New Little Red Riding Hood

MOTHER: Come, Little Red-Cap, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good.

RED CAP: Yes, mama.

MOTHER: Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don't forget to say, 'Good-morning,' and don't peep into every corner before you do it.

RED CAP: I will take great care.

Scene III**

Grandmother’s house on the other side of the woods. The bedroom at the center, furnished only with a bed, a  chair and a commode. This is the bedroom of a very old and sick woman, a bedroom that has not been cleaned for at least a month. However, needlework examples are covering the commode and the chair, to demonstrate that the room knew better times when Grandmother was healthy.

 Music is heard. It is slow and sinister, it is horrifying.

Grandmother is in bed. Loud knock at the door is heard.

GRANDMOTHER: in a weak voice: Who is there?

WOLF: in a high voice: Little Red Cap. I brought cake and wine, open the door.

GRANDMOTHER: Lift the hatch, I am too weak, I cannot get up.

The sinister  music grows louder as the wolf goes straight to Grandmother to devour her.

Unfortunately, I have missed the last Wednesday’s lesson

            Unfortunately, I have missed the last Wednesday’s lesson, when you have had such an interesting debate on what is literature and what came first, history or literature (reminds one of the philosophical question “which came into being first: a hen or an egg?”). The question of what is literature has been stirring me since I went to elementary school or even longer; for my parents, being a “soviet intelligentsia”, tried to cultivate in me love to literature not without some success since I learnt how to tricycle. Anyway, I would like to share with you some disorderly observations, to which I came soon after my tricycle was replaced by a stable four-wheel vehicle.

             Firstly, I am going to speak about the narrow meaning of Literature, which according to Orit and Oxford English Dictionary is “written works that are regarded as having artistic merit”, because this is what we learn on this faculty. Of course, we also read critical articles, but this kind of literature (without capital L) is going to be the subject of my final review letter, if I won’t change my mind.

Constructive thinking.

Constructive thinking.

This course provides intensive thinking practice for attaining a high level of  plunging into a particular work of art in order to become an intelligible, confident, creative playwright. Students are required to read the assigned texts carefully before the class in which they are to be discussed. Students will be exposed to exhaustive and wearying writing activity. Reading assignments are subject to change! Three exercises are to be passed through for each reading assignment. Class attendance is mandatory.

Other requirements: No yawning or snoring in class!

Exercise 1. Esthetic and colloquial synthesis*. 

The goal of this exercise is to help students perceive the most important aspects of a book, including exposure of environment, character, mood.

Description:

Students will take a story, or a certain chapter of a prose work and transform it into a play.

Exercise 2. An interview

The goal of this exercise is attaining a deeper understanding of character, providing him/her with additional sensuality, abilities and vividness.

Description:

Students will be required to write an imaginary interview with every character of the book.

Exercise 3. Constructive satirism.

This method of criticism is developed by the author of the present syllabus as a reaction against psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism and Lesbian/gay criticism.

The goal of this exercise is to teach students to find plot holes in order to avoid them if, hopefully, they actually finish this course and go into the real world of playwrights.

Description.

Students will be required to search through the book and find equivocal phrases, indicate them and suggest solutions for eliminating ambiguity.

                                                                                                                                           

*See examples below. Examples are based on Grimms’ version of the fairy tale Little Red Head.

Example 1. Esthetic and colloquial synthesis

Act one,  Scene I.

The village house surrounded by woods. The acting area is the porch of the house. This is Red Cap’s house. The door leading from the porch to a dirty trashed kitchen is open. There is a hammock hung between two trees with a neglected book on it and an ashtray full of cigar butts.* It is the beginning of dawn. Stage director may want to  add a rooster’s crow. As the curtain rises, Mother and Red Cap, countrywomen, are standing on the porch. Mother’s look is very untidy, she is wearing a dirty apron over her peasant dress and dirty worn wicker shoes. Red Cap’s look, to the contrary, is neat and pleasing to the eye. She is wearing a clean apron and her wicker shoes are tidy.

A  wolf howl is heard in the distance.

Letter to Freud

Dear Sir,

          It has been brought to my attention that you are seriously toying with the notion of penis envy. Further to your suggestion of the scientific significance of your discovery I am pleased to submit my thoughts concerning the above issue. I am also enclosing a detailed psychoanalysis of myself in regards to the interest evoked by your ideas.  

