Required:

On the Nature of Things Lucretius

Book I
"Nothing ever springs miraculously from nothing... all are formed from fixed seeds... Any given thing
possesses a distinct creative capacity... In every case, growth is a gradual process... Things are created from a
definite, appointed substance... All things are composed of imperishable seeds... No visible object ever suffers
total destruction, since nature renews one thing from another.
Matter exists in the form of invisible particles, e.g. the particles of the wind, of odors, cold, sound. Wearing
down of objects is accompanied by a loss of substance which is invisible. Empty space (void) exists. "The
universe, in its essential nature is composed of two things, namely matter and the void... All predictable things
are either properties or accidents of matter and void... Time has no independent existence; rather from events
themselves is derived a sense of what has occurred in time past, of what is happening at the present, and of what
is to follow in the future..."
"Two kinds of bodies are to be distinguished: there are primary elements of things, and objects compounded of
primary elements [atoms]. As for the primary elements, no force has power to extinguish them... The ultimate
particles are solid and contain no void... They must of necessity be everlasting. The atoms, though indivisible,
have parts which cannot have an independent existence. In contrast to Heraclitus, fire is not the ultimate
substance, nor are there just the four elements championed by Empedocles. etc. Also criticizes the views of
Anaxagoras . Lucretius wishes to make the Epicurean philosophy he is teaching more palatable, to "coat it with
the sweet honey of the Muses". The atoms are infinite in number and the void is infinite in extent, as is the
universe. "The ultimate particles are assuredly given no respite from movement, because there is no bottom at
all where they can congregate and settle... The universe has nothing beyond to bound it... Everywhere lies open
to things, infinite in every direction on every side... Since the universe is infinite, there can be no center...
Book II
Benefits of Epicurean philosophy: "..Nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by
the teachings of the wise... The mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment. And
so the nature of the body evidently is such that it needs few things, namely those which banish pain and, in so
doing, succeed in bestowing pleasures in plenty... Life is one long struggle in the gloom.
All atoms are in constant motion-- "... those which are concentrated in closer union and rebound only a very
short distance apart, entangled by the interlacement of their own shapes, for the basis of tough rock..." The
movement of the particles of matter can be very fast, even faster than sunlight. "... The world was by no means
created for us by divine agency: it is marked by such serious flaws." All bodies are drawn downwards by their
weight, but follow a somewhat swerving path that allows them to come in contact with each other. "All the
ultimate particles lie far beneath the range of our senses... their movements too must be hidden from sight..."
The forces of creation and destruction are evenly balanced. "No object whose substance is plainly visible
consists only of one class of atom." Digression on the cult of the Great Mother (Cybele). Compound bodies
consist of a mixture of different types of atoms, which cannot unite arbitrarily in any combination. The particles
of matter (atoms) are colorless and devoid of sensation, but the compounds derived from them can impart
sensation. "Death does not destroy things so completely that it annihilates the constituent elements: it merely
dissolves their union. Then it joins them in fresh combinations, and so causes all things to alter their forms and
change their colors, to acquire sensation and resign it in an instant...
There are many worlds in nature and they are not controlled intimately by the gods: "Under no circumstances
must it be considered likely that this one earth and heaven alone has been formed and that those particles of

matter outside it achieve nothing... You must acknowledge the existence elsewhere of other aggregations of
matter similar to this world of ours... things there is nothing solitary; everything belongs to some family, and
each species has very many members... You can see that nature is her own mistress and is exempt from the
oppression of arrogant despots, accomplishing everything by herself, spontaneously and independently, free
from the jurisdiction of the gods. For-- and here I call to witness the sacred, peacefully tranquil minds of the
gods, who pass placid days and a life of calm-- who has the power to rule the entirety of the immeasurable."
The world grew and now declines. "All things gradually decay and head for the reef of destruction, exhausted
by the long lapse of time."
Book III
Eulogy on Epicurus. "You are my father and the discoverer of truth... I feed on each golden saying. Plainly
visible are the gods in their majesty, and their calm realms... All the needs of the gods are sullied by nature, and
nothing at any time detracts from their peace of mind..."
We must banish fear of death. Men are driven to seek wealth in part because of a fear of death. "The ignominy
of humble position and the sting of penury are considered to be incompatible with a life of enjoyment and
security... The mind, or the intelligence, as we often term it, in which the reasoning and the governing principle
of life resides, is part of a person no less than the hand and foot... Mind and soul are intimately connected, and
together from a single substance... the mind or intelligence has its seat fixed in the middle of the breast-- the rest
of the soul-substance is disseminated through all the body... Mind and soul consist of material substance... The
mind is exceedingly subtle, being composed of the minutest particles."
Body and soul are united firmly even in the womb. The mind is more essential to life than the soul. The mind
and soul are subject to birth and death. "The mind is born with the body, develops with it, and declines with it."
The mind feels pain and is therefore mortal. It is affected by the body and can be cured by medicine. The mind
cannot exists without the body and both must live in union. The soul suffers dissolution at death. "Divorced
from the body, the soul cannot have either eyes or nose or hands or tongue or ears, and therefore cannot possess
either sentience or life." If the soul were immortal, we should have some recollection of our earlier existence,
which we do not.
Other arguments against the immortality of the soul. "Death, then, is nothing to us... When we are no more,
when body and soul, upon whose union our being depends, are divorced, you may be sure that nothing at all
will have the power to affect us or awaken sensation in us, who shall not then exist..." "We have no recollection
of our earlier existence; for between that life and this lies an unbridged gap-- an interval during which all the
motions of our atoms strayed and scattered in all directions, far away from sensation." "We have nothing to fear
in death, that one who no longer exists cannot become miserable, and that it makes not one speck of difference
whether or not he has ever been born, once his mortal life has been snatched away..." It is futile to mourn the
dead, since it involves "a return to sleep and repose...". In death there is no longing for sensual pleasures. Nature
rebukes those who complain about death. Hell and its torments exist only in our life. Why should you hesitate to
die, since far greater men have died before you? Restlessness and discontent can only be banished by studying
the nature of things. Why cling to life, when death is inevitable and will be eternal?
Book V
Another Eulogy of Epicurus. The components of the world-- earth, sea, sky-- are destined to be destroyed. The
earth and the heavenly bodies are neither alive nor divine. The gods do not inhabit our world: "The nature of the
gods is so tenuous, and so far removed from our senses, that it is scarcely perceptible even to the mind; and,
since it eludes the touch and impact of our hands, it cannot touch anything that is tangible to us... For what
benefit could immortal and blessed beings derive from our gratitude, that they should undertake to do anything
for our sake? What new occurrence could induce them, after such ages of tranquillity, to desire to change their
former mode of life... The world was by no means created for us by divine agency: it is marked by such serious

flaws... wild beasts... torrid heat... perpetual frost... diseases". The four component elements of the world (earth,
water, air and fire) are mortal and therefore the whole world is mortal. The recency of history indicates the
world is young and had a beginning. The world will someday be destroyed. Many defective creatures were
made... the survival of the fittest. Fabulous hybrid monsters could never have existed. Primitive man.
Beginnings of civilization. The origin of language, of fire, monarchies. "And yet, if a man were to guide his life
by true principles, great wealth consists in living on a little with a contented mind; for of a little there is never a
lack." Property, evil consequences of riches. The causes of beliefs in the gods. The miseries caused by erroneous
beliefs concerning the nature of the gods. Metals. Iron. War. Weaving. Agriculture. Music. Seasons. Art.
Book VI
Another eulogy to Epicurus and the "godlike nature of his discoveries". His plan is to explain certain "terrestrial
and celestial phenomena which, when observed by mortals, make them perplexed and panic-stricken, and abuse
their minds with dread of the gods..." Thunder. Lightning. Thunderbolts are not instruments of the gods.
Waterspouts and whirlwinds. Clouds. "We see rivers and the earth itself exhale mists and vapors. These
exhalations, which are expelled like breath, are carried upwards, and overspread the sky with a veil of darkness,
gradually uniting to form the clouds on high". Rain and rainbow. Earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions. The rise of
the Nile in summer. Toxic lakes. Springs. Magnets. Pestilences. The plague of Athens.
** We may now once more return to a close scrutiny of the ludicrous. We have shown that we laugh at any
deviation from the customary, from the normal, but, as we have pointed out, the lower forms of the comic do
not awaken any other emotion except the sense of the ludicrous. The one who ridicules, the comic-writer,
anaesthetizes his audience so that no attention should be paid to anything else. Any thing, any action, or any
saying that manifestly falls below the social or the normal human standard is an object of ridicule. Why do we
laugh at the defective, at the abnormal? Because, as we have shown, we feel our superiority, we feel that we are
normal, that we possess the power, the energy which the object of ridicule lacks. Such a feeling of superiority is
joyful, and we have the psychomotor manifestation characteristic of joy, namely, smiles and laughter, at the
expense of another person. We feel bigger, because another one is belittled; we feel the joy of superiority,
because another one has been made inferior; we are raised, because another has been humiliated. "It is sweet,"
sings Lucretius, "when one on the great sea the winds trouble its waters, to behold from land anothers deep
distress; not that it is a please and delight that any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what
evils you are yourself exempt." This exemption from evil or inferiority detected by the comic in another is one
of the main factors in laughter.
The Raft of the Medusa Gericault
Presentation is both innovative and rebellious
Name of the ship. Myth of Medusa sight turns to stone in a confrontation with the hideous truth: this
universe-al sea which ends in a shipwreck, glimmer of hope. There is something way beyond to save us.
Gricault decided to represent the vain hope of the shipwrecked sailors: the rescue boat is visible on the horizon
but sails away without seeing them.
It depicts an event whose human and political aspects greatly interested Gricault: the wreck of a French frigate
off the coast of Senegal in 1816, with over 150 soldiers on board. The painter researched the story in detail and
made numerous sketches before deciding on his definitive composition, which illustrates the hope of rescue.
The disaster of the shipwreck was made worse by the brutality and cannibalism that ensued.
The whole composition is oriented toward this hope in a rightward ascent culminating in a black figure, the
figurehead of the boat. The painting stands as a synthetic view of human life abandoned to its fate.

