected through the shattered pens in video.Generally, A birth of a person is seen as an arrival of happiness in other people's life while here it sounds like that Birth is so cheerful. Because now we are alone in this purposeless universe. According to Existentialism "We are thrown into the Meaningless Universe."

    In between beginning and end the collection of rubbish connotes the different phases of development of life. And continuous slow effects of breath in and breathe out music denote the Inspiration and Expiration process which breathes life to the body.This suggests boredom and anxiety. The brief cry also signifies life but it also suggests disgust, anguished, stressed, haphazard, pessimist and gloomy thinking. The play is very short so, this also significantly suggests that life is very short. After that we see many types of tablets, Ayurvedic Kadha and also a lot of pouches of medicine right .. They represent our present lifestyle and how we are dependent on medicine. Nowadays we are facing this covid 19 pandemic. It seems like we can not survive without medicine.There are many cosmetic things. They symbolised our daily routine and like the luxury of our life.First one is medicine than cosmetics.There are many rubbish things of food. These all types of food represented our need that without food and water we can not survive on earth.

“The problem with wearing a facade

is that sooner or later life shows up with a big pair of scissors.”

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

    Another significant symbol used in the rubbish stuff is scissors, In my opinion scissors represent social criticism. Yes we all are facing this problem in our hall life.Social criticism is also a theme of Existentialism.One line of criticism holds that the emphasis on individual freedom and the rejection of absolutes in existentialism tends to undermine ethics; by suggesting that everyday life is 'absurd' and by denying the existence of fixed, binding principles for evaluating our actions, existentialists promote an 'anything-goes' If we talk about Existentialist Aesthetics that As the existentialist motto goes, “man is condemned to be free.” Here, freedom is not just independence in the sense of independence from, but in the sense of being able to decide who and what one should be.

    At the end of the video we see Cans of tobacco and Rosary. Can we say that they have any similarity ? When we go to purchase tobacco , On cans of tobacco writed one thing that “तम्बाकू से दर्दनाक मौत होती है।” or “ Tobacco causes painful death.” also give one or two very dangerous images of mouth cancer caused by tobacco use. But many people see these things and also purchase tobbaco.

    According to the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar “I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality & frater.” But when people become blind behind religion and man's freedomity, liberty , individual life strips that is problematic and religion being cancer for people. And despite knowing all this to a great extent, man becomes obsessed with religion. Also I remember one amazing personality Sadat Hassan Manto.Manto says that “मजहब जब दिलो से निकलकर दिमाग पर चढ़ जाए तो जहर बन जाता है।”

    Also do japmala and other kind of things our lives remain tangled like the tangles of earphones, at the end in video I putting one white cloth and key. They symbolized truth of life that cloths is called like Kafan and key is like truth of our life. The viability of religion is a contested matter among existentialists. 

    Sartre argued that the existence of a God who was free, and so religiously interesting, would entail the cancellation of human freedom; but humans are free, therefore God does not exist. Others saw God as the ultimate Thou who, by engaging in relationship with us, could give authentic meaning to our otherwise absurd existence. Tillich was sympathetic to such a position. In “Existentialism,” death allows the person selfawareness and makes him alone responsible for his acts. Prior to Existential thought death did not have essentially individual significance; its significance was cosmic. Death had a function for which history or the cosmos had final responsibility.

    Now, The central question is What is the meaning of Life? Why are we here? Why are we doing all these things? And perhaps the answer is nothing. If one day we are going to die then what is the point of doing these useless things. This is the core idea which came out from the video that "Life is Absurd."But another opposite Conclusion can also be made through the above video is that We need to accept the things as they are because Life is Absurd. But as human beings we need to live our life in fullest capacities within these absurdities and meaningless universes.

    At the end I want to say that all, this entire process took 4 hours in recording the video and audio (13 retakes were taken) , editing and mixing many files for final video, and uploading the finalized version to YouTube. And after completed to this blog and my interpretation on video took totally 6 hours.😄 But I have learnt a lot many things from this project and I am so happy to see my work. I hope you all are enjoying this blog.

THANK YOU........