          I am glad to inform you that I have read an account of your ideas with a certain amount of interest. Having critically analyzed myself in accordance with your method, I came to the conclusion that this interest has its origins in my infancy. That is, using your terms, my early childhood sexual experiences determine my adult interest in everything related to sex and sexuality. Unfortunately, the interest to your work is the only point where my views come to an agreement with yours.

          Further to your notion of penis envy, there seems to be some overstatement. First, I do not believe that the majority of female species experience the feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by and in conjunction with desire for the possession or qualities of the above mentioned male organ. I agree that a minor part of women do experience this feeling, but perhaps you are unaware that the latest development of medicine and plastic surgery has proved to avail deliverance of such envy. Let me also remind you that a minority of men encounter with the opposite concern, that is riddance of their male organ, which too can be easily accomplished with help of plastic surgery.

Second, I do not believe that this male organ signifies or has anything to do with women’s lack of social power. I am aware that some critics have made attempts to interpret your idea of phallus envy as “social castration”. However I consider that these attempts are nothing else but a desire to mask their interest in sex and sexuality by the impression of psychoanalytic research literary works. This is another point I am pleased to expound on.  

I am highly concerned with application of your psychoanalytic theories to literary works. I recently came upon an example of such application to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where you offer a solution to the question why Hamlet hesitates to obey his father’s ghost  order to kill his uncle. There you suggest that Hamlet is unable to “take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father’s place with his mother, [because this man] [...] shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized.” Thus you prescribe Hamlet an Oedipus complex, which also is your famous invention. I am sorry to notify you that I find such “psychoanalysis” lacking any significance. First, in my opinion, it is because only the author of a literary work can know what he has in mind while writing. Second, it is because even the author may not be sure what he has in mind while writing. Third, the author may just write without having in mind anything but what he is writing about. Fourth, I believe that not every piece of literary work has anything to do with sexual complexes taking their origins in childhood sexual experiences.

In conclusion, although I do not agree with some of your ideas, let me express my admiration of your considerable investment in the sphere of sexual psychology. I have a faint hope that my letter helped change your views upon literature and femininity. In case you remain faithful to your position of explicit phallo-analysis, I would recommend you to turn to a good doctor in order to analyze yourself.

Regards,

Xfire

Gustave Dore’s misinterpreting of Milton’s epic.

                     

            Gustave Dore's romantic style of illustration, imaginative and richly detailed, was ideally suited to literary subjects. His wood-engraved illustrations for John Milton's monumental epic poem Paradise Lost are incredibly beautiful and impressive but mistakable.  His Satan’s Misery seems to be based on the superficial reading of the epic.  Dore uses the romantic Satan’s image, which looks perfect on the gravure but is not really related to the Milton’s subject.

              John Milton was a puritan and so were his works.  It’s a well known fact that puritans deny images, whence the item is impossible to be seen or correctly illustrated, and when this item is beyond human visualization.    Puritans iconoclast in their poetry refers either to G-d and everything that attaches him, or to Devil etc.  Dore was completely incorrect, when illustrating Paradise Lost because it should not be visualized but rather understood verbally.  If leaving this argument behind and turning to the epic itself, we can also recognize the error in the artist’s analyzing of Satan through the close reading of the text.

          After landing on Earth, Satan laments his fall and his future scheme for corrupting creation.  “Me miserable! which way shall I fly / Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?” (IV. 73-74).  But basing on this short quotation is hardly enough for the complete understanding of the subject; it suggests the indifferent attitude towards the rest of the text, which is truly big.  Dore’s Satan looks fairly miserable; he desperately stares at Havens, leaning on the Earthly rock.  The wings are outstretched as if he landed a moment ago, and he still hopes to take off and to fly back to the start point.  The most impressive proofs of his despair and misery are his terrified eyes, looking upwards and begging for forgiveness, and his hand, pulling out the hair in the gust of repentance.  The background is dark and empty, and the rock is huge and stony-cold.  His clothes reminds of a Greek warrior’s armor and the style of the body illustration reminds of the classic Greek sculptures with their little heads and unbelievably beautiful built up muscled bodies.   