Some writhe in the elation of hope, while others are unaware of the passing ship. The latter include two figures
of despair and solitude: one mourning his son, the other bewailing his own fate.
Paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art
and reality?
Its beauty lies in its horror. It is a painting which the eye can easily divide into smaller and ever smaller units,
each one of which requires perhaps even seems to demand feverish attention from the onlooker, quite as
feverish as the terrible ocean, which is buffeting the doomed raft itself. It contains a muscular figure study here,
a still life there. It is a painting of tumultuous bodies, reaching out, turning, twisting, contorting, many
seemingly in desperate conflict with each other, which coheres as if by some miracle. It could so easily not have
cohered, we think. There is so much of it, and it engulfs the eye to such an extent it is almost as if the eye
(mimicking the raft itself) seems to drown in it, as if the ocean is threatening to upend the raft in our direction
so that this horrifying mess will shortly be our mess. Such is our horrified absorption. Such is this vertiginous
scene of terrible and uncontrollable chaos, with its oceanic rocking motion.
There is so much here: heroism, terror, resignation, horror, optimism, pessimism. Is not the man who is being
borne aloft by his desperate comrades, the one who is furiously brandishing that red fragment of clothing or
pennant in a kind of desperate apex of optimism, still living in hope of rescue? Is there not a tiny triple-master,
the tiniest of specks, on the horizon? Oh, but it is so hopelessly far away!
And yet there is the opposite of this mood too, on the other end of that ever weakening and ever-shifting frame
of wooden planks. Is not the man in the foreground, he whose head is resting with exhausted resignation on the
heel of his hand, and whose other hand claws at a beautiful naked corpse whose leg hangs over that of another,
as if to give some meagre comfort to the naked dead, the very embodiment of doomed pessimism? There is a
strange stillness in that face which stares, rapt, into the middle distance, hoping nothing.
But it is the light in this painting which finally condemns these human beings to death. We have seldom
witnessed such a ghoulish, knell-tolling light. Look how dark the enveloping atmosphere is, how suffused with
the sickly smearily ghoulish green-brown-yellow of the charnel house. That dominant tone almost reeks of
death, decay the dying of the light of day, and the dying of the light of life simultaneously.
But it is a parable too, this masterpiece of almost wincingly cinematic pity and horror. Although inspired by a
particular occasion, it is also a universal story of hazarding. We too, we feel as we look and look at it, live our
lives so precariously, as unsteadily as doomed survivors who hope to remain upright and alive and ever
optimistically waving on some doomed raft in mid-ocean. We are pitched and tossed about so wantonly.
Our moods, our financial instabilities, buffet us back and forth. We find ourselves rejoicing over some
petty triumph over adversity one day, and weeping the next.
A striking feature of the painting are the interlocking triangles, a common feature in Renaissance and Baroque
paintings, and one that expresses Gricaults academic training. Much has been made of the fact that the figure
at the apex of the pyramid, who is waving a flag to a distant ship, is an African man; a very uncommon choice
at this time in history. The people on the raft are divided into four groups; the dead and dying are at the center,
then there are those struggling to stand up, a third group is comprised of three figures huddled together by the
mast with one gesturing, and the fourth group is capped by the African waving the flag. Studying the painting
from left to right, the physicality of the figures intensifies but not necessarily the emotional drama. The figures
in the foreground display deep anguish and despair while the faces of the more active figures are a bit blurred or
hidden in shadow or not seen at all. Note the seated figure in the foreground of the despondent father who holds
onto the body of his dead son.
John 12:24New International Version (NIV)

24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But
if it dies, it produces many seeds.
1.
In the first six sections of On the Use and Abuse of History for Life Nietzsche explores the worth and
worthlessness of history and argues that history must serve the interests of the living. Nietzsche begins by
reminding his reader about the role both remembering and forgetting play in the lives of individuals,
communities, and cultures. He claims that because we must use the past for living and make history out of what
has happened in order to become a person, to live as a person, we must not abuse historical knowledge. We need
to understand the role the unhistorical and super-historical can play in maintaining a contemporary life that isnt
a slave to historicism. There is power to forgetting the past and not taking history to seriously. Nietzsche values
history but claims we must not be slaves to it.
Much history, according to Nietzsche, is told through the method of monumentalism and antiquarianism and
criticism.
I. The Monumental Method
Those who find no inspiration in daily life look to historymonumentalize itfor inspiration and
motivation; they use it as a driving force in other words. Political historians employ this method often. They
claim to monumentalize history for the good of collective. By building monuments for instance, we are
proclaiming: We will be great by making greatness exist once again! Greatness perseveres! Live by
example and we shall excel!
Nietzsche asks, however, can the past truly be replicated by monumentalizing? Can the greatness that once was
become again in same fashion? Not unless we distort the past in order to gain the same effect (6). What we
do when we try to relive the past or to recreate the cause to invoke the same great effect is really just attempt to
revive the effects. For to repeat the cause that lead to the effect in past is impossible to duplicate. There is no
repeating history. And when we try to repeat history, all we end up doing is destroying history through
distortion, alteration, reinterpretation.all we end up really doing is creating a mythic fiction, especially if
we create a monumental history without antiquarian or critical methods. For monumental history deceived
through its analogies (6).
Thought provoking quote:
monumental history is the theatrical costume in which they pretend that their hate for the powerful and the
great of their time is a fulfilling admiration for the strong and the great of past times. In this, through
disguise they invert the real sense of that method of historical observation into its oppositeTheir motto: let
the dead bury the living (7).
The second type of history is the antiquarian view: history that belongs to the preserving and revering soul
to him who with loyalty and love looks back on his origins and gives thanks for his existence (Nietzsche
19). This antiquarian sense provides man with the assurance that his existence is neither arbitrary nor
accidental, but rather a link in a chain of events extending from the past, and therefore, justified.
The third and final approach to history is the critical view, in which [man] must have the strength to shatter
and dissolve something to enable him to live: this he achieves by dragging it to the bar of judgment,
interrogating it meticulously and finally condemning it (Nietzsche 21). Through this close analysis of
history, it is possible for man to discover knowledge that conflicts with his nature; critical history then gives
him the power to utilize this new knowledge to his advantage and implant a new habit, a new instinct, a second
nature so that the first nature withers away (Nietzsche 22).
The proper usage of these three views of history indicates how Nietzsche believes history can, and should, be
used in the service of modernity. Monumental history should be used to discover models to be emulated
and surpassed, rather than to freeze a single image of excellence as divine and absolute, sternly
prohibiting fresh acts of human courage and strength; this allows history to empower the man of action
through its exhibition of the enduring truth about human excellence and thereby encourages him to attain

greatness (Berkowitz 15). While the antiquarian approach requires an appreciation for the past, it does not
demand immortality for something old simply because of its considerable age; this would make it seem
presumptuous or even impious to replace such an ancient thing with a new onea startling consequence for
modernity that leads to the paralysis of the man of action (Nietzsche 21). This prompts Nietzsche to outline the
necessity of critical history, which once again frees the man of action and allows him to move forward towards
growth and progress.
Excess knowledge. Nietzsche begins his argument that a surplus of history is detrimental to life by discussing
the term inwardness, which he defines as mans chaotic inner world filled with knowledge, taken in excess
without hunger, even contrary to need that no longer acts as a transforming motive impelling to action and
remains hidden (Nietzsche 24). This surfeit of knowledge is gathered and hoarded through the abuse of
history, and results in a modern pseudo-culture comprised only of knowledge acquired purely for the sake of
acquisition. This mode of existence separates man into an inner content and an outer forma disconnected
composition that weakens the personality and forces the hollowed man to gradually become an actor in
society. Through far-reaching consequences for politics and for social life in general, this becomes a crisis of
modernity: namely, that all of us are no longer material for a society (Ansell-Pearson 119, original italics). By
turning himself into an actor, man relinquishes his value to society, hinders its internal support system,
and decreases its ability for growth. Nietzsche continues his explication of how excess history eventually
leads to the destruction of man through the following pattern: man comes to believe that he has the ability to
render justice on earlier ages; mans depleted instincts impair his maturity and growth; man suffers in
believing that he is a latecomer in the lifespan of the world; man adopts views of irony and cynicism with
regard to himself; and man eventually becomes egoistical to the point of paralysis and destruction.

