MODERNISM

MODERNISMQueen Victorias Jubilee in 1887 was felt by many to represent the end of an era. Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species puts the existence of God into radical question. Society became more fragmented and individual identities more fluid. The Boer War (1899-1902), which was fought by the British to establish control over the Boer republics in South Africa, marked the beginning of rebellion against British imperialism. Liberal beliefs in the gradual transition to a better world began to be questioned. The mass destruction of the First World War led many towards more extreme affiliation, and both Fascism and Marxism held attractions for many intellectuals and workers, particularly during the 1930s. Increasing access to literacy, and to education in general, led to profound changes in the reading public. The Education Act of 1870 made elementary education compulsory for everyone between the ages of 5 and 13, and that led to the rapid expansion of a largely unsophisticated literary public, the rise of the popular press, and the mass production of popular literature for semi-literate low-brow readership. Some writers reacted to this situation by concerning on a narrow, highly educated audience who would understand their alienation from this changing world, thus, the avant-garde era in writing began. This intellectualization has been criticized as restricting literature to a cultural and academic elite. Isolation and alienation, together with experimental forms of expression, came to characterize serious literature. Modern begins to define the twentieth century. Modernism is one of the key words of the first part of the century. It is a search to explain mankinds place I the modern world, where religion, social stability and ethics are all called into question. This resulted in a fashion for experimentation, for the tradition of the new as one critic, Harold Rosenberg, memorably put it. The workings of the unconscious mind become an important subject. What went out was narrative, description, rational exposition; what emerged focused on stream of consciousness, images in poetry, anew use of universal myth, and a sense of fragmentation both of individuality and of such concepts as space and time. T.S. Eliot even furnished footnotes to help the reader with his Waste Land. The 1890s the decade of Aesthetic and Decadence. It was largely a poetry of urban themes. In 1899, Arthur Symons, one of the poetic aesthetes of the 1890s, published his study The Symbolist Movement in Poetry, which would have great influence on modern poets like W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot. He brought home to British poets the significance of French experimental symbolists like Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue and Marallme . Yeats himself quickly drew the lesion that We must purify poetry. Throughout the Victorian and Georgian periods the language of poetry was felt to have a special decorum and to be different from everyday language. Modern poetry contains language that is closer to the idioms of everyday speech and to a more diverse range of subject matter. Dialect words, colloquial expression, specialist terminology, poeticism, and foreign words may be found in the same poem. The language mix reflects a sense that there is no longer a fixed language of poetry just as there is no longer one English. Among the voices which can be more clearly heard in the novel in resent years are those of the young and the lower classes, the voice of the new educated middle classes, the voices of women, racial minorities, gays, and outsiders and many other types. Various subgenres of novel have become bestseller while retaining intellectual acceptability- for example, the working-class novel, the Hampstead novel, the academic novel, the Scottish novel, the womens novel, the magic realist novel. At the same time there have been numerous bestseller which have never reached intellectual acceptability-for example, romances, thrillers, and historical novels. Some genres, like the detective story and the spy story, have, however, begun to receive critical acclaim, and to be recognized as major contribution to literature. The growth in cultural studies has meant that many previously unconsidered areas of written expression have come under scrutiny in the late twentieth century. Throughout all the Greens fiction he remained fascinated by people who are capable or incapable of judging between good and evil. His novels are carefully constructed, with powerful plots and a strong sense of place. The fascination with guilt and salvation is reflected in his thrillers just as much as in his more serious novels. In the world of spies violence, betrayal, treachery and human weakness are bought into play in terms of plot before they become moral or spiritual issues. Do, although his shockers are superficially novels of escape, like Maughams influential Ashemden stories or Buchans Richard Hannay novels, they reveal a more serious purpose. His works creates an identifiable Greenland- a world od constant anxiety rather than easy excitements. Greens technique- his strengths in plotting and cutting from one scene to the next-and the sinister atmosphere of the thriller were influenced by his time spent as a cinema critic in the late 1930s.

Modernism vs. Victorian novel

Influenced by English romanticism, developments in modern art, in the changing and the and a changing intellectual milieu that questioned the possibilities of universal values or objective truth, modern novelists erased the boundaries between art and life. They realized that each man perceived a different reality and lived in a closed circle. They wrote not only to urge their perspectives upon their audience but to create their own identities and values. On the other hand, the artist doubts that he can change the world, but, on the other he tries to convince himself and his audience that he can. 20th century British writers invented ways of seeing the human psyche in a more subtle and complex manner. While the Victorian novel focused upon man and his social aspect, Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce and Woolf isolate their characters from the social community by focusing on the perceiving psyche. The English novel from 1890 -1930 made self-consciousness and self-awareness its subject, and the stream of consciousness within the soliloquy and the interior monologue - both direct and indirect became more prominent. Since characters are often versions of the author who either does not or cannot achieve the traditional distance between the author and the characters, the experience and self- consciousness of the characters reflect those of the author. In the traditional novels we are more conscious of the characters, actions, themes, and rhetoric and less conscious of the authors presence. While reading Emma is the discovery of a finished three - dimensional imagined world, reading the major British novelists in the period 1890-1930 involves participating in their process of struggling to define their values and their concepts of the novel. The authors struggle with his subject becomes a major determinant of novel form. Telling becomes a central action in these novels. Sometimes a character will become the spokesman for values that the omniscient voice articulates. The structure of a novel is no longer a preconceived pattern in which characters move towards discovering values held by an omniscient voice who is a surrogate for the author. To read the novel is to participate in the process by which, through his characters, the novelist proposes, tests, examines, and discards moral and aesthetic values. Thus it becomes increasingly difficult for writers to remove themselves from the text. The stream of consciousness, which has been thought of as a movement towards objectivity, is actually often a disguise for authorial presence rather than a means for the author to absent himself. (We know a great deal more about Joyce from a portrait and Ulysses than we know about Austen from Emma and P&P.) A novelist lives in his work. He stands there, the only reality in an invented world, among imaginary things, happenings, and people. Writing about them, he is only writing about himself. He remains, to a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a suspected rather than a seen presence a movement and a voice behind the curtains of fiction.

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BRITISH LITERATURE QUESTIONS

Some of the possible exam themes

Trensc Poets

I. Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) Matfield, Kent

The Effect, They

II. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) Oswestry, Shropshire

Strange Meeting, Anthem for the Doomed Youth, Spring Offensive, Dulce and Decorum Est, The Letter, Exposure

