Great discussion today about these two poems, Anna Seward's "Sonnet" and Wallace Stevens's "The Snow Man." There were two main points I wanted everyone to take away. The first we covered fairly thoroughly, the second not so much:
Main Point #1: How to Read a C18 Poem
1. Read the poem sentence-by-sentence.
2. Expect the sentences to function as correct grammatical units and parse them accordingly.
3. Expect the poem to say what it means, just like a modern piece of prose does.
Main Point #2: Some Matters of Late C18 Taste
1. Sensibility
2. Gothic/Sublime
3. (Moving beyond the Enlightenment?)
The first two items under "Main Point #2" I wrote on the board; the last I held in reserve to write in case discussion started pressing hard on Seward's "great Ruler" and "Creation's wail" vs. Stevens's "Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." I'm not going to try to lecture you online about those points (believe me, we'll be coming back to them as we go on!). But I do encourage to build on the foundation of your own knowledge and background and what you've picked up so far in our "mapping" activities. How do you think Anna Seward's "Sonnet" connects to any one of those three terms? How do they help to distinguish Seward's view of "the listener in the snow" from Stevens's?
Don't feel like you need to have a fully worked out "big picture" of both poems in order to respond! Thoughtful attention to a single line or image is a solid contribution to the conversation through which a bigger picture will emerge.
Deadline: Wednesday (1/28), 10am.
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7 comments:
I think that some interesting comments were made about the differences between Seward's "Sonnet" and Stevens' "The Snow Man", particularly the fact that "The Snow Man" focuses more on solitary experience and reflection. This, perhaps, goes along with the third point about "moving beyond the Enlightenment". The listener and/or person with a mind of winter reminded me more of a transcendentalist philosophy: being one with nature and all that. Was anyone else reminded of Emerson or Thoreau?
Seward seems to be appealing more to sentiment instead of logic and reasoning in "Sonnet." Her poem connects to sensibility through the "he" in the text learning something through experiencing and appreciating winter. The "solemn lesson" learned is learned through emotions felt about winter or nature in general.
She also seems to be moving past the Enlightenment with references to nature's "great RULER" and "Creation" instead of only using logic and reason to appeal to the reader or the "he" of the poem. Seward makes references to a higher power that may be present, even though its existence cannot be proven.
I think moving past the Enlightenment and the inclusion of some higher power makes Seward's "listener in the snow" more dependent on something outside himself to learn "the solemn lesson of the ruin'd year" (whatever that may be) than Stevens's. In his poem the listener relies only on himself and his own mind to understand or learn about "nothing" in its many forms.
While the first sentence in Seward's sonnet is saturated with romantic language describing the sublime feelings one should take away from winter, I'm not all that sure that Stevens' poem is. Seward states that if one does not feel the sublime that is winter one has done a crime against nature while Stevens merely says some people like winter and some do not, but it would be nice if everyone did.
There's definitely something terrifying in the language of Seward's sonnet. Winter is portrayed like a season of death. "faded Clime," "Dim in the gloom," "pale in the hoar rhyme," "bleak," "dreary." On one hand, these descriptors are definitely terrifying, but on the other hand they seem exaggerated. Sure winter can be dark at times, but its not really as horrifying as Seward paints it.
Seward, I think, is using Gothic horror to convey the meaning of the poem. In a sense winter is terrifying, yes, but this terror should also cause us to respect Nature that much more.
Sensibility is such a strange term linked both with positive and negative attributes. Seward's sensibility is romantic and bridges on the negative aspects of dramatic silliness at the same time the eliminate idea of her poem is about understanding and appreciating an unappealing subject (winter).
Steven's poem is no about sensibility it is about sensitivity. I t is about awareness of the unattainable and at the same time attainable. I wonder if sensibility is not applicable to more moder works.
I agree with the general sentiment that Seward's poem portrays winter as a time of dying and seems to demand a respect for and observance of nature. In Wallace's poem, however, the references to weather and the seasons seem figurative. I read "The Snow Man" as a poem about self-reflection; specifically the notion that he who cannot reflect upon himself cannot reflect upon what is going on around him.
Both "sensibility" and the idea of the "gothic/sublime" are not so subtle when dealing with the idea of depression, or at least the extremes of feeling feelings.
Seward appears to have a twinge of an optimistic point of view about Spring, but much of her language seems to leave you with the same feeling as after seeing a Zoloft commercial. Her wintery feelings about the "gloom", the "solemn"ness of the "ruin'd year", and the "dreary" "sullenness of nature" are quite sublime, and show her extremely emotional state of mind. That being said, she seems to just be really reflective, and connected to nature and in that way, I agree with BritJohnson that she is very Thoreauian.
I think her use of a religious figure, the "great RULER" and "Creation", is a way of dealing with the issue of the sublime- a beacon of light (like Spring), in an otherwise awe-inspiring feeling of being overwhelmed by winter. I really do believe she does feel a bit of a positive "light at the end of the tunnel" kind of sentiment, though, with just showing that she does feel "grateful" and "gay" about Springtime.
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