            It is true that sometimes Satan’s army is described heroically and classically, almost like in  Oedipus Rex: “patience and heroic martyrdom” (IX. 32), “imblazon'd shields” (IX. 34) “gorgeous knights” (IX.36), “which justly gives heroic name” (IX. 40).  But Milton’s Satan doesn’t have any concrete form, but only a size, which is tremendously big.  Using the images from Books IV and IX, Dore disregards the opening chapter, which describes Satan himself but not his warriors. He is talking to his servant “with head uplift above the wave, and eyes /That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides /Prone on the flood, extended long and large” (I. 193-196).  He’s got eyes and the “other parts” which are not necessarily legs and arms.  The only criterion that is clearly described by the author is his “monstrous size” (I. 196), when he “stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay” (I. 209).  The creature is of completely inhuman form but of “his own dark designs” (I. 213) as the narrator remarks.

           Dore’s picture is rightly called Satan’s Misery if to judge only according to the gravure image, but it’s incorrect to address Milton’s hero with such an epithet. A miserable and broken creature will hardly be able to arrange the resistance against G-d and his creation almost immediately after the fall.  Satan tells to Beelzebub that he wants “with rallied arms to try what may be yet / Regained in Heaven” (I. 270).

            The way that he is reproduced in Dore’s gravure suggests that the only thought that occupies his mind is coming back to the Creator and being rescued from this terrible coldness of Earth.  But Milton shows us Satan, who, dreaming of revenge, appears to Eve and convinces her to eat from the Forbidden Tree and to induce Adam to also taste it. “Ah! gentle pair, ye little think how nigh / Your change approaches, when all these delights / Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe” (IV. 365-368); he decides to ruin G-d’s beloved creation, instead of begging for forgiveness. 

             Gustave Dore’s Satan’s Misery rather represents the artist’s own opinion towards Satan’s figure than John Milton’s epic image.  A wonderful piece of lithography is more successfully perceived as a separate and an independent work of art than as a reproduction of the Paradise Lost main character.

Donne’s poetry abandons Catholic dichotomies.

        During the Renaissance there was a change of emphasis, which appeared to be man-centered rather than strictly G-d-centered. Educated men became interested in scientific knowledge but they still placed their ultimate salvation and trust in their knowledge of  G-d.  The Renaissance attitude toward man’s desires, body, soul, knowledge and belief in G-d is perhaps best reflected in John Donne’s poetry, which incorporated scientific and individualist ideas into the verses.

  Catholic dichotomy between spirit and flesh is one of the Catholic ideas that Donne abandons in his poetry.  Catholics adopted this idea from the platonic understanding of the separation between the spirit, which is to be of the holy, divine nature, and the material body, which is tended to be corruptible and finally tended to die, unlike the immortal soul.  Donne, however, seams to generate his own understanding of the connection between spirit and flesh, which is represented in his poem The Ecstasy: “Love's mysteries in souls do grow, /But yet the body is his book” (71-72).  The poet uses the term “mysteries”, which was a theological term attached to Jesus’ resurrection.  Donne’s love between a man and a woman is represented as a spiritual and even divine substance.  Moreover, the poet assumes lovers to be “saints” and human love to be holy in his The Canonization: “Us canonized for love” (36).  For him there’s no contradiction between a mortal, representing libido “fly” (19) and the image of the Holy Spirit - “dove” (21).  “The phoenix riddle” (22) has a multiple meaning; a man and a woman cannot be separated, because G-d creating Adam and Eve, made them “two being one” (23). 

Donne also declares love to be G-d’s creation in The Ecstasy:  “On man heaven's influence” (57).  In “For soul into the soul may flow, /Though it to body first repair” (58-57),  love is attached to the physical world and to the spirit; it is impossible to separate them because they are meant to be one.  Donne, living during the Renaissance has followed the man-centric tendency, while exploring the mechanism of his soul and body.

          Thus, creating his own attitude towards this mechanism, Donne abandons Cartesian dichotomy between mind and body.  The notion that the mind is somehow distinct from the body goes back to Descartes’ agreement with the Roman Catholic Church. He studied science and left the soul, the mind, the emotions, and consciousness to the realm of the church.  John Donne proclaimed with anti-Cartesian poetic wisdom that “the body makes the mind”.  Gold, David. “John Donne’s Poetry.” The Complete English Poems. Ed. A. K. Stone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. His poetry has embodied knowledge and has emphasized in The Ecstasy that “by good love” (23), which is attached for him to the flesh, “were grown all mind” (23).