III. Issac Rosenberg (1890 1918) BristolIV. Dead Man's Dump, Break of Day in the Trenches

1. ANTI-WAR MESSAGE IN THE POETRY OF TRENCH POETS

Unlike Georgian poets who presented was as glorious, noble thing, where British army was celebrated and British young men were becoming heroes, the war poets questioned traditional ideas that were earlier taken for granted. Although their poetry was labeled as WAR POETRY, it would be more correct to call them TRENCH POETS who wrote ANTI-WAR POETRY. Their poetry was direct, open and full of authentic details, irony, sarcasm and cynicism. Thousands of them died in battles or in trenches and those who survived became wise and suspicious of the purpose of the war . Many of those people turned to writing and in that way tried to cope with their experience showing the reality of war, about which the official war policy propaganda kept silent.As a result of the fact that for many of these poets their daily experience destroyed their image of war as something great, the reader is offered strong anti-war messages in great poems full of naturalistic horror scenes and brutalities of war, showing physical and mental hardships, fear of death and compassion for the enemy soldiers. For example. S.Sassoon wrote poetry in Georgian style in the beginning of the war. It was artificially romantic, empty and sweetend, but war experience soon sobered him up. In the Effect, Sassoon uses a quote from a war correspondent as an epigraph upon which to base his poem. The correspondent had observed the effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man told me he had never seen so many dead before. He juxtaposes the news from the war reality. The people engaged in war hate what they are doing. In this very poem, the pilot does not like the effect of his bombardment. For example, his anti-war feelings are reflected in the poem They, which is a direct attack upon the Bishop for supporting the war and in the same time not participating in the war himself. He contrasts Bishop who represents tradition with the reality of war. Brutal pictures were deliberately used to make people think, and the purpose was to reveal the cruelty of war to those who stayed at home. In the poem Dulce et Decorum est, Wilfred Owen put the title which is deliberate allusion to the famous Roman poet Horace, who said that it is sweet and fitting thing to die for one's country (Dulce et Decorum est per Patria Mori). Owen reveals all the horror of war traumatic experience by showing very maturalistic and detailed images of the blind and devastated soldiers looking for a shelter after being attacked. Marching soldiers are so tired and their senses dulled to run away from granades. For the first time modern images entered literature wherein the poisoned gas was presented as a green sea. Green colour symbolizes death, i.e. the poetic voice, which is at the same time the protagonist, sees his fellow dying under a green sea. He shows that dying is not sweet but choking. Finally, after presenting the traumatic experience and helpless sight that has been reflected in all his dreamsm the poetic voice highly ionizes traditional views expressed in the title calling it the old lie and saying that war is anything but sweet and honorable. Owen tries to prevent young men from dying, he addresses the reader on behalf of those who were like himself, in position to see a fellow soldier gasping for air while dying of choking or to look at his hanging face while standing behind the wagom where his corpse was flung, by saying that the odl lie which kept soldiers for fighting for centuries should not be repeated to children ardent for some desperate glory.A recurring theme in Owen's poetry is the notion of unseen scars for many of the surviving soldiers who, not able to help a dying man, carry remediless guilt with them. Though soldiers may return alive or injured, their lives will never be the same. In the poem Strange Meeting, we have a strange notion of escaping into hell from war which is presented from a perspective of a soldier who has just died in combat and goes to the underworld. Owen goes beyond social irony AND RAISES EVERYTHING ON a metaphysicall level by showing compassion that a dead soldier feels about his enemy I am the enemy you killed, my friend, realizing that they are humans just like them, and that is what was a taboo for war propaganda. He remembers himself before the war, he is mourning because of the undone years. He regrets that the truth about his suffering dies with him and the truth about the war will stay concealed in the underworld. There are no influences from the upper world on the underground world and there is no battle there. It is worse on the Earth than in hell another anti-war message.In the poem Anthem for the Doomed Youth, Owen also condemns the war showing that there is nothing glorious in dying in battle. The young people who died in battles as cattle will not receive ordinary funerals and instead of the usual rituals, their weapon will be the last thing they will hear; only the weapon will say their last prayer.In Exposure, as time goes on, the poem becomes more unsettling and each stanza shows the life of the soldiers becoming worse. The repetition of the line But nothing happens at the end of each stanza is particularly poignat because it shows the pain and suffering combined with a hope that something might change and finally disappointment over the fact that none of these things that were waited for with extreme anticipation will ever take place. In the poem Dead Man's Dump, Isaac Rosenberg juxtaposes images of uninterested living people and apocalyptic elements of dead people. He uses irony to indicate his compassion for young soldiers in the war. To show the misery of war, he uses images of dead bodies being overrun by the wheels and writes about trauma that such images leave on those who survive. The important moment is when he reveals that people on both sides are afraid of dying.In the poem Break of Day in the Trenches poetic voice is a soldier who addresses a rat and gives him human characteristic. The soldier envies the rat because of his freedom to constantly change sides and it is very ironic that people cannot do what the rat can. The poet has an impression that the rat perfectly understand the situation and he mocks the soldiers. The poet soldier feels that nature also suffers because of war, human beings are doing violence to the Earth by digging trenches.War poetry is no longer a hobby or composition of sweet verses used to escape from reality: on the contrary, it is a call for awareness, it has a purpose to sober up the reader in a very shocking way and recall that the war is brutal, unnatural, and that there can be no winners. One of the goals is to use very sharp, shocking detailed images, and present ironic contrast between the officially produced norms and reality based on personal experience.

2. CRITICISM OF IMPERIASL AND COLONIAL POLICY IN HEART OF DARKNESS

Heart of Darkness was first published in Blackwoods Magazine in 1899, and then in 1902 in book-form. It can be read on two levels: on the surface level it is a story on imperialism, which starts in London and continues in Congo.The end of the 19th century brought one of the most famous examples of imperialism and genocide in modern memory. King Leopold of Belgium secured the Congo region of Africa sa a Belgian colony. The king said that the natives should be grateful to them for bringing Christianity and European civilization but the Africans were exploited. The belgians performed cruel punishment, they terrorized and despised the savages. When we combine all those things, we get the Congo that Heart of Darkness portrayed as horror. There is no doubt about Conrad's attitude towards Imperialism. He tries to tell the readers that imperialism and colonial policy are immoral. He believes that Europeans are too arrogant in dealing with these uncivilized people; he indicates that the whites are too materialistic and they don't understand how spiritually advanced the natives are. On the other hand, the Company is a collaboration of imperialistic notions, hides its core of darkness behind noble ideas of civilization and commerce. The Trading Company is a model of colonialism. This writer uses colonization to wake and explore the universal questions about man's capacity for evil and horror.In this book, Marlowe symbolizes the positiveness of imperialism. When he says: I've got heavenly mission to civilize you, he expresses his good intentions to help the African progress and advance. He grows cynical with the Company's ideas and sees the imperialists as trying to conquer something much more immense than could be conceived. This is the world of suffering and oppression to a false power imperialistic Europe. Marlowe compares the Romans with the British people. Romans brought the flash of lightening civilization. They were not colonists, they were killers, thieves. They missed something; they missed a plan how to change their own space and learn to be like the British. Kurtz is hidden by the socio-political message here, it winds up controlling you. The Western civilization that Kurtz presented in HOD is the logical fulfilment of Western religious memory. That's the idea that the Earth is a gift to the specific people. Kurtz a symbol of Europe (his mother and father were half French-half English). His only work was to exploit the Africans for their ivory. His terminal illness and later death represents the eventual death of imperialism due to inability to respect the culture and the people of the invaded country. The Accountant was described as a white in a sptless dree. It symbolizes the Company's desire to seem morally spotless to the rest of the world. He lost his soul on the way of greed for money. Ironically, this money is supposed to be used to help the natives that the company is destroying.

Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924 BiographyHe was one of the true masters of English novel, even in spite of the fact that it was a foreign language. He belonged to a distinguished polish family form polish UKRAINE. Both his father, apollo KORZrENOWSKI and mother Eva BROBOVSKA were from noble families. They met in 18 17, and were married in 1856. Joseph was born a year later.Toward the end of the 18th century Poland was split between Prussia, Russia and Ukraine. Poles never accepted this since their country used to be a great kingdom. They tried to regain their independence by rebellion. Conrad's father was involved with literary and political activities and was also among the underground movement. Russians sent him to exile in siberia because he was an organizer of the uprisings. His family followed him into exile. These were his early memories of hardships. His mother Eva gradually developed tuberculosis and died in 1865, which left Joseph devastated. He also developed health problems (migraines and lung inflammation) which persisted throughout his life. His father apollo also died OF tuberculosis in 1869, frustrated with his lack of success. At the age of eleven, Joseph became an orphan and went to live with his mother's brother todensz bobowskl He wanted to make sure he got good education, would send him to Switzerland and then have him help with his business. But Joseph wanted to travel, get away from the Russian stronghold.In 1874 he left for marseilles with the intention of becoming a seaman Since he had no experience, he had to start from the bottom. At one moment, he became captain of the ship. He learned French well. He traveled across the world, first mediterranean, then pacific ocean, Venezuela where he met a colorful person who was the model for the Nostromo. He couldn't choose where his ships would take him and he went to asia. While these trips lasted, he heard all kinds of stories and met all kinds of people, and began to jot down these stories. He then went to the English commerce navy, where he had to start again, since he didn't know the language. After a number of years and a series of exams, he eventually became captain there too. Ships are a small world on their own - a microcosm. Sailors had a lot of hardships, especially if they had a cruel captain. The sailors had to count on each other and focus on their survival. Being at sea and traveling these dangerous oceans brings a lot of unusual events and personal experience.He didn't in fact start writing till 1889, while he was waiting for a ship in London. In 1890 he sailed to africa, to the mouth of the river congo. It was a belgian colony, owned by King leopold as his personal property, rich in ore, wood, and diamonds. He wanted to see one'particular trade - ivory, (hat started to flourish at that time. TJiis gave him enough material to write Heart of Darkness. By 1895 he was well known. He married a 22 year old Jessie George and they had two sons. He was too enclosed in his writing, not very comfortable at home. He was often absent-minded.

Conrad was indeed a profoundly moral novelist but he recognized the moral complexities of his age which stemmed in part from the absence of any clearly shared set of values between people. In order to present this world fictionally, Conrad develops techniques of multiple points of view. He is a master of complex narrative techniques such as time shifting and flashbacks, which prevent reader from adopting too simplistic an interpretation of events. In HD, Conrad describes a long journey to a place deep inside the Belgian Congo, the heart of darkness of the title. The story is again told by the intermediate narrator Marlow, who retraces his first visit to colonial Africa and his growing awareness of the evils he encounters. The story contrasts Western civilization in Europe with what that civilization has done to Africa. The theme of darkness leads to the figure of Kurtz, the central character, a portrait of how the commercial and material exploitation of colonial lands can make men morally hollow, and create a permanent nightmare in the soul (Marlow about Kurtz his was an impenetrable darkness). Conrad also shares with another writers of this time a sense of impending anarchy and the collapse of moral and political order.