Consider the herd grazing before you. These animals do not know what yesterday and today are but leap about,
eat, rest, digest, and leap again; and so from morning to night and from day to day, only briefly concerned with
their pleasure and displeasure, enthralled by the moment and for that reason neither melancholy nor bored.
It is hard for a man to see this, for he is proud of being human and not an animal and yet regards its happiness
with envy because he wants nothing other than to live like the animal, neither bored nor in pain, yet wants it in
vain because he does not want it like the animal. Man may well ask the animal, Why do you not speak to me
of your happiness but only look at me? The animal does want to answer and say, Because I always immediately
forget what I wanted to saybut then it already forgot this answer and remained silent: so that man could only
wonder.
But he also wondered about himself, that he cannot learn to forget but always remains attached to the past;
however far and fast he runs, the chain runs with him. It is astonishing: the moment, here in a wink, gone in a
wink, nothing before and nothing after, returns nevertheless as a specter to disturb the calm of a later moment.
Again and again a page loosens in the scroll of time, drops out, and flutters awayand suddenly flutters back
again into mans lap. Then man says, I remember and envies the animal which immediately forgets and
sees each moment really die, sink back into deep night extinguished forever. In this way the animal lives
unhistorically: for it goes into the present like a number without leaving a curious fraction; it does not know
how to dissimulate, hides nothing, appears at every moment fully as what it is and so cannot but be honest.
Man on the other hand resists the great and ever greater weight of the past: this oppresses him and bends
him sideways, it encumbers his gait like an invisible and sinister burden which, for the sake of appearances, he
may deny at times and which in intercourse with his equals he is all too pleased to denyto excite their envy.
This is why he is moved, as though he remembered a lost paradise, when he sees a grazing herd, or, in more
intimate proximity, sees a child, which as yet has nothing past to deny, playing between the fences of past and
future in blissful blindness. And yet the childs play must be disturbed; only too soon will it be called out of its
forgetfulness. Then it comes to understand the phrase it was, that password with which struggle, suffering, and
boredom approach man to remind him what his existence basically isa never-to-be-completed imperfect

tense. And when death finally brings longed-for forgetfulness it also robs him of the present and of
existence and impresses its seal on this knowledge: that existence is only an uninterrupted having-been, a
thing which lives by denying itself, consuming itself, and contradicting itself.
If, in any sense, it is some happiness or the pursuit of happiness which binds the living being to life and urges
him to live, then perhaps no philosopher is closer to the truth than the Cynic: for the happiness of the animal,
that thorough Cynic, is the living proof of the truth of Cynicism. The least happiness, if only it keeps one happy
without interruption, is incomparably more than the greatest happiness which comes to one as a mere episode,
as a mood, a frantic incursion into a life of utter displeasure, desire, and privation. With the smallest as with the
greatest happiness, however, there is always one thing which makes it happiness: being able to forget or, to
express it in a more learned fashion, the capacity to live unhistorically while it endures. Whoever cannot settle
on the threshold of the moment forgetful of the whole past, whoever is incapable of standing on a point like a
goddess of victory without vertigo or fear, will never know what happiness is, and worse yet, will never do
anything to make others happy. Take as an extreme example a man who possesses no trace of the power to
forget, who is condemned everywhere to see becoming: such a one no longer believes in his own existence,
no longer believes in himself; he sees everything flow apart in mobile points and loses himself in the
stream of becoming: he will, like the true pupil of Heraclitus, hardly dare in the end to lift a finger. All
acting requires forgetting, as not only light but also darkness is required for life by all organisms. A man who
wanted to feel everything historically would resemble someone forced to refrain from sleeping, or an animal
expected to live only from ruminating and ever-repeated ruminating. So: it is possible to live with almost no
memories, even to live happily as the animal shows; but without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at
all. Or, to say it more simply yet: there is a degree of insomnia, of rumination, of historical sense which
injures every living thing and finally destroys it, be it a man, a people, or a culture.
The stronger the roots of the inmost nature of a man are, the more of the past will he appropriate or master; and
were one to conceive the most powerful and colossal nature, it would be known by this, that for it there would
be no limit at which the historical sense could overgrow and harm it; such a nature would draw its own as
well as every alien past wholly into itself and transform it into blood, as it were. What such a nature cannot
master it knows how to forget; it no longer exists, the horizon is closed and whole, and nothing can serve as a
reminder that beyond this horizon there remain men, passions, doctrines, and purposes. And this is a general
law: every living thing can become healthy, strong, and fruitful only within a horizon; if it is incapable of
drawing a horizon around itself or, on the other hand, too selfish to restrict its vision to the limits of a horizon
drawn by another, it will wither away feebly or overhastily to its early demise. Cheerfulness, clear conscience,
the carefree deed, faith in the future, all this depends, in the case of an individual as well as of a people, on there
being a line which distinguishes what is clear and in full view from the dark and unilluminable; it depends on
ones being able to forget at the right time as well as to remember at the right time; on discerning with
strong instinctual feelings when there is need to experience historically and when unhistorically. Precisely this is
the proposition the reader is invited to consider: the unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary for
the health of an individual, a people and a culture.
Everyone will have made the following observation: a mans historical knowledge and perception may be
very limited, his horizon as restricted as that of a resident of an alpine valley, into every judgment he may
introduce an injustice, into every experience the error of being the first to have that experienceand despite all
injustice and all error he stands firmly in indefatigable health and vigor, a pleasure to behold; while right beside
him the man of greater justice and learning deteriorates and crumbles because the lines of his horizon restlessly
shift again and again, because he cannot extricate himself from the much more delicate network of his justice
and truths in order to engage in rude willing and desiring. We have seen, however, that the animal, which is
quite unhistorical and lives within a horizon which is almost a point, nevertheless is in a certain sense
happy, or at least lives without boredom and dissimulation. We must then consider the capacity to perceive
unhistorically to a certain degree as the more important and fundamental so far as it provides the foundation
upon which alone something right, healthy and great, something truly human may grow. The unhistorical
resembles an enveloping atmosphere in which alone life is generated only to disappear again with the