            In this poem he makes use of the concept of atoms: “We then, who are this new soule, know, of what we are compos'd, and made /For, the atomies of which we grow” (45-47).  The poet values sciences and knowledge, that’s why he includes a scientific term into his verse.  His “soule” is immediately followed by “know”; this combination derives from Donne’s individualist philosophy, where the feelings, the soul, the body and the mind are of one substance.  In addition to it he proclaims that body, which is inseparable from soul, is a vehicle of one’s knowledge.  Donne says that in order to understand the notion of the divine substance, which is soul, one has to use his mind: “That he soul's language understood” (22).  This new learning and understanding will help the development of “all mind” (24).  Human being uses his brain, while thinking; man cannot exist after physical separation of his “mind” – the brain, and the body.  So, there’s no logical reason for doing so metaphysically.

              It is possible to interpret John Donne’s new conceptions as the complete rejection of all religious dogmas of Christianity.  His emphasizing of sexual human love on one hand and relating it to G-d on the other may easily be understood this way.  He dares to mention that “we grow” out of atomies, which disparage the notion of the Holy Creation.  This opinion is an error in regard to the fact that Donne was a very religious person as well as a great number of scientists and philosophers of the Age of Discovery.  Even the men who produced the scientific revolution, including Copernicus, Galileo and Newton were all deeply religious men who believed that their discoveries revealed more deeply the glory of God.  The poet does not abandon G-d, but dedicates the majority of his poems to Him.  His poetry is a manifesto of a learned and a loving man about his gratitude to the Creator for being able to live, to think and to love. 

It is a well known fact that the discoveries of new destinations has always been accomplished with human mistakes and shortcomings

           It is a well known fact that the discoveries of new destinations has always been accomplished with human mistakes and shortcomings – as for Columbus the discovered continent of America, was India, which he desired to visit.  Marlowe reminds of this tendency in his play, and Francis Bacon invents his metaphor of “idols” to refer to such causes of human error.  In the first book of Novum Organum Bacon discusses the causes of human error in the pursuit of knowledge. Bacon defends the new studies against those who considered them to be a poison to one’s soul, but he also insists on the unmistakable understanding that can not accept any exaggeration. “The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds,” (XLV.1-2).  In The Advancement of Learning the philosopher emphasizes the same issue of danger in knowledge for those, who were not trained enough, for they can easily adopt heresy or can think that “nature’s chain needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter’s chair”.

          Bacon distinguishes four idols, or main varieties of the error. The “idols of the tribe” are certain intellectual faults that are universal to mankind, or, at any rate, very common. One, for example, is a tendency toward oversimplification that is that there exists more order in a field of inquiry than there actually is. The “idols of the cave” are the intellectual peculiarities of individuals. One person may concentrate on the likenesses, another on the differences, between things. The “idols of the marketplace” are the kinds of errors for which language is responsible. The fourth and final group is the “idols of the theatre”, which are a mistaken systems of philosophy in Baconian sense of the term, in which it embraces all beliefs of any degree of generality.

            John Donne said in his Anatomy of the World that “new philosophy calls all in doubt” (205) and “no man’s wit /Can well direct him” (207-208).  “Wit” is a Renaissance metaphysical term for either similarity, or difference, which are used by Bacon in his Idols of Tribe.  Here we see the poet’s attitude toward the modern Renaissance philosophy which is very critical.  Bacon insists on man’s inability to distinguish between truth and false, and the poet is absolutely sure that man is an independent individual, a “phoenix”, who is able to take decisions without anyone’s help.  Poets and philosophers have been known as irreconcilable opponents for centuries.  We can easily recognize a similar situation in ancient Plato and Aristotle; poets would still withstand the philosophers’ siege during Renaissance, where we see Bacon and Donne.  Yet but still, they have at least a small amount of similarity in their works and ways of thinking – they write for man and about man.  Both of them insist on discoveries and the gaining of new knowledge, which will make man more and more powerful and wise.