The end of the nineteenth-century brought about one of the most notable examples of imperialism and genocide in modern memory. King Leopold II of Belgium (ruled 18651909) possessed an insatiable greed for money, land, and powerand looked to Africa to find them. Like many other Europeans, he was intrigued by reports of Africa made by the famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), whose books How I Found Livingstone: Adventures and Discoveries in Central Africa(1872) and Through the Dark Continent (1878) were best-selling accounts of his travels. Through a series of machinations and a deluge of propaganda proclaiming his munificence, Leopold eventually secured the Congo region of Africa as a Belgian colony. On May 20, 1885, Leopold named his new nation the tat Independent du Congo, or The Congo Free State. This huge area of Africa remained under Belgium control until 1960.The Congo was a perfect colony for Leopold II for several reasons. First, ivory and rubber were plentiful and could be systematically gathered and shipped to Europe. Second, the only law there was Leopolds: Although he constantly presented himself to his European contemporaries as a philanthropist and humanitarian, Leopold ran the Congo (without ever visiting it) from a distance with an iron hand. Third, labor was plentiful and, more important to Leopold, free, because his agentsroutinely forced the Congolese into slave labor by means of torture or intimidation: Women, for example, were often kidnapped and held until their husbands and sons gathered sufficient quantities of rubber. Forth, there were few operating expenses: Huts and mess-halls were constructed for the agents, and the construction of a railroad system running through the Congo guaranteed that supplies could reach different stations quickly. Finally, the colony was thousands of miles away from sheltered European skies. People could not condemn what they could not see. Leopolds agents, therefore, comprised a chaotic, unforgiving, and hateful force determined only to make the most money possible by exploiting the nativesoften whipping them with a piece of sun-dried hippopotamus hide called a chicotte, chopping off their hands and heads, or killing them by dozens at a time. In his recent study of the Congo, King Leopolds Ghost, the historian Adam Hochschild estimates that duringthe period of Leopolds pillage of the Congo, the population dropped by ten million people. Disease, starvation, a low birth rate, and outright murder all combined to turn the Congo into what Heart ofDarkness later portrayed as a nightmare. Some observers of the atrocities committed theresuch as E. D. Morel and Sir Roger Casement became noted anti-Leopold activists and launched semisuccessful campaigns to end Leopolds rule. Other observers transformed what they saw into artas did Joseph Conrad when he wrote Heart of Darkness. Leopolds Congo and the peopleWhite and Blackwho populated it find their way into the pages of Conrads novel. The ominous Company that hires Marlow, for example, is a thinly veiled depiction of Leopolds operations in Africa. Leopolds agents become the faithless pilgrims looking for riches that Marlow describes once he reaches the Congo, and the chain gang Marlow sees at the Outer Station is a glimpse at the slavery enforced by Leopolds agents. Kurtz, the first class agent who commits numerous acts of savagery (including the placing of rebel heads upon posts surrounding his hut) is an embodiment of the collective horrors that Conrad witnessed firsthand. As Marlow tells his audience on board the Nellie, In the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weakeyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. The devil in this context is the greed that motivated Leopold to continue the systematic ravaging of the Congo and its people for more than twenty years.

A Brief SynopsisHeart of Darkness begins on the deck of the Nellie, a British ship anchored on the coast of the Thames. The anonymous narrator, the Director of Companies, the Accountant, and Marlow sit in silence Marlow begins telling the three men about a time he journeyed in a steamboat up the Congo River. For the rest of the novel (with only minor interruptions), Marlow narrates his tale.As a young man, Marlow desires to visit Africa and pilot a steamboat on the Congo River. After learning of the Companya large ivorytrading firm working out of the CongoMarlow applies for and received a post. He left Europe in a French steamer. At the Companys Outer Station in the Congo, Marlow witnesses scenes of brutality, chaos, and waste. Marlow speaks with an Accountant, whose spotless dress and uptight demeanor fascinate him. Marlow first learns from the Accountant of Kurtza remarkable agent working in the interior. Marlow leaves the Outer Station on a 200-mile trek across Africa, and eventually reaches the Companys Central Station, where he learns that the steamboat he is supposed to pilot up the Congo was wrecked at the bottom of the river. Frustrated, Marlow learns that he has to wait at the Central Station until his boat is repaired. Marlow then meets the Companys Manager, who told him more about Kurtz. According to the Manager, Kurtz is supposedly ill, and the Manager feigns great concern over Kurtzs healthalthough Marlow later suspects that the Manager wrecked his steamboat on purpose to keep supplies from getting to Kurtz. Marlow also meets the Brickmaker, a man whose position seems unnecessary, because he doesnt have all the materials for making bricks. After three weeks, a band of traders called The Eldorado Exploring Expeditionled by the Managers unclearrives. One night, as Marlow is lying on the deck of his salvaged steamboat, he overhears the Manager and his uncle talk about Kurtz. Marlow concludes that the Manager fears that Kurtz is trying to steal his job. His uncle, however, told him to have faith in the power of the jungle to do away with Kurtz. Marlows boat is finally repaired, and he leaves the Central Station (accompanied by the Manager, some agents, and a crew of cannibals) to bring relief to Kurtz. Approximately fifty miles below Kurtzs Innerm Station, they find a hut of reeds, a woodpile, and an English book titled An Inquiry into Some Points of Seamanship.As it crept toward Kurtz, Marlows steamboat is attacked by a shower of arrows. The Whites fire rifles into the jungle while Marlow tries to navigate the boat. A native helmsman is killed by a large spear and thrown overboard. Assuming that the same natives who are attacking them have already attacked the Inner Station, Marlow feels disappointed now that he will never get the chance to speak to Kurtz. Marlow reaches the Inner Station and notices Kurtzs building through his telescopethere is no fence, but a series of posts ornamented with balls that Marlow later learns were natives heads. A Russian trader and disciple of Kurtz, called The Harlequin by Marlow, approaches the steamboat and tells Marlow that Kurtz is still alive. Marlow learns that the hut they previously saw is the Harlequins. The Harlequin speaks enthusiastically of Kurtzs wisdom, saying, This man has enlarged my mind. Marlow learns from him that the steamboat was attacked because the natives did not want Kurtz to be taken away. Suddenly, Marlow sees a group of native men coming toward him, carrying Kurtz on a stretcher; Kurtz is taken inside a hut, where Marlow approaches him and gives him some letters. Marlow notices that Kurtz is frail, sick, and bald. After leaving the hut, Marlow sees a wild and gorgeous native woman approach the steamer; the Harlequin hints to Marlow that the woman is Kurtzs mistress. Marlow then hears Kurtz chiding the Manager from behind a curtain: Save me!save the ivory, you mean. The Harlequin, fearing what might happen when Kurtz is taken on board the steamboat, asks Marlow for some tobacco and rifle cartridges; he then leaves in a canoe. At midnight that same night, Marlow awakens to the sound of a big drum. He inspects Kurtzs cabin, only to discover that he is not there. Marlow runs outside and finds a trail running through the grassand realizes that Kurtz is escaping by crawling away on all fours. When he comes upon Kurtz, Kurtz warns him to run, but Marlow helps Kurtz to his feet and carried him back to the cabin.The next day, Marlow, his crew, and Kurtz leave the Inner Station. As they move farther away from the Inner Station, Kurtzs health deteriorates; at one point, the steamboat breaks down and Kurtz gives Marlow a packet of letters and a photograph for safe-keeping, fearing that the Manager will take them. Marlow complies. One night after the breakdown, Marlow approaches Kurtz, who is lying in the pilothouse on his stretcher waiting for death. After trying to reassure Kurtz that he is not going to die, Marlow hears Kurtz whisper his final words: The horror! The horror! The next day, Kurtz is buried offshore in a muddy hole. After returning to Europe, Marlow again visits Brussels and finds himself unable to relate to the sheltered Europeans around him. A Company official approaches Marlow and asks for the packet of papers to which Kurtz had entrusted him. Marlow refuses, but he does give the official a copy of Kurtzs report to The Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs with Kurtzs chilling postscript (Exterminate all the brutes!) torn off. He learns that Kurtzs mother had died after being nursed by Kurtzs Intended, or fiance. Marlows final duty to Kurtz is to visit his Intended and deliver Kurtzs letters (and her portrait) to her. When he meets her, at her house, she is dressed in mourning and still greatly upset by Kurtzs death. Marlow lets slip that he was with Kurtz when he died, and the Intended asks him to repeat Kurtzs last words Marlow lies to her and says, The last word he pronounced wasyour name. The Intended states that she knew Kurtz would have said such a thing, and Marlow leaves, disgusted by his lie yet unable to prevent himself from telling it. The anonymous narrator on board the Nellie then resumes his narrative. The Director of Companies makes an innocuous remark about the tide, and the narrator looks out at the overcast sky and the Thameswhich seems to him to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