destruction of this atmosphere. It is true: only so far as man, by thinking, reflecting, comparing, dividing, and
joining, limits that unhistorical element; only so far as a bright lightning flash of light occurs within that
encircling cloud of mistthat is, only through the power to use the past for life and to refashion what has
happened into history, does man become man: but with an excess of history man ceases again, and without
that cloak of the unhistorical he would never have begun and dared to begin.
2.
Summary
The narrative of Faust begins in Heaven. While angels worship The Lord for his creation, Mephistopheles, the
Devil, complains about the state of affairs in the world. Mankind is corrupt, he claims, and he revels in the evil
and disaster that he is able to cause. Mephistopheles makes a bet with The Lord that he will be able to turn one
of his servants, Dr. Faust, over to sin and evil. The Lord agrees, claiming that Faust will remain a loyal follower.
The play introduces Faust while he sits in his study in despair over his life. He has been a scholar and an
alchemist, and he feels as though he has come to the end of all knowledge. Books and chemistry can no longer
define his life for him, and he longs to live a life in harmony with Nature and with the universe. He summons a
Spirit to come and be with him, but this only reinforces the fact that he is human and not spirit and therefore
cannot share the Spirits higher knowledge. In his despair, Faust brews a poison to commit suicide. Just as he is
about to take the poison, a chorus of angels appears announcing Easter day and stops him from completing the
act.
Faust walks outside his town with Wagner, a fellow scholar. Faust describes his passion for nature and for a
higher mode of life, but Wagner cannot fathom it. The townspeople celebrate Easter, and although Faust feels
that he should be with them, he cannot shake his despair at his current situation. The townspeople crowd around
Faust, cheering him because as a young man he and his father helped the people with medicine during a time of
plague. Faust, however, feels that he probably did more harm than good with his crude medicines. As Wagner
and Faust return home to their studies, they meet a black dog on the road that follows Faust back to his room.
In his study, Faust attempts to find new inspiration by reading the Gospel of John. He begins his own translation
of the work, but the barking dog interrupts him. Soon, the dog transforms, and Mephistopheles appears where
the dog once was. Faust and Mephistopheles begin a conversation about Faust's work and despair at his current
situation in life. To show Faust a taste of his power, Mephistopheles summons a group of spirits that take Faust
on a hallucinatory journey while Faust falls asleep. Mephistopheles leaves the study with a promise to return
and show Faust more.
When Faust awakens, Mephistopheles returns, this time with a wager. Faust continues discussing his inability to
find a satisfying higher power, and Mephistopheles makes him an offer. The Devil promises to serve Faust and
to give Faust a moment of transcendence, a moment in which he hopes to stay forever. If Mephistopheles
succeeds, Faust must then be his servant for the rest of eternity in hell. Faust takes the wager, believing that the
Devil can never give him such a moment. Mephistopheles tells Faust to prepare for their journey, and while
Faust does so, the Devil poses as the doctor as one of Fausts new students arrives for a lesson. The Devil and
the Student talk of the student's future learning endeavors, and Mephistopheles tempts him into a more libertine
lifestyle. The Student leaves, preparing to abandon his study to pursue women.
Mephistopheles takes Faust first to Auerbach's Cellar, a drinking tavern. He tries to convince Faust that the men
there have found their true pleasure; they are men who enjoy their lives in the tavern. Faust is unconvinced,
however, by their crude cares and simple lives. Mephistopheles plays tricks on the men. He drills holes in the
side of one of the tables and pours wine out of the holes. As soon as one of the men spills his wine, however,
flames jump out from the spilled liquid. As they try to come after Mephistopheles and kill him, the Devil
transports them into an alternate reality while he and Faust make their escape.

Faust and the Devil then travel to a witch's cave where they encounter two apes brewing a potion in a cauldron.
The beasts begin to have fun with Mephistopheles and pretend that he is a king while they are his servants.
When the witch returns, she initially does not recognize the Devil but soon sees that he is her master.
Mephistopheles makes the witch give a small bit of her potion to Faust, who drinks it. Outside on a street, Faust
meets a young girl with whom he immediately falls in love. Margaret, or Gretchen for short, avoids his
advances but cannot help and think about the older, noble stranger she met on the road that day.
Faust and Mephistopheles sneak into Gretchens room. In her room, Faust realizes that the feelings he has for
the girl go beyond simple sexual desire. His feelings are complex, and he longs to be near her. At seeing her
bed, he reveres nature for creating such a beautiful creature. When Gretchen returns, they quickly exit, but
Mephistopheles leaves behind a box of jewels. When Gretchen finds the jewels, she cannot believe that they are
for her, yet she also cannot help but put them on and admire them. Faust orders Mephistopheles to have the two
of them meet.
Gretchen visits her neighbor, Martha, to fret over her mother's actions. Her mother, upon seeing Gretchens
jewels, promptly took them to a priest, who could tell that they were from an evil source. Later, Gretchen found
another box of jewels, and Martha encourages her not to tell her mother this time. They answer a knock at the
door and discover Mephistopheles disguised as a traveler. He weaves a story for Martha, telling her that her
husband has died on his long travels. Martha is both heartbroken and angry at the stories of her husband's
licentious life. To put the matter to rest, Martha asks Mephistopheles and another witness to come and legally
attest to her husbands death. The Devil agrees to bring someone, as long as Gretchen will also be present.
That evening in Martha's garden, Gretchen and Faust meet formally for the first time. Faust charms her and
courts her. She tells him of her hard life and of how she nursed her sick infant sister until her sister died.
Gretchen has no other family except her brother, who is away at war, and her mother. Mephistopheles and
Martha also flirt, with the Devil playing a coy game of seduction with her. Meanwhile, when Faust professes his
love for Gretchen, she plays a game of He loves me/He loves me not with a flower. She lands on he loves
me and runs to her room. Faust follows her to a summer cabin, where they say goodbye.
Faust, fearing that he will corrupt the girl with his feelings, runs away to the forest, where he lives for a time in
a cave. He thanks the Spirit of Nature for giving him such feelings, for now he has a moment and an
understanding of life that he does not want to lose. Mephistopheles finds Faust and derides his foolish behavior,
hiding from the woman that he loves. He tells Faust that Faust must find this girl, for she pines away for him
day and night. Faust, his passion overtaking him, agrees that he must go.
Faust returns to Gretchen, and one night in her room, they discuss his feelings on religion. Gretchen is a faithful
Christian, and she knows that neither she nor her mother could accept a man that does not believe the same.
Faust tries to convince the girl that he also believes and worships God, but she does not quite believe him. Faust
convinces her to allow him to give her mother a sleeping potion, and they consummate their relationship. Soon,
Gretchen learns that she is pregnant by Faust. One day, while drawing water from the town well, she hears the
girls gossip about another girl who had sexual relations and became pregnant. The girl was forced to kill her
baby and now lives as a beggar and outcast. Gretchen fears that she will share the girls fate. Gretchen prays to
the Virgin Mary that the Lord will have mercy upon her.
Faust comes to Gretchen's house to see her and meets Gretchen's brother, Valentine. Valentine has heard of her
sister's licentious behavior and has come to exact revenge on the man who impregnated her. He and Faust begin
to argue and fight, and Faust plunges a dagger into Valentines heart. As he lies dying, Gretchen comes to
comfort her brother, but he accosts her as a whore and tells her that she will be damned for her actions.
Gretchen runs to the Cathedral to pray, and an Evil Spirit visits her, securing her damnation
In a gloomy field, Faust learns of Gretchens fate. She killed their infant child and was as a result arrested. He
falls into a new kind of despair and curses Mephistopheles for creating this unhappy and unholy affair.
Mephistopheles reminds him that it was he, Faust, who made the pact. Faust orders the Devil to take him to

Gretchen's jail so that he can free her. Mephistopheles brings horses, and they ride towards the village, although
the Devil warns Faust that both the authorities and avenging spirits are in the town, ready to take their
vengeance on Faust for murdering Valentine.
Faust sneaks into the jail and finds Gretchen. She has devolved into insanity, and she does not recognize Faust,
instead mistaking him for her executioner. Faust pleads for her to escape with him, but her own sense of guilt
and shame, as well as the prospect of the despairing life that she will live outside of the jail, prevents her from
escape. As Gretchen surrenders her soul to the judgment of God, Mephistopheles enters to tell Faust that they
must leave or be caught by the authorities and suffer the same fate of execution. Faust and Mephistopheles flee
from Gretchen's cell as she cries out his name.
Summary
Faust hears a knock at his door while in his study. He tells the visitor to come in, and he hears the voice of
Mephistopheles. Faust urges him to enter, but Mephistopheles tells him he must say Come In three times
before he may enter. Once inside, Mephistopheles tells Faust that he will drive his sorrows away. He tells Faust
to dress in his nicest clothes so that they may go out into the world for some pleasure. Faust, however, is
reluctant because he knows that even in such pleasure, he will feel the pain of his doldrums. He tells
Mephistopheles, I am too old for mere amusement / and still too young to be without desire. Faust tells him
that he wakes with a horror in the morning and lives with it all day. The horror is that he cannot fulfill a single
wish of his soul. He seeks vainly for rest and for God, but he finds neither. Even Death is not welcome, for
Mephistopheles reminds him that he did not drink the poison that he concocted for his suicide. Faust tells him
that a sweet familiar note / drew me from my fearful bog / and deceived the remnants of my childlike faith /
with allusions to a gladder day but that now knowing he will never see that gladder day, he has sunk into a
deep depression. Faust curses all things of life and faith, and most of all he curses Patience.
The Chorus of Spirits, invisible to Faust, begins to sing a song of woe. They tell him that they carry the
fragments of his shattered world into the Void and goad him to build a brighter world. Mephistopheles tells
Faust that these are his spirits, and that Faust should listen to their advice. Mephistopheles then tells Faust that
he has another way out of his depression. He tells Faust that if Faust will travel at my side / and make your
way through life with me, then Faust will be his servant and slave, allowing him to glimpse all the secrets of
the world that he now does not know. Faust asks what Mephistopheles will gain in return for his years of
servitude, but Mephistopheles tries to avoid that question. Faust tells him that he knows he is dealing with a
devil and that such hellish creatures do not often do what is useful for another. Mephistopheles tells him that
he pledges to be his servant and slave here and now if Faust will then do the same for him in the world
beyond.
Faust, without hesitation, tells him that the beyond he speaks of does not bother him at all. He wants to
smash this world to bits, and he does not care what happens to the other world. He takes all his joy from the
earth he now inhabits and wants to know all of its secrets, and whatever happens in the next world is of no
concern. Mephistopheles is pleased with this answer and encourages him to take the risk and to commit his
life to him. He promises to give to Faust what no man has ever seen before.
Faust tempers his expectations, however. He doubts that the Devil can show him anything of real importance.
Faust conjectures that he will offer him food which does not satisfy and riches that do not stay. He will offer
him sport with no winner and false love. He will offer him honors that do not last. Mephistopheles contradicts
these accusations, telling him that such treasures will be easy to produce but that there will come a time when
both will want to revel in the leisure that such comforts bring.
Faust is now ready to make the wager. He tells Mephistopheles that he will never take such leisure. He knows
there are too many mysteries to be solved and too much wonder to behold and that if he ever finds satisfaction
in myself / if you bamboozle me with pleasure, / then let this be my final day! / This bet I offer you!
Mephistopheles eagerly agrees to the wager, and they shake on it. Mephistopheles, however, is not content with
a simple handshake. He desires a legal, signed document to seal their fate. Faust finds it amusing that the devil
would want a binding document and he is reluctant to give it at first, saying that he is a man who keeps his