2. Criticism of Imperial and Colonial Policy in "Heart of darkness"The end of the nineteenth-century brought about one of the most notable examples of imperialism and genocide in modern memory. King Leopold II of Belgium (ruled 18651909) possessed an insatiable greed for money, land, and powerand looked to Africa to find them.The Congo was a perfect colony for Leopold II for several reasons. First, ivory and rubber were plentiful and could be systematically gathered and shipped to Europe. Second, the only law there was Leopold. His agents routinely forced the Congolese into slave labor by means of torture or intimidation. The ominous Company that hires Marlow, for example, is a thinly veiled depiction of Leopolds operations in Africa. Leopolds agents become the faithless pilgrims looking for riches that Marlow describes once he reaches the Congo, and the chain gang Marlow sees at the Outer Station is a glimpse at the slavery enforced by Leopolds agents.Leopolds agents become the faithless pilgrims looking for riches that Marlow describes once he reaches the Congo, and the chain gang Marlow sees at the Outer Station is a glimpse at the slavery enforced by Leopolds agents. Kurtz, the first class agent who commits numerous acts of savagery (including the placing of rebel heads upon posts surrounding his hut) is an embodiment of the collective horrors that Conrad witnessed firsthand. As Marlow tells his audience on board the Nellie, In the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weakeyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. The devil in this context is the greed that motivated Leopold to continue the systematic ravaging of the Congo and its people for more than twenty years.The vision of Europe as a civilizing and torch-bearing force does not accord with Marlows portrayal of it in his narrative.Marlow learns that the narrators version of imperialism is alie. The Europeans he meets are not knight-errants but faithless pilgrims; the Company does not bring a spark from that sacred fire, but death, and instead of a bright jewel, flashing in the night of time, the Company is a rapacious and weak-eyed devil. At the end of the novel Marlows tale has significantly changed the narrators attitude toward European imperialism. The narrator compares him to a meditating Buddhaclearly he has been touched by Marlows teachings. While the Director of Companies remarks, We have lost the flow of the ebb because he wants to break the uncomfortable silence created by the power of Marlows story, the narrator has been too affected by Marlows ideas, and his enlightenment affects his description of what he sees as he looks at the Thames: a dark river leading to an immense darkness. When Marlow visits Brussels to get his appointment, he describes the city as a whited sepulchera Biblical phrase referring to a hypocrite or person who employs a faade of goodness to mask his or her true malignancy. The Company, like its headquarters, is a similar whited sepulcher, proclaiming its duty to bring civilization and light to Africa in the name of Christian charity, but really raping the land and its people in the name of profit and the lust for power.The first glimpse Marlow and the reader have of the Companys headquarters hints at the organizations sinister, evil, and conspiratorial atmosphere. First, Marlow slipped through one of the cracks to enter the building, implying that the Company is figuratively closed in terms of what it allows the public to learn about its operations.When civilized Europeans go to Africa, the restraints placed upon them by European society begin to vanish, resulting in the kind of behavior previously seen in Fresleven.

Note: All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz. Literally, Marlow is speaking of Kurtzs ancestrybut metaphorically, Marlow implies that the horrors he saw in Africa cannot all be blamed on one man. More importantly, Kurtz is not an isolated figure all of Europe has produced him, and the power, hunger, and evil he embodies. The appearance of the Harlequin (like Kurtzs jester) at this point emphasizes the charisma and power of the demagogue and prepares the readerlike the previously discussed digressionfor the entrance of Kurtz in Part 3.The novel is about the meeting of two men (Marlow and Kurtz) whose existences mirror each other. Ultimately, Conrad suggests that Kurtz is who Marlow may become if he abandons all restraint while working in the jungle. Part 3 emphasizes Kurtzs godlike stature to show why Kurtz became what he did and how Marlow retreats from this fate.Once a formidable tyrant, Kurtz is now an animated image of death carved out of old ivory. As Kurtzs wild woman is a personification of the jungle Kurtz himself is the embodiment of the Company: a force that revels in its own power for powers sake. (Recall how Kurtz turned his canoe around after coming two hundred miles down the river; after tasting the power that his position afforded him, Kurtz could not return to the confining civilization of Europe.)Besides implying the idea that Kurtz embodies the Company, the passage is important because it suggests that even men with great plans such as Kurtz (recall his painting and ideas about how each station should be a beacon on the road to better things) can discover they are, in fact, exactly like the savages they are purporting to save. Underneath the sheen of civilization, there exists, in every man, a core of brutality. Many people manage to suppress this part of themselves, but Kurtz chose to court it instead. His previous beliefs and plans really meant nothingthere was no substance to them, which is why Marlow calls Kurtz hollow at the core. Kurtzs report on Savage Customs reflects this dualityits opening pages are filled with grandiose plans for reform, but its authors true feelings are revealed in his postscript, Exterminate all the brutes!The Company wants to get rid of Kurtz because he reveals the lie to their methods.The Company, however, does not want to appear loose from the earth like their number-one agent, which is why its representatives (the Manager and the spectacled man who accosts Marlow in Brussels about Kurtzs papers) want to ensure that Europeans never learn thetruth about him. According to Marlow, Kurtz was a noteworthy man because he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. Kurtz is not heroic, but he is more of an adventurer than Marlow everimagined he could beinstead of voyaging into an unknown continent, he voyaged into the unknown parts of his own soul.Heart of Darkness is not a fable, and one of its themes is that the darkness courted by Kurtz is potentially in everyones heart.Like Africa, Kurtz is mysterious, and the workings of his heart at his supreme moment remain mysteriousas well.Despite the fact that Marlow knows that lies are wrong, he cannot refrain from telling this one (his lie to Kurtz's Intended), because to do so would have been too darktoo dark altogether. As the Intended gratefully receives Marlows lie, so Europe accepts the oneit tells itself about building empires and civilizing savages.

3. Symbolism (e.g. light vs. darkness) in "Heart of Darkness"(CLIFF NOTES)Many critics have commented (sometimes inconclusively) on Conrads use of white and black imagery; The Company claims to be a means by which (as Marlows aunt calls them), emissaries of light can bring civilization to the darkness of Africa, which is done by denoting Brussels as white and the Congo as black. The white men in the novel (particularly Marlow and Kurtz) will be greatly influenced by their experiences with the Africans.Although the Company professes to be a force of white moral righteousness, it is actually spotted with black spots of sin and inhumanity, and the corpses of the Black natives that are found throughout the Congo. In short, the Company may appear to be white and pure, but it is actually quite the opposite, as denoted by the accountant and his white shirt. Some critics argue that the white characters in the book are actually more black than the natives they slaughter and that Conrads imagery stresses the hypocrisy of the Company and its white employees.

The Companys chief accountant, who suggests the immense amount of money that the Company is making from its campaign of terror and whose dress is impeccable. Again the reader sees the Companys attempts to array itself in colors and faades of purity. Marlow calls the Accountant a miracle because of his ability to keep up a dignified European appearance amidst the sweltering and muddy jungle. (He even has a penholder behind hisear.) Completely and willingly oblivious to the horrors around him, the Accountant cares only for figures and his own importance: When a sick agent is temporarily placed in his hut, the Accountant complains. He also tells Marlow, When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savageshate them to the death. To the Company, as embodied in the Accountant, profits take precedence over human life and the bottom line is more important than any higher law of humanity.The discarded machines (at the Outer station) symbolize the complete disregard of the Company for making any real progress in the Congo, as well as the disorganization that marks its day-to-day operations.The grove of death: a shady spot where some of the nativeslike the machinery mentioned previously are dying without anyone seeming to notice or care. Marlow notices that this man has a bit of white worsted tied around his neck and puzzles over its meaning, but the reader can see that the wool is symbolic of the Companys collaring the natives and treating them like animals.Earlier in the novel, Marlow states that he would, in time, become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless follynow, at the Central Station, he remarks, the first glance of the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was runningthat show.One of Conrads personifications of the flabby (because it has devoured Africa), pretending (because it masquerades its avarice in the name of enlightenment), and weak-eyed (because it refuses to see the effects of its work) Company is the Manager. He has no education, is a common trader, inspires neither fear nor love, creates uneasiness in all who meet him, and lacks any genius for organizing. All Marlow is able to conclude is that he was never ill and is able to keep the supply of ivory flowing to European ports. Marlowsgrowing perceptions soon allow him to understand that the Company possesses not an atom of foresight or of serious intention and that To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.An imortant symbol is Kurtzs painting, which Marlow sees hanging in the Brickmakers room. The painting depicts a woman, blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. Clearly, this woman reminds one of the usual personification of justice, while the torch suggests the Company bringing the light of civilization into the Dark Continent. (Recall Marlows aunt and her hope that Marlow will help those ignorant savages become more civilized.) The woman in the painting also symbolizes the Company, which willingly blindfolds itself to the horrors it perpetuates in the name of profit; it also recalls the Companys ineptitude and the ways in which it blindly stumbles through Africa. This painting also symbolizes its creator. Like the blindfolded woman, Kurtz once yearned to bring the light of civilization and progress to the dark continent. (This explains the torch coming out of the darkness.) At the end of his life, however, Kurtz changes his position, most markedly apparent when Marlow reads a handwritten line in one of Kurtzs reports urging, Exterminate all the brutes! Thus, according to the painting, Europe puts on a show of bringing light but this light ultimately reveals a sinister appearance, which marks the womans face. Here, Conrad foreshadows what Kurtz will be like when Marlow meets him: a man who once held high ideals about bringing justice and light to the Congo, but who became sinister once he arrived there.

the two women knitting black wool suggest the fates of Greek mythology; like these goddesses, the Company is knitting the destiny of the Africans, represented by the black wool. The Company, therefore, plays God with the lives of the Africans, deciding who in the Congo will live or die.

On a deeper level, Heart of Darkness" can be read as an allegory depicting cosmological struggle between light and darkness resulting in a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo, Africa. It is a conflict of abstract ideas, allegory of light vs. darkness, light falling into darkness. Africa is called the Dark Continent. Paradoxically, it is an honest, pure land clean from these human soul - sinister, evil, and corrupted. Darkness in one sense represents the heart of Africa where black people are being enslaved. The main goal is to wrap up exploitation and present it in a better light.Conrad exploits the primary and secondary connotations of light/darkness. "And God said, Let there be light..." In most books light was the most ancient of associations with sanctity, truth, purity, chastity.These characterizations of light and darkness were mixed here. The imagery of light and dark very clearly corresponds to the tension that is arranged between civilization and savagery.It is important_to note that the city is always described in stark contrast to its dark surroundings, which may be water or land, they are so amorphous. Light represents civilization; darkness represents the savage or uncivilized side of the world. Europe is described as a place of light, and Africa is a place of darkness - wild, unknown. "Light dawned upon me" - Marlow uses it as a symbol of knowledge. This symbolism is not new; these connotations have been present in society for centuries. According to Christianity, inthe beginning of time there was darkness. God created light. According to the Heart of Darkness, England was in darkness before the Romans came. The same way Africa is in darkness. When you look deeper, the usual pattern is reversed and darkness=light, light=corruption, evil. No matter where the whites exist - in civilized London or in deepest Africa they bring darkness. Darkness has another application - - a colour of skin. Reading this book, the reader gets the idea that the darkness of natives' skin is always mentioned. At first glance Marlow describes them as "mostly black and naked, moving about like ants. There is absolutely no differentiation between dark animals and dark people. Even the rags worn by the natives are described as tails. Darkness is like a starting point for a discussion. Heart of Darkness can suggest a number of things: dark soul, heart, a living heart beating in darkness. It's a double meaning symbolism.The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that not only Congo, but London as well is the Dark Place; the difference between London and Africa is relative. We cannot think of London as a place of lightness and prosperity, or about Congo as a place of darkness, when it is one and the same.The other symbols are: The portrait of the blind woman holding a torch, suggests the failingof Kurtz - that he has blindly traveled into a situation and became absorbed in it, much as the woman is absorbed into the darkness of the painting with the exception of the torch which provides insufficient light.

4. THe PROBLEM OF EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

DevilsMarlow's first taste of man's true self as he saw it, began when he saw the six man chained together treated as slaves.. Marlow compares the white men who are leading these chained up men to devils, by remarking that he had seen devils, but never devils that drove other men like cattle. Men who were no different themselves, except in the color of their skin. Question of devils is enforced by the descriptions of the manager and his uncle as flabby, pretending, weak-eyed of a rapacious and pitiless folly. Neither of them would be particularly keen to take direct action against Kurtz. This is shown by their deliberate failure to get a doctor to Kurtz, as well as their personalities generally. Devil's symbolism is a very important here. Conrad is really showing that their minds, their souls may not be entirely what one may consider human. It could also be interpreted to suggest the inhuman aspects of the man.

Irony In Heart of darkness

This novel opens with Marlow noting that England was once one of the dark places of the earth. This can be read two ways. First, Marlow may mean that "Western" civilization is just as barbarous as African civilizations. This reading may contradict the European belief that white men are more "civilized" than their colonial subjects, but it hardly mitigates racist notions about primitive or degraded "savages": it just means that Europeans are as "bad" as that which they have constructed as the lowest form of humanity. The second way to read Marlow's comment is as a reference to the historical precedent for colonization of other peoples. England, after all, was once a Rornan colony. Again, this reading is more ambiguous than it seems. On the one hand, it implies that all peoples need a more advanced civilization to come along and save them; on the other hand, though, it also implies that the British would and did react to an exploitative colonial presence in the same way the Africans are reacting.

The images from the Thames in Heart of Darkness lend support to the argument that this is, at a basic level, a novel about imperialism. At the beginning of the novel, Conrad connects the Thames to the Congo. The Thames is "a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth." It is connected to the Congo like "an interminable waterway." It is connected both symbolically and actually. It is connected physically as all rivers are connected to each other. It is also connected by shared humanity, and it is connected economically. One piece of the economic connection is the ivory coming out of the Congo on its way to Europe. Darkness and its opposite, light, are contrasted in H. D. to reveal the irony of imperialism. Traditionally, light and darkness represent civilization and the uncivilized world, respectively.

(Cliff notes)What makes Heart of Darkness more than an interesting travelogue and shocking account of horrors is the way that it detailsin subtle waysMarlows gradual understanding of what is happening in this faroff region of the world. Like many Europeansincluding his creator Marlow longed for adventure and devoured accounts such as those offeredby Stanley. But once he arrives in the Congo and sees the terrible work (as he ironically calls it) taking place, he can no longer hide under the cover of his comfortable civilization. Instead, all the horrors perpetrated by European traders and agentstypified by Kurtzforce him to look into his own soul and find what darkness lies there.

Narrative style

Modernist style and Joseah Conrad

In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness we can see an interesting form of writing which is characteristic for Modernist's experiments. He spoke of a different type of chaos present in the world at his times. The issue of slavery was very important to him. Heart... describes a voyage to Africa common for the British novels in that time, but what Conrad showed was not a pink picture. He wrote about the horrific treatment which was present alter a cruel colonization. The chaotic, stream of consciousness style helped Conrad to display the confusion and made readers interpret to themselves what they thought the writer meant. Conrad experiments with this style, leaving some sentences without ending. Conrad mixes situations like two women knitted black wool feverishly at the gate of the city (of hell) and his aunt who is the main point why he feels that women are out of touch with truth to how the British are as weak-eyed devils of a rapacious and pitiless folly. Conrad's narrative frame also continues his experimentation with literary form in Modernist style. Two separate monologues are present throughout Heart of Darkness. The first part starts out with an unnamed narrator aboard the ship Nelly describing to himself, as well as to the reader and those aboard the ship, particularly Marlow. At first, the narrator is not known for sure to be a character aboard the ship until a few paragraphs later identify him as a person observing the others. Marlow gradually takes over the narration beginning. Conrad has Marlow take over the entire monologue and the unnamed narrator jumps in from time to time. It is very easy for a reader to see "Heart of Darkness" as a description of Africa's truth and an attack upon colonialism in general through brutal picture of colonialism that took place in the Belgian Congo (mistreatment of the Africans, the greed of the so-called "pilgrims," the broken idealism of Kurtz and Brussels as the city of the whited sepulchre). The key answer of this novel stands in the fact that man can change in a certain situation, cross the line from morality to darkness of soul and that is why the doctor tells Marlow that people who go out to Africa bourns "scientifically interesting", they find their inner darkness. It is important to say that Conrad in his novels developed techniques of multiple points of view. He is a master of complex narrative techniques such as time-shifting and flashbacks which prevent a reader from adopting too simplistic interpretation of events.