word. Mephistopheles wonders why Faust is so hot and angry and tells him any scrap of paper will do. All
Faust has to do is sign it with a drop of his blood. Faust agrees and tells him that he should not be afraid that he
will break his pact because he desires the knowledge of the spirits too much. He desires too much to see the
miracles of the world and to experience the lot of humankind that he desires to taste within my deepest self. /
I want to seize the highest and the lowest / to load its woe and bliss upon my breast / and thus expand my single
self titanically.
Mephistopheles tells him that he has never quite met a man with such passions and that he might be
disappointed at what he finds. Faust assures him that he wants to take the journey nonetheless. Mephistopheles
then has a brief change of heart, telling Faust that perhaps he should find a poet to help guide him through the
world. The passions of the poet are very similar to his own and if he were to find such a man, he might call him
Mr. Microcosm. Faust assures him that he has hoarded all the treasures, / the wealth of human intellect, in
vain and that he knows for sure that his only salvation will come through supernatural means. Mephistopheles
relents and tells him that he will see and feel all the pleasures he desires. Faust asks how they must begin, and
Mephistopheles tells him that they must leave because there is nothing left for him in this study.
However, he must first deal with his student who has come prepared for a lesson. The Devil tells him that he
will deal with the boy, and, donning the scholars cap and gown, he tells Faust that he will dispense with the
student in fifteen minutes time. Faust leaves. Mephistopheles, speaking only to himself, divulges his secret
plan. He says that he will drag Faust through the wasteland of mediocrity. / Let him wriggle, stiffen, wade
through slime, let food and drink by dangled by his lips / to bait his hot, insatiate appetite. In the end, Faust
will tell the Devil that he has been satisfied, and he will then perish miserably.
The Student enters and tells the Devil that he is newly arrived and, thinking that Mephistopheles is Faust,
desires to study with the man whose name all speak with veneration. Mephistopheles tells him that this is the
place for him. However, the Student says that already he is thinking of running away because of the coldness of
the place and its lack of joy. Mephistopheles tells him that this is simply because he is not acclimated to the
scholarly life and that if he puts all of his energies into his studies, he will soon find his place. The student tells
him that he desires to study all of the things of nature and of science and Mephistopheles gives him a speech
about the rigors of academic training. He must learn to duly classify all things. He tells him to first tackle
logic and then metaphysics and that he must declare a discipline.
Analysis
This is the most crucial scene of the play, as it enacts Fausts bargain with the devil for his own soul. Faust
makes the transition in this scene from the Christian man of the Renaissance to the post-Christian man of the
Modern world. He thus encapsulates what Goethe sees as the condition of humanity during the Modern era.
It is important to note that Faust does not make a bargain with the Devil, implying that each will get something
from each other, but instead makes a wager. The wager is that the Devil will accompany him through the world
in order to produce for him a moment of bliss and contentment in which he will never want to leave. If Faust is
able to experience such a moment, then Faust will have to become the Devils companion for the rest of
eternity. If Faust does not experience such a moment, then he is free. Such a wager demonstrates the deepness
of Fausts despair. Faust considers his inability to fuse with the life of the universe to be his own personal hell.
In a way, Faust is damned either way in the wager.
Fausts wager with the Devil represents the break of Christendom with the secular world. In this world, there are
physical things that can provide pleasure and satisfaction to humanity. When such physical things occur in
excess, confession and sacraments exist to bring people into right relationship with God. Faust, however,
represents a newer world. Faust is entirely sure that physical pleasure will never be able to satisfy him.
Fausts life is subjective, and his inability to satisfy his mind represents the ultimate dead end of
philosophy and of human endeavors of learning and comprehension.
The use of the number three is notable in this scene. Three is a number of religious import in the Christian
tradition, often symbolizing the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Mephistopheles must ask three
times if he can enter Fausts study. In one part of the scene, Mephistopheles is also forced to ask Faust three

times for his soul, an allusion to Peters betrayal of Jesus in the Gospel accounts. This use of numbers
demonstrates the free flow of meanings and significance between the spirituality of Christianity and paganism,
as well as an important fact about Fausts medieval world. Such a world, while fully a part of Christendom, was
not as orthodox as one might think. A free cultural exchange existed between religious and pagan ideals, and
Fausts character represents a break with this exchange for the more rigid culture of logic and dogmatism of the
Modern era.
At issue in this scene is the central tension of the play, the conflict over the mind/body dualism of the Christian
and the post-Christian age. Goethe asks his audience to consider whether one can pursue this life, free from the
moral and sacrificial constraints of the Christian age, without it turning into a life of sin and debauchery. As the
reader will see, the answer that Faust gives is mixed. On the one hand, we see the modern man, represented by
Faust, as a supremely unhappy being. On the other hand, his wager with the Devil does not provide a resolution
either, although it does illuminate the power and passion of love in Fausts heart. One could argue that Fausts
position in the play ultimately represents one of nihilism and defeat.
The closing event of this scene, Mephistopheles conversation with the student, is the first of three successive
scenes meant to provide comic relief after the intensity and despair of the plays beginnings. On one level, this
scene is a parody of academic culture in Goethes day. The student arrives, eager to learn from an intellectual
superior, only to become gradually aware that the intellectual superior is unhappy in his own scholarly pursuits.
The student feels this tension almost immediately. On another level, the scene shows how easy of a time the
Devil has in the world of such intellectual pursuits. After only a brief conversation, the boy is ready to give up
his study for more fleshly pleasures. The student, like all students and their teachers, is easily persuaded towards
the less noble aspects of life. His world becomes relativistic, and if these academic disciplines have no ultimate
meaning, then morality and social structure mean nothing either. The signature in the students book alludes to
the Garden of Eden scene in the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible. The
student reenacts this scene, choosing evil over nobler, though more unsatisfying, intellectual pursuits.
Summary
In the second scene entitled "Faust's Study" Mephistopheles pays Faust a second visit. Faust shares with
Mephistopheles his dissatisfaction with his life and his desire for death. Mephistopheles asks Faust why he did
not go through with his suicide plan. Faust admits his plans were disrupted by the hope the songs of the Easter
celebration brought to him. He has now returned to his original despair and disillusionment with his life. It is at
this point that Mephistopheles presents his deal to Faust. He will serve Faust on earth if Faust will promise to
serve Mephistopheles in the afterlife. Faust agrees but adds that the devil must present him with some sort of
amusement that will bring Faust enough pleasure that Faust will not want it to end. Faust signs the pledge with
his own blood.
As this pact is signed, a student arrives wishing to meet Faust. Mephistopheles transforms into the image of
Faust and "advises" the student on how he should go about his career in knowledge. The student leaves and
Faust voices concern to the devil that he is too old and too antisocial to enjoy the pleasures of other people.
Mephistopheles persuades him he will soon lose these inhibitions. They make their way through flight to a
Faust's Study (I & II) and Auerbach's Tavern in Leipzig Analysis
It is in this portion of the play that Faust makes his bargain with Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is to serve
him on earth and show him some pleasure that strikes Faust's fancy. Mephistopheles' first attempt fails as he
tries to include Faust in the pleasures of drink and the related revelry.
After his initial fear of the black poodle, Faust brings the animal back to his study. His fear of the dog was a
foreshadowing of who is masked by the dog's form. As Faust attempts to read and study the scriptures, the dog
interrupts and frustrates his study by howling and growling, and then finally transforming into the form of
Mephistopheles himself. The dog works as a form of distraction, keeping Faust from studying the Word and at
the same time putting him into a frame of mind that will easily allow him to be influenced by the devil.
Following Faust's deal with the devil a student comes in wishing to interview Faust. Instead Mephistopheles
disguises himself as Faust and advises the student. The interview is intended as comic relief to lighten the

otherwise dark mood of the play.