Symbolic setting

The superiority of whites over blacks faces the horrid reality that the whites are there not to colonize the Congo but to conquer it. In the novel the blacks are described at one point as helpers, but they are really treated more like slaves. The white men are corrupt and greedy in the Congo, as Marlow states when he is first entering the Congo. The whites enter the jungle thinking that natives must become civilized. The natives have a relationship with nature where things are still pure and innocent, where they are not exposed to the corruption of the civilized world. The white men made some natives to live by rules and these natives help to enslave the others. This creates unhappiness and degradation of the blacks where they tend to retreat to the forest to die. The ivory trade in the Congo is very dark and no one really knows how Kurtz's gets the ivory he does. Marlow describes Kurtz face just before his death as a face of ivory trader full of pride, ruthless power, terror and hopeless despair. Both Kurtz and Marlow found a dark heart of Africa. They were forced to look at the face of darkness, hate, fear and evil within themselves. They saw that the white men were not really bringing progress to Africa and the price of being the part of it was dying without hope. The white men have no escape from the darkness as Kurtz realized as he spoke his last words.

The jungle as a symbol

Like darkness", the jungle as a metaphor is found through the text. The jungle is an unwanted barrier, a challenge for the colonists. The frequent personification of the wilderness, saying ...the big trees were kings , for example, make the jungle another entity or presence, which the white man must face and fight before they can colonize. Like the natives, generally, the jungle is viewed negatively. Within the jungle, a tall, dance grass is mentioned a multitude of times. Many of the huts or houses are almost buried in the greens. The recurrent imagery of grass, particularly associated with decay, is a wonderful example. The decaying machinery in grass, the skeleton of Fresleven with grass growing up through the nibs, and Kurtz's decaying building that is half-buried in the grass, shouts that the jungle can be destructive, but is also possessive It was reclaiming what belonged to it. This would be seen as threatening by the colonists. This further emphasizes that it is actually the colonists that are in the wrong, not the apparently dark, uncivilized natives. This in turn accents the effect on a reader, namely one of sympathy for the natives and aversion for the colonists. The silence of the forest is terrifying because sound is unnecessary to prove the fobs power, and its silence consumes the sounds of man. Here, as elsewhere, the jungle is alternately a symbol of depth and an impenetrable surface, a mask of silence.

The Whited Sepulchre

I arrived in the city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre . (Brussels)

A sepulchre implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death to white men and to their colonial subject, it is also governed by a set of reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit change. Marlows nickname for Brussels "the sepulchral city" comes from the words of Jesus. This would make good description of the Belgians' hypocrisy toward the Congo; they claim to be guiding and helping the Africans, when in fact they were enslaving and slaughtering them in record numbers. The Company hides its appetite for wealth and power behind empty platitudes about advancing the light of European civilization through the darkness of the African jungle, and ... weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways."

Symbolism in HD

Conrads use of symbolism, metaphors, and irony was necessary in order to convey the stories overall theme. Africa was, to the Europeans, a place of another type of darkness. The symbolism of the color of the hens reveals the unpleasant fortune of the men and village. He also depicts the jungle and the native people with words that inspired images of darkness and gloom. The darkness therefore, is not a literal absence of light; it is instead a device creating a feeling of despair, anguish, and evil. Kurtz had succumbed to the darkness within, becoming a savage. The symbolism of the white ivory and the darkness enveloping everything around represents the civilized Kurtz, who once was a sane ivory trader. Within all the darkness, a big snake-like river stands out "It had become a place of darkness. This path leads into the darkness of Africa. What is symbolic about this river is it's a dark path and as people travel deeper and deeper into Africa, the darkness will eventually consume them. There is also symbolism in the setting of which Conrad uses to describe Kurtz's home. Again, Conrad uses symbolism in the black wool that is being knitted by two women. One more area where Conrad uses symbolism to portray the good and evil, civilized and uncivilized is character. Throughout the novella, symbolism can be found in everything aspect of it.

Kurtz

The men who work for the Company describe what they do as "trade," and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of "civilization." Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words "suppression" and "extermination": he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa. However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtz's African mistress is at best a piece of statuary.

William B. Yeats, 1865 -1939, Sandymouth, Dublin Nobel prize 1923 for Cuchulain's Fight With the SeaThe picture of modern civilization in poetry of W. B. Yeatsn 1913, Yeats met the American poet Ezra Pound Pound traveled to London to meet the older man, whom he considered to be "the only poet worthy of serious study." From that year until 1916, (the two men wintered in the Stone Cottage at Ashdown Forest, with Pound nominally acting as Yeats' secretary. The relationship got off to a rocky start when Pound arranged for the publication in the magazine Poetry of some of Yeats' verse with Pound's own unauthorized alterations. These changes reflected Pound's distaste for Victorian prosody. In particular, the scholarship on Japanese Noh plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa's widow provided Yeats with a model for the aristocratic drama he intended to write. The first of his plays modelled on Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft of which he dictated to Pound in January 1916.Yeats is generally considered to be one of the twentieth century's key English language poets. Yet, unlike most modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the traditional verse forms. The impact of modernism on Yeats' work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of the more austere language and more din of approach to his themes that increasingly characterizes the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities, and The Green Helmet.

5. The idea of transitoriness in Yeats' poetryYeats had his own philosophical theories which he expanded in "The Vision". The image of the winding stair is very important and appears repeatedly throughout his work. This relates to his Irish ancestry, time and his cyclical theory of history. He saw history diagrammatically and believed that the world is done and undone in two thousand years, where each era is overthrown by some catastrophic change. Thus: He symbolized this in the gyres, alternating series of historical change, a gyre being a conical spiral movement which begins at a point in history (an annunciation, the birth of Christ etc.) and expands to its fullest circle, whereupon in the middle of this circle occurs a point, the next annunciation, and with it the birth of the new age which will be the reverse of all that has gone before. The winding stair reminds Yeats of a gyre and he believes that his era will come to some catastrophic end due to all the war he has seen.In "Sailing to Byzantium" Yeats again presents the reader with a symbolic (although imaginary) journey, where the speaker sails away from a place of decay - the natural world of "fish, flesh of fowl" to one with the promise of immortality where neither time nor nature can intrude. Byzantium becomes a symbol for this world.When Yeats talks about the "monuments of un-ageing intellect" he is not just talking about buildings which are often associated with the cold and formal but also the "rational quality of intellect", perhaps suggesting that the monuments might be verses, pictures or any other artistic creation. The buildings may be weatherworn and can change over time but here he suggests that those created out of intellect are beyond lime, thus suggesting that these monuments are more magnificent man the works of nature. The marbles of the dancing floor" can also be viewed similarly, although they could stand for coldness; they could also stand for durability of art.The "gold mosaic" of "Sailing to Byzantium" is a symbol of eternity, where a moment in history is frozen and preserved through art and into the "artifice of eternity". This symbol aims to remind the reader of the transience of nature and the durability of ail These monuments and works of art that Yeats discusses serve to provide and imagined defense against time.

Sailing to Byzantium

Sailing to Byzantium enters a qualification against a venerable topos within Irish poetry: the fecundity of Ireland. The aged speakers decision to travel away from Ireland to Byzantium is the result both of his pained contemplation of the young In one anothers arms and the fact that they are part of a cycle of nature which ends in death: Whatever is begotten, born and dies. The reference to death is picked up in the account of Irish violence later in the volume. Byzantium, unlike Ireland, offers a wisdom founded in the eternal, beyond the cycle of life and death: Monuments of unageing intellect.

Yeats handles themes of age and myth in poems such as Sailing to Byzantium, which opens with the line: That is no country for old men.The concern is with the new Ireland, and its future; the poet returns to the holy city of Byzantium as symbol of artistic/creative perfection. The concern with the passing of time, a major concern in many Modernist writers, becomes clear in the poems last line, which speaks Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

(iz diplomskih)

Written in 1927, this poem expresses Yeats belief that in order to get immortality through art, it is necessary to move away from the song of the senses and move to songs celebrating "monuments of unaging intellect".That (the Ireland) is not the right place for an old man. In that country, the dying generations of birds and young lovers celebrate things which are slave to the natural cycle of birth and death. Creatures, "...Caught in that sensual music..." are very much subjects to death and decay.An old man, "A tattered coat upon a stick..." has only one alternative - to educate his soul to clap its hands and sing louder and louder as the physical powers go from bad to worse. Since in "That" country there is no school for his soul to be educated, the poet decides to sail to the holy city of Byzantium. Byzantium is the old name for Constantinople or Istanbul, capital of Roman Empire. For Yeats, it was the ideal of culture and wisdom.

The third stanza sees the poet already in the holy city, Byzantium. He addresses the sages standing in God's holy fire to purify his heart because it is tied to the animal instincts and is sick with physical desire. Once that is done, it would be easier to do what poet most desires - to gather him into he artifice of eternity. In other words, he wants to become a part of those things which are beyond the cycle of birth and death: "Consume my heart away: sick with desire /And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is; and gather me / Into the artifice of eternity."Once the poet is out of this circle of nature, he will break the contacts with natural, i.e. physical world. Instead of taking his bodily form, he will take a form of a golden bird, hammered by Grecian goldsmiths. The golden bird could sing to a sleepy Emperor and keep him awake. The poet dreams of singing of all times - past, present and future to the lords and ladies of Byzantium. That song would be different from the sensual music of "dying generation" and will sing of "monuments of unageing intellect". The last stanza: "Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing, / But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enamelling / To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; / Or set upon a golden bough to sing / To Lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come."

Apart from the obvious main dilemma that the poet sets in "Sailing to Byzantium", the poem has deep mystical significance. Herald Bloom said his book "Yeats, 1970": "God's holy fire in this poem is not a state where the creator and his creation are one, as in Blake, but rather a state where the creator has been absorbed into his creation." The very opinion was profoundly influenced with Hinduistic approach to Creator and Creation from their holy scriptures ''Upanishads". This famous poem is also an emphatic reminder of Yeats's keen interest in historic capital of the Eastern Empire and the significance he attached to its art and culture. Byzantium to Yeats stood for that moment in history where religious aesthetic and practical life were one - something never achieved before or since in recorded history. In Yeats' concept of history development, the Christian civilization achieved the point of fullest synthesis or unity in the visionary art if Byzantium, about the time of Justinian. Byzantium became a symbol of "the artifice of eternity" where the soul may realise its possibilities in life. After that moment, the disintegration of the Christian civilization set in; there is a complete immersion in only one, materialistic, aspect of life, at the cost of another. Modern generation has no thought for those masterpieces of art which are the product of ageless intellect and spirit and symbolise permanence in the stream of life. "Sailing to Byzantium" presents the voyage to the land of the mind. To help us hear the golden bird and its song beyond the time.

The Wild Swans of Coole

A middle-aged man observes a flock of swans first seen years before; contrasting their unwearied energies to his own diminished spirits, he wonders what will happen when the vitality they symbolize leaves him behind for good. Each stanza blends melancholia with mysterious expectancy. The expectancy arises partly from such vividly elemental images as brimming water among the stones. It also derives from the speakers resonant voice, which coaxes the diction and syntax of mildly elevated speech into harmony with gentle rhythms, lilting undulations of longer and shorter lines, and the music of assonance and rhyme. (The first stanzas pairing of stones and swans is one of the most oft-admired oV-rhymes in the language.) Can anyone capable of such imaginative seeing and speaking really possess a heart that will grow old? The poems concluding reference to an eventual awakening suggests that the end of ordinary life may bring the start of something else.

His poem The second coming is a chilling vision of impending death and dissolution. It contains the famous lines: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the worldbut the dissolution is part of a cycle of history which also guarantees order, joy and beauty. There is gaiety and celebration in Yeats poetry in these years as well as terror and fear of anarchy.

THE MAIN THEME AND SYMBOLISM IN YEATS POETRY

Yeat's work is characterized by two main preoccupations: literary explorations of occult, mystic or spiritual themes and the promulgation of Irish nationalism through the medium of literary propaganda. Mystic and occult themes run throughout his "literary oeuvre" from the early appearance of "magic" in Mosada to the "over mysticism" of The Celtic Twilihgt and the "spiritualism" of A Vision. Later when Yeats was fifty two years old, he married twenty five years old George Hyde-Lees, who practiced "automatic writing". Yeats and his wife shared an enduring interest in "research into occult matters"; his A Vision, privately reflected many of their mutal spiritual concerns. Yeats's earlier encounter with the political agitator Maud Gonne inspired his interest in nationalistic literary themes, culminating in his assistance in the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre, to which he contributed many dramatic works. The fifty years the publication of Yeats's first volume of poems "The Wondering of Oisin and other Poems"(18829 and his death in 1939 saw many ups and downs in Yeats's own life as well as in Ireland and the world. Yeats tried to record most of these ups and downs and tried to interpret them in his own unique poetic way. The result is that his themes cover such wide-ranging areas as love, old-age, politics, art and aristocracy, violence and prophecy, history, myth, unity of being and courtesy, intellectual hatred, innocence, anarchy and nostalgia. For him Augusta Gregory was a living symbol of the old Irish Aristocracy The poem Olin Memory of Major Robert Gregory" is a commemorative poem on the death of Lady Gregory's son, whom Yeats admired as a kind of symbol of aristocratic good breeding. Yeats's poetry is replete with symbols. He has been regarded as one of the greatest symbolists in English literature. In his poetry the same symbol is often used for different purposes and in different context His Symbols are derived from occult studies, which included a fascination for fairies, banshees, astrology, automatic writing and prophetic dreams. He had come to know from Madame.

YEATS AS A MYSTIC

Yeats believed the invisible life is the matter of poetry. Poetry should discover essential truth within the poet's intuitive understanding In a letter to his friend John O'Leary Yeats explained the importance of the supernatural in his work: "The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. It holds to my work the same relation that the philosophy of Godwin holds to the work of Shelley and I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance [sic] The revolt of the soul against the intellect--now beginning in the world." In his essay "Ideas of Good and Evil" he gave principles of his doctrine. He believes:

"1. That the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.

2. That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

3. That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by syrnbols."

Byzantium as the heart of European civilisation and the source of its spiritual philosophy appears in two Yeats' poems: "Sailing to Byzantium" in 1927 and "Byzantium" in 1930. Yeats was impressed by the holy city with its great dome and its mosaics, which defy nature and transcend material existence. He cultivated the myth of Byzantium as a city of perfect and eternal art, the great magical city where the soul reaches its perfection and artists live in the unity with the supernatural. Critics' opinions on the poem range from that it is a poem about the images in poet's mind to that it is about the life after death. The main question is what, in the poem, is Byzantium itself? H. Bloom writes: "Byzantium is for Yeats a state of inspiration, a kind of death, and an actual historical city, all at once. For this to be possible, phantasmagoria is necessary, and Yeats begins and ends his poem as a phantasmagoria. Indeed, the given of the poem is this phantasmagoria". It may be Yeats' most obscure poem.

Yeats' concerns are the actual creative experience, the relation of art and life and various phenomena of mental vision. "The importance of this "reverie" as a dramatic process in Yeats' later verse is underscored by the fact that two of his finest poems, "Among School Children" and "Byzantium," are basically dramas of thought and image.".

The first stanza gives the imaginary setting. It is the midnight hour in the ancient city of Byzantium and the streets are apparently deserted. "The unpurged images of day" are receding. Those are the ordinary banal images of everyday life describing events inside the city like "The Emperor's drunken soldiery" and "night-walkers' song". "They are "unpurged" because they are still a part of human life: they have not yet been refined of "All mere complexities, / The fury and the mire of human veins. The poem continues with the image of the moon and the stars shining on the enormous cathedral dome, the symbol of eternal, perfect art which "disdains /AII that man is."