Note Faust's lack of confidence in Mephistopheles' ability to make him feel at ease in social situations. Faust
argues he is both too old and too socially backward to enjoy the social scene. These fears are realized as Faust
feels uncomfortable and out of place in the bar and finally asks Mephistopheles for permission to leave. In the
second scene entitled "Faust's Study" Mephistopheles pays Faust a second visit. Faust shares with
Mephistopheles his dissatisfaction with his life and his desire for death. Mephistopheles asks Faust why he did
not go through with his suicide plan. Faust admits his plans were disrupted by the hope the songs of the Easter
celebration brought to him. He has now returned to his original despair and disillusionment with his life. It is at
this point that Mephistopheles presents his deal to Faust. He will serve Faust on earth if Faust will promise to
serve Mephistopheles in the afterlife. Faust agrees but adds that the devil must present him with some sort of
amusement that will bring Faust enough pleasure that Faust will not want it to end. Faust signs the pledge with
his own blood.
Quote
Problematizes the notion of gratification, and consequently renders more complex the temporal structure of
desire. This development is marked by a decreasing emphasis on the flirtatious pleasures. Shortly after his
wage with Mephistopheles, Faust REJECTS joy in favor of a mutual intensification of contradictory
emotions: most anguished lust, enamored enmity, restorative disgust. The pleasurable moments of the
poetry steer free of such tensions. Joy, cheer, pleasure, lust, rapture, all repeat themselves to prolong a
pleasure that no single experience can furnish for more than an instant.
The fantasy that desire survives on requires dialectic as temporalization, as the production of sequence, of
narrative, that moves toward an always unrealized end. Desire necessitates the emergence of fantasy in order to
screen the drives insistence. That fantasy, always experience as the very reality and opens the space of desire to
an infinite future of failed pursuit prolonging itself by negating the satisfaction at which it aims and only though
that negation attaining the enjoyment it refuses to know.
3.
Summary

Becausethemonsterisallsensitiveandstuff,hestartstorealizethatFelixistotallysad,too.
Soon,ahot,foreignwomanarrivesatthecottage.Felixperksup.Sodoeseveryoneelse.
Thewoman,Safie,doesn'tspeakthelanguagethattherestofthecottagepeopledo,sothey
teachittoher,whichisconvenientforthemonsterheeavesdropsonherlessonsandlearns
thelanguage,too.
Healsolearnstoreadandlearnabouttheworld.
HelearnsabouthistoryfromthebookRuinsofEmpiresthatFelixusestoteachSafie.
Allthisliteracyisbothgoodandbad(likefire!);ithelpshimunderstandtheworld,butit
alsoremindshimthathecan'treallyparticipateintheworld.
He'suglyanddifferentandalone,andnowhereallyknowsit.
The monster relates how Felix reunites with his lost love, Safie, a woman of Turkish descent. Felix had rescued
Safie's father from death in France and had placed her in the protection of a convent of nuns. She arrives in
Germany just barely literate. Felix is overjoyed to see her again. Safie makes an earnest attempt to learn the De
Lacey's language, which benefits the monster in learning a language as well. While listening to the
conversations in the house, the monster gets a brief but memorable lesson in the history of Europe. Content in
his hiding place, he calls the De Lacey family his "protectors."

Analysis
Mary Shelley advances two concepts in this chapter that are central to the novel: one is the use of knowledge
for good purposes, to know the world around you; and, the second is to question the essence of man's
good and evil tendencies.
Shelley wonders how man can be forever changed by the simple act of acquiring information about his
world. How can we as learned humans forever change the nature of man? Can learning be undone or is it
permanent once learned:"Of what a strange nature is knowledge? It clings to the mind when it has once
seized on it like a lichen on the rock." This again is the "use of knowledge for good purposes" concept.
Shelley seeks to find out how man is a paradox of contrasts:"Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous
and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at
another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike." She is questioning the existence of good and evil
present in all men. This is a concept that crops up from the story of Adam in the Bible and one of the questions
posed by

Milton in Paradise Lost.

Also, Shelley causes the monster to question his own creation. He realizes that he is different and does not fit
into society, a thought that terrifies him. He seeks to rationalize his being, meanwhile answering his doubts with
answers:"Of my creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no
property. I was not even of the same nature as man." The monster must wonder, "where do I belong in the
scheme of life, with men or among the animals?" Furthermore, who were his family and did he have a mother
or father? These questions serve to fuel his inquisitive instincts. Only through Victor can some of his doubts be
answered.
Reflecting on his own situation, he realizes that he is deformed and alone. Was I then a monster, he asks, a
blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? He also learns about the pleasures
and obligations of the family and of human relations in general, which deepens the agony of his own isolation.
Quote
The nature of knowledge is such, that once acquired, knowledge will stay in your mind. She/He compares
knowledge's staying power to lichen--that white fungus (moss) growing on rocks that cannot be removed
without determined scraping !
Summary:
The middle part of Frankenstein is that of Victor's downfall. After his initial success in part I, he is afraid of the
monster he has created and runs in fear, only to find the monster missing when he returns.
The beginning of part II follows the story from Victor's point of view as he returns home to his broken family
and finds his brother has been murdered and the family maid is accused. Although he doesn't tell his family,
Victor knows it could only be the monster that has done this. Completely depressed, Victor retreats to his

favorite spot in the mountains, exploring a glacier and admiring the beauty of nature, which revitalizes him:
until he encounters his monster.
The end of part II follows the story of Frankensteins monster. The monster, dazed and confused after being
created, retreated to the forest and then spent his time trying to understand his senses; distinguishing between
light and darkness, finding food, discovering fire, and trying t understand humans. But when he first encounters
humans, he is fought back and hurt, so he once again retreats to find a small hovel. In his small hovel, the
monster observes and learns from a poor family, slowly learning their language (French) and eventually
learning their background. Fearful of receiving the same attacks that were made on him by the other villagers,
the monster first approaches the father of the family, who is blind, while the others are out. But when the others
return he is once again beaten and thrown out, even though the monster sympathized with them and wanted to
help. This is the breaking point for the monster, as he burns the hovel and proceeds to chase down his creator
(whom he had learned about through a journal that had been left in his coat pocket when he escaped the lab).
The monster is drawn to Geneva where he kills Frankenstein's brother and frames the maid. Part II of
Frankenstein is concluded with the monster pleading Frankenstein to make him a female partner to have as
company as he escapes human society by retreating to the Americas. Victor accepts the task of creating a second
monster in order to protect what is left of his family.
Analysis:
From the start of this section, it can be seen that nature has a deep effect on Victor. As the weather changes, so
does Victor's mood, "The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and I was miserable." Consequently the
monster is also tied to nature, as he grows and learns in the wild, he becomes attuned to the changes in nature
and his feelings are reflected in the evolution of the seasons. In the winter he is scared and confused, but as the
seasons progress towards spring and summer, and he gains more knowledge about himself and his surroundings,
he becomes more relaxed and content.
The ties that both Victor and the monster share with nature connects them both and reinforces the powerful
(though unwanted) bound between creator and created. This bond is further displayed with the fact that
although Victor appears normal on the outside, on the inside, he is full of turmoil over what he has done.
Conversely, the monster appears deformed and ugly on the outside when on the inside he is sensitive to the
feelings of others, such as the plight of Felix and Agatha.
The theme of hubris, of gaining too much knowledge, is also continued throughout this section. It is seen in
the second part of the book that too much knowledge is painful, if not wrong, especially in the case of the
monster. Only once he became aware of his situation as a deformed outcast from society, does the monster first
become destructive and dangerous. At first bearing the beatings, but then striking back the more he realized his
foregone position. The monster shows that ignorance is bliss when he states "Of what a strange nature is
knowledge, it clings to the mind when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock." The monster's kindling
feelings of resentment towards his creator has culminated into a blaze of hostility by the conclusion of the
second section of Frankenstein, setting the scene for the end of the book.
ON THE NATURE OF THINGS