The speaker of the poem appears in the second stanza. He is in a state of inspiration and an image is floating before him. He describes it as "man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade." It is more shade than a man because it is a spirit, but more an image than a shade because it is a human soul. The conclusion is that the phenomenon is more spiritual than human, more mental than spiritual, but involving all this in its complexity of an artistic image. This image has been interpreted as a metaphor for Yeats poetry or the poetical inspiration. He calls it death-in-life and life-in-death. The spirit has come to him through Hades bobbin bound in mummy-cloth, which may unwind the winding path. In hailing this superhuman image, Yeats in effect takes on the role of Dante, a Dante who has found his guide to the world of death and judgment. In the next stanza Yeats glorifies a golden bird, which he calls a miracle. It is an image based on golden birds that adorned trees in the palace of the Byzantine emperor. He also compares the bird to the cocks of Hades, the supernatural birds which according to an ancient tradition, crow the arrival of spirits into and out of our temporal world. So the golden bird has helped the poet to summon the superhuman. The bird represents the embodiment of the relationship between nature and art: its form comes from nature, but being a perfect everlasting artistic creation it is not subjugated to this temporal world and the fury and the mire of human veins. The fourth stanza deals with the purification of the spirits entering on Emperors pavement. They are given in an image of dancing flames Yeats, customarily, uses a symbolic dancer to suggest complete or almost complete Unity of Being, whether of a disembodied soul or of a living human being. Those are Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steal has lit, /Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame. This symbolizes a purification of human soul through the art. The flames cannot be extinguished so they are set free from the cycles of death and rebirth. In the stanza five the spirits are called to Byzantium. They encounter the Emperor golden smithies that break the flood. The violent, flooding sea is the centre of this stanza as a symbol of every movement in nature. There is a reference to dolphins at the end: That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. In classical mythology dolphins carry the souls of the dead. The gong that symbolizes time or mans suffering in it corresponds to the church bell in the opening lines of the poem. Through the imagery of the "dolphin" and the "gong tormented sea", Yeats is now saying that men reach the supernatural by dying and carrying with them "all complexities of mire or blood". But he is also saying something else. He is saying that intuitively the great poet borrows his symbolism from nature". The whole poem is a symbol of "journeys over the waters of life and death towards nature or God".

THE SECOMD COMING

Using his "antithetical rhetoric", Yeats concentrates into imagery as much of his thought as is possible and represents some of the most profound elements of his philosophy. But this condensation can create interpretative problems. The title of "The Second Coming" suggests that the poem will depict the return to Earth of Jesus Christ preceded by the Apocalypse, when the world will end, and the final judgment will take place. But Yeats challenges the traditional Christian vision describing his vision of something that could be- not the expected return of Christ, but the Second Coming of the Antichrist. He projects the present moment in history into a vision of the past and the future.

The whole poem is full of antitheses, Yeats confronts: the centre with a centrifugal force it cannot control; a blood-dimmed tide and the ceremony of innocence, the best and the worst, a lack of conviction and a passionate intensity; a stony sleep vexed to nightmare and a rocking cradle; a slouching, rough beast and Bethlehem. There is not any introduction to the poem. It opens in medias res with the image of a falcon circling in the sky, far away from the falconer who released it. It is a reference to Yeats' philosophic system and his cyclical conception of history. Yeats believed that history was divided into two thousand year cycles. The central symbols of this conception are two interlocking gyres or cones. The cone representing the coming era rises from its base to its peak, while the inverted cone representing the previous two thousand year cycle, rises to its point of greatest expansion, a widening gyre like the one in which the falcon loses its point of reference. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer" The separation of man and bird presents an image that has been interpreted in many ways as mankind moving from a period of Christianity to Paganism or as a symbol of human technology getting out of human command or as the society going out of control and becoming lost and disoriented or as social and cultural destruction of the aristocratic ideal of the order that Yeats so admired. The poem continues with an image of doomsday, anarchy or is "loosed" upon the Earth. The centre, or the nadir of the inverted cone, is the birth of Christ, "the first comings". But, 'Things tall apart; the centre cannot hold" because as the cone reaches its utmost expansion it begins to slow down and to destabilize. Yeats believed that Christianity had culminated in an "egalitarian democracy " which will finish disintegrating into "mere anarchy". The following lines show extent of death and destruction. ''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. This is the world between the two great wars and in the period of civil war and revolutionary struggles in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Violent followers of different ideologies are absolutely sure of themselves and "full of passionate intensity". And "the best" who are free of dogmatic ideology and "lack all conviction" are unsure of what to do. Violence, which is symptomatic of the end of one era and the beginning of another, becomes widespread. So the poem's speaker concludes that "surely" revelation, the uncovering of apocalypse, is at hand. But immediately after he has expressed the words "the Second Coming" his sight is troubled by sudden rising of "a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi", opposed to the I Holy Spirit, the soul of the universe which is the general inventory where the human race preserves its past memories and condenses a whole history into it. It is the source of prophecy, since in Yeats' belief history repeats the same predestined cycles. This vast image involves not so much fear as confusion caused by imperfect vision. The shape, situated "somewhere in sands of the desert," appears monumental and vague at the same time. The desert could symbolize the worthlessness of the egalitarian mass society that Yeats so disliked. The creature has a "lion body and the head of a man, it is an image of the sphinx although it is not named, a combination of human intellect and brutal strength. It is frightening but majestic. Her gaze is "blank and pitiless as the sun. The creature appears impassive, proud, and fearless.The imagery of the second stanza becomes increasingly disturbing. The protagonist of the poem has a vision of the sphinx rising up. The angry desert birds are flying around the slowly moving sphinx. As the vision comes to an end and The darkness drops again, he uses the phrase now I know, which suggest a knowledge from some higher power similar to divine wisdom. The speaker realizes that he has had a preview of things to come. The sphinx, a symbol of classical civilization, was "vexed to nightmare" that is to say, overwhelmed and put to a sleep by Christ's birth, "by a rocking cradle" which suggests the manger where he was born. She slept in a world of nightmares for 2000 years. The essential question of any interpretation of the poem concerns the sphinx symbol. Critical opinion has predominantly interpreted the rough beast as a pessimistic vision of horror, symbolizing the beginning of a violent, bestial anti-civlization. The god of that era who rises fiom the desert sands, is not beneficent but a monstrous. He inspires a sense of horrible helplessness. It could seem that there is no hope for the existence of mankind. But in Yeats' cyclical view of history this life is our eternal life, the Christian civilization is only a trio thousand year episode, like others that have preceded and will follow it. All they are part of the cycle. The Christian era had its birth in violence, just as the modem era did. This is his answer to cataclysm Yeats ends his poem in a question leaving it open to interpretation.

YEATS' MYSTICISM

Yeats was as visionary instead on surrounding himself with images. Just magic and its imaginative life appealed to him. The age of science was not interesting to him; he was more attracted by astrology than astronomy. Numerous visions were connected with Yeats leading idea of gyres, the cones that spiral together and symbolize objectivity and subjectivity of the world. These idea was practically collaborated with his wife through her automatic writing and connection with a ghost named Leo Africanus. The gyres give the image of a single circle when looking down on them. This circle represents the moon and the twenty-eight phases of the moon which are closely related to the progression of time and world history. The new and full moon are the periods where time begins end ends. However, it is not an end in the right sense of the word, it is actually a beginning of a new cycle. The phases in between are the growth and evolution of the human soul over time. The cycle lasts two thousand years and each period is dominated by a single civilisation and its own prevailing myth. The present one begun with the birth of Christ and now, as Yeats says, is already in the period of disintegration. Thus the end of our cycle will come in the year of 2000. He calls this time 'The Second Coming'. These ideas appeared in the Yeats' poem 'The Second Corning':

'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 toward Bethlehem to be born ?'

Together with the idea of cyclic history comes to Yeats the idea of cyclic repeating of life and death, the reincarnation of souls. He also speaks about what happens after death, describing the process of return of the soul to the cosmic trance from which it sprang. The body is looked on as an animal part of a man full of desires which should be purified.

Yeats shared the idea of reincarnating of a soul through all worldly things, not only within the human being. This idea actually refers to his view at the world or the universe as a view in the very modern term. It is the way of looking at the universe as a whole interconnected system of energies, always changing but never disappearing.

James Joyce, 1882 1941; Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland

Joyces techniques of stream... are different of Woolfs. The movement of the porse is more staccato and less poetic in rhythm. In linguistic terms, the fragmentation of narration is often represented by unusual cohesion, or changes in the normal ways of linking sentences, paragraphs and narration. This leads to unusual jumps, juxtapositions, and connections, often also marked by unusual or missing punctuation, which can create unexpected visual or graphological effects on the page. Stream of... takes these effects to extremes, often abandoning cohesion, syntax, and punctuation and lexical correctness which previously brought order and clarity to narration. Different characters have different inner lives and different writers perceive and represent the inner mind in contrasting ways. His Dubliners depicts the lives of the ordinary people of the city with clarity and realism. The stories are carefully organized so that meanings arise not only from the individual sketches but also from the relations between them. The best of these stories The Dead is the final one in the sequence, to which many of the previous stories point. It is a story in which a husband is shocked out of his self-satisfaction and egotism by learning of wifes love for a young man she had known many years before.The theme of the many of the stories in Dubliners is the attempt of the citizens to free themselves from lives in which they feel paralysed by relationships, by social, cultural, and religious traditions, or by their own natures. Joyces treatment shows a mastery of the short-story form and becomes increasingly detached and neutral. Joyces first major novel, A Portrait of... is s