4.
1. Sketch of the structural development of Freud's argument:Merchant (3 caskets) > Astral
myth (3 planets) > Merchant (3 women, on basis of symbolic substitution) > King Lear (3
daughters/sisters) > Paris Myth (choice among 3 women) > Cinderella (3 sisters) > Myth of
Psyche (3 daughters/sisters) > Common Feature? = inconspicuousness, silence,
"unshining", pallor, hidden. These are all symbols of Death according to dream logic.
Hence choice of death = Myth of the 3 Fates (3 women). If the unconscious message is: The
necessity of death, then in the manifest content of the myths this is distorted by turning

both terms into their opposites. Necessity > choice; death > love: The message on the
manifest level is thus: The choice of love. Wish-fulfillment has altered the "authentic"
unconscious message into this more acceptable and pleasing conscious one.
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Psst. If you haven't already read about the symbolism of the lottery, do that before your read this.
The three caskets (gold, silver, and lead) are major symbols in the play. The big tipoff is the fact that each of
them is inscribed with a message on the outside and also contains a note on the inside.
The outside of the blinged-out gold chest promises, "Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire."
Sounds nice, but it's a trick, because the inside contains a skull with a smug message: "All that glisters [glitters]
is not gold [...]" (2.7.73). In other words, appearances are often deceiving, and human desire (for wealth, sex,
what have you) can be dangerous.
The inscription on the outside of the silver chest reads, "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves."
The inside contains a picture of an "idiot," with a nasty little note: "So be gone: you are sped. / Still more fool I
shall appear / By the time I linger here / With one fool's head I came to woo, / But I go away with two" (2.9.7882). In other words, whoever chooses the silver casket is a fool who'll get what he deserves (a picture of another
fool). Finally, the lead chest, which is made of a very humble metal, seems to symbolize inner beauty and
modesty (the exact opposite of the shiny gold casket) and contains a picture of Portia. The inscription is also
significant: "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath" (2.7.11-12). Gee, this sounds like a pretty
good description of marriage: a big risk that requires a lot of sacrifice. The inscription also reminds us of the
fact that Bassanio's courtship of Portia literally involves a man who must "hazard all he hath." (That would be
Antonio, who risks his life to loan his best pal the money to woo the rich heiress.)
***KING LEAR
5.
When my mother died I was very young,
The poem opens with the speaker telling us that his mother died when he was just a wee little tyke.
How young is "very young"? Five? Six? Three? Yeah, somewhere in there sounds about right.
This line is just a basic, give-you-the-facts kind of opener, don't you think?
Still, there's at least one thing to notice: the sing-songy rhythm Blake's got going on. When my mother
died I was very young.
Lines 2-4
And my father sold me while yet my tongueCould scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!So your chimneys I
sweep, and in soot I sleep.
A. The speaker tells us more about his childhood. It turns out his father sold him before he could even
really speak.
B. Um, did he just say sold? Is he saying he's a slave? This is headed nowhere good.
C. The phrase "my tongue / Could scarcely cry" is a neat, poetic way of saying "before I could even cry."
Blake's gettin' all fancy on us.
D. Plus, he's using a little device called metonymy here, too. When he says tongue, he's really referring to
the speaker's voice (a tongue can't actually make a sound all on its own). When a poet uses something
closely related to something else to refer to that something else, we call it metonymy.
E. In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most chimney sweeperspeople who cleaned
chimneyswere young boys, because they were small and could crawl up there with ease.
F. So we're thinking that the boy's father sold him to somebody who runs a chimney-cleaning business.
After all, he tells us straight up that because his father sold him, he sweeps chimneys, and sleeps in soot.
G. Does the boy sleep in a pile of soot? Or is he so dirty from working that he has soot all over his body?
Either way, it does not sound fun.

H. As it turns out, sometimes, chimney sweepers would sleep under the blankets or cloths they used to
collect soot during the day. This was known as sleeping in soot.
I. Notice anything else here? How about that rhythm from the first linehas it changed at all?
And what about the rhyme scheme? Did you notice that? It looks like a straight up AABB. Young rhymes with
tongue, and weep rhymes with sleep.
Blakes attempt to invoke pity in the reader is also supported by his use of anecdote. The work is written
through the perspective of an experienced chimney sweep who was so young that he couldnt pronounce the
word sweep. The childs lisp in pronouncing his cry sweep!had its pathetic significance (Damon 270)
in that it invokes pity in the reader; Blake used the childs inability to form speech, a problem associated with
young children, to show the injustices of putting such young children in such a dangerous line of work. As an
experienced sweep, the narrator consoles a new recruit, Tom Dacre, who cried when his headwas shavd
(SIE, Copy Z), a common practice, since hair would collect large quantities of soot (Essick 52-3). However,
the speaker reassures Tom that the shaving of his head is a good thing, for the soot cannot spoil your [his]
white hair (SIE, Copy Z). The speakers ability to find the silver lining of every cloud (Essick 53) embodies
the tragedy of the poemthe childrens ability to remain innocent and optimistic in such a hopeless, oppressive
environment.
In addition to blaming religion for giving the sweeps false hope of a better life, Blake, as a part of his social
commentary, also blames humanity in general for allowing and encouraging such a dangerous and inhumane
practice. By using the word your in the line so your chimneys I sweep (SIE, Copy Z), Blake implicates the
reader in the circle of exploitation (Essick 53). Blake claims that by supporting the sweeping industry, society
as a whole is perpetuating and encouraging the oppressive conditions in which the young sweeps live. The
sweeps trust in the justice and benevolence of the very world that has injured them is terribly pathetic (Leader
46); Blake invokes a feeling of guilt in the reader by juxtaposing Toms dream with subtle accusations of
societys betrayal of these young children.
1
2

"The Chimney Sweeper"

by William Blake

2
1

When my mother died I was very young,And my father sold me while yet my
tongueCould scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"So your chimneys I sweep & in soot
I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,That curl'd like a lamb's back. was
shav'd: so I said"Hush. Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bareYou know that the soot
cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet & that very night,As Tom was a-sleeping,
he had such a sight!That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned or Jack.Were all of them
lock'd up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key,And he open'd the
coffins & set them all free;Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,And wash in
a river. and shine in the Sun. Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,They rise upon
clouds and sport in the wind;And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,He'd have God
for his father & never want joy. And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark.And got with
our bags & our brushes to work.Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;So if all
do their duty they need not fear harm.

2
The child is the object of the verb "sold," which tells us that his suffering is forced upon him by somebody else.
Moreover, he is sold before he can even speak, which implies he's been suffering for a long time, and has no say
in the matter.
This poem is narrated by a nameless child, who does not give the reader much information about himself. The
first line of the poem is about his mothers death; the second describes his father selling him as a chimney
sweeper. By not talking about his condition in the first lines, he diverts the readers attention away from himself,
which shows that he may not think his life is worth mentioning. He does speak about himself, or rather, his

tongue, in the third line: yet my tongue/Could scarcely cry weep! weep! weep! This line should not be
interpreted as the narrators protest. Because he is so young, the narrator cannot pronounce sweep. So instead
of being aware of his condition, the narrator has accepted his life without protest and is crying without being
conscious of it. The next line, So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep, Blake writes your chimneys to
involve the reader. This accusatory statement causes the reader to think about their involvement in this
inequality. This is the last line of the first stanza and the last time we hear about the narrators personal
condition. Blake is showing the reader that the narrator does not place value on his life, which is why he resists
giving us information about himself.
The first stanza introduces the narrator, a young sweep, and the family background which caused his
unfortunate, lowly position:
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. (1-4)
The young sweep was abandoned through death and betrayal by the two people most readers depend upon to
support and nurture them throughout adolescence, causing his fate as an unloved and unknown chimney
sweeper. Blake does not even give the young speaker a name, using instead the mysterious first person voice.
For the father to sell the boy so young, the reader knows that the sweep comes from a poor background, where
money (or morals) is short; however, though the sweep is an individual, his nameand individual status
portrayed by that nameappears unimportant.
The anaphora weep in the third line holds an ironic double meaning: while it could be read literally as the
cry of a young child unable to pronounce his s, it also symbolizes the weepingor lack thereofof the
little sweep. Thrown into work so young, the sweep may not have realized the horror of his position until just
recently. This double meaning stems from the metonymy of a tongue crying: the reader thinks of words as well
as tears. Also, the alliteration of the consonant s (sweep, soot, sleep) sounds like a brush
repetitiously scraping a chimney wall. The dirty sweep cannot avoid his condition, even in sleep.
Blake has the sweep address his readers' morality in line four your chimneys (italics mine) because
they assist in his current soot-filled existence by hiring him to clean their chimneys. Through this, Blake
places the blame for the social epidemic of sweepers onto his readers for not stopping the cruelty.
3
6.
Only the elite survive.
Darwins theory is based on the notion of variation. It argues that the numerous traits and adaptations that
differentiate species from each other also explain how species evolved over time and gradually diverged.
Variations in organisms are apparent both within domesticated species and within species throughout the natural
world. Variations in colors, structures, organs, and physical traits differentiate a multitude of species from one
another. Heredity is the mechanism that perpetuates variations, Darwin argues, as traits are passed from parents
to offspring. What is important about these variations to Darwin, though, is the way they allow species to adapt
and survive in the natural world. He gives numerous examples of variations that illustrate the wondrous
adaptations that allow species to survive in their natural environments: the beak that allows the woodpecker to
gather insects, the wings that allow the bat to fly, the paddles that allow the porpoise to swim, and so on.
Darwin hypothesizes that the minor variations we see within a single speciessuch as variations in size, shape,
and color of organismsare related to the more distinct variations seen across different species. His theory of
evolution explains how variations cause the origin of species.
Natural selection is the key component of Darwins theory, as it explains the relationship between
variation and the eventual evolution of a species. Borrowing from Thomas Malthuss principle of exponential
population growth, Darwin argues that the possibility of infinite growth of population sizes is checked by the

limits of geography and natural resources, which will not allow an infinite number of beings to survive. As a
result of limited food, water, shelter, and so on, species must engage in a struggle for existence, creating
competition for survival. What decides, then, which species will survive and which will become extinct? Here is
where natural selection comes in. Darwin argues that organisms exhibiting advantageous variations
variations that will allow them to adapt to their environment better than other organisms dowill be more
likely to survive. Through heredity, these advantageous variations will be passed on to the organisms
offspring. Eventually, natural selection will allow those species best adapted to their environments to
survive and prosper, while species without these advantageous adaptations will lose the struggle for
existence and become extinct.
Natural selection is the mechanism that leads to descent with modification, Darwins term for the process of
evolution. Organisms will continually give birth to offspring that carry variations, some of which are
advantageous and some of which are not. As advantageous variations are naturally selected and become
perpetuated through successive generations, organisms carrying these advantageous variations will diverge from
the original species, eventually becoming a species of their own. Continual modification and divergence, then,
create a branching scheme of evolution, in which new species continually branch off from old ones. The
branches help biologists link later species back to an original parent species, identifying the point at which
different species are related to one another. Darwin notes that existing classification systems developed by
naturalists already show these relationships between species. Darwins theory of descent with modification,
then, simply provides an explanation for why many species seem so similar: Either they evolved from one
another, or they both evolved from a common parent species.
After laying out the main principles of his theory in the early chapters of Origin of the Species, Darwin devotes
much of the rest of the book to defending his theory against criticisms and presenting detailed examples of how
natural selection occurs. The geological record is a formidable impediment to Darwins theory, as the existing
fossil record does not provide the missing links in the chains of descent that Darwin proposes. In response,
Darwin argues that the geological record is imperfect and that many fossil remains have been destroyed by
changes in the earth or have yet to be discovered.
Darwin also attempts to explain how variations occur in species, driving natural selection and the creation of
new species. Geographical isolation is a key component of Darwins theory. Darwin hypothesizes that because
all species originated from one or a few original beings, species needed modes of transportation to migrate
between geographical areas throughout the world. Barriers such as oceans and mountain ranges restrict the
ability of organisms to migrate, and the few that manage to do so play a large role in shaping the evolution of
species on islands and in geographically isolated areas. Geographical isolation accounts for the plethora of
unique species on islands, as well as the wider distribution of species across continents.
Darwins theory challenged not only the prevailing view of the independent creation of species but also larger
claims of religion and science. Darwin explicitly denied the validity of natural theology, which posited that
species adaptations to their environments was proof of their intelligent design by a creator. It was natural
selection, not independent creation, that resulted in these adaptations, Darwin argued. Moreover, Darwins use
of scientific methodology to prove his theory amounted to an explicit critique of naturalists who would attempt
to ignore the scientific validity of his theory because of its controversial nature. While the text of The Origin of
Species did leave room for religious theology, Darwins overall commitment to scientific rationale rather than
theological reasoning pitted him against religious doctrine. Darwins text was controversial when it was
published, and it remains controversial today. However, his theory of natural selection has stood the test of time
in scientific circles, and it remains the leading scientific explanation for the origin of species.
Chapter 3
Darwin begins the bulk of his argument here, explaining how different species are created. Two concepts
dominate this explanation: the struggle for existence and natural selection. Darwin suggests that an organisms
struggle for existence is part of what determines why some species characteristics survive and others become
extinct. The great number of variations in species have allowed plants and animals to become beautifully
adapted to their environments. Darwin provides examples of these adaptations. He mentions the beak of a
woodpecker, which allows it to gather insects for food; the structure of a parasite, which allows it to attach to

and feed off of another organism; and the ability of a beetle to dive into the water to gather food. These
adaptations illustrate how unique characteristics of particular organisms have developed, allowing them to
thrive in their specific environments. The most advantageous characteristics are preserved and passed on to
offspring. Darwin explains that the presence of these useful adaptations in organisms is the result of natural
selection.
Two other concepts, the struggle for life and the limits of population increase, frame the idea of an organisms
drive to exist. Although nature can provide an abundance of food and shelter to its inhabitants, it can also be
destructive, causing a struggle for life. Natural disasters, epidemics, and shifts in climate can limit the
availability of food and shelter, and animals prey on other plants and animals. Nature inherently disallows the
survival of some organisms. Darwins principle of the limits of population increase, borrowed from economist
Thomas Malthus, is based on the notion that each successive generation of species exponentially increases its
population, growing the world population on a constant basis. If each generation continues to reproduce in
greater numbers than the one before, and the rate of death remains the same, the earth will eventually run out of
room and will be unable to support all of its inhabitants. Therefore, nature limits the number of possible
inhabitants of the world. As a result, each individual organism must compete to continue existing, and because
there must be a limit on population for every species, one individual organisms survival inherently threatens the
survival of another.
The constant competition for existence compels all organisms and species to strive to outlive others and
successfully leave offspring for the survival of the species. Most important to Darwins theory is the survival of
progeny, because future generations are both dependent on and essential to the perpetuation of advantageous
traits and the progress of their race. While much of the competition for existence takes place between members
of different species, the most important struggle is between members of the same species. Those individual
members who hold advantageous variations that allow them to avoid predators, withstand climate changes, and
survive natural disasters have the best chance of surviving. An advantageous variation, combined with
successful reproduction, can result in a change in the species, creating a subspecies better equipped to handle its
environment. Survival does not occur by chance. Rather, it is the result of advantageous variations.
Finally, Darwin indicates different ways in which the struggle for existence can occur in the natural world. Most
cases of survival involve one organism or group possessing an advantage over another one and beating it out.
Generally, a species with a larger population has a greater chance of survival than a species with a smaller
population, as its larger population makes it less likely to be wiped out by prey and better able to maintain its
great numbers through reproduction. In some cases, however, relationships between species govern the chances
of survival. Darwin points out that a single tree planted in any area allows further vegetation to grow there and
that the fencing off of a section of land to keep cattle away allows seedlings to flourish. In these cases, the
survival of a tree or removal of cattle allows the growth of an entirely different species. Struggles for survival
are dependent on others, whether those struggles end up being competitive or cooperative in nature.
Analysis
In this chapter, although Darwin begins to get to the heart of his theory of evolution, he continues to highlight
how the work of others helped him form his theory. In particular, he credits economist Thomas Malthus for
contributing the theory of a struggle for existence, one of the key concepts driving his own theory. Malthuss
theory provides a rationale for why many species become extinct: In the competition to continue living, the
traits that allow species to survive shape the descent of new species, providing the impetus for natural selection.
Darwin also uses Malthuss theory to delve into an entirely different realm of scientific thought, using
mathematics and statistics to define the model of population growth. Darwin demonstrates the value of drawing
on several scientific fields (in this case, botany, zoology, and mathematics) to construct a scientific theory.
Darwins notion of the struggle for existence personifies natures contradictions. He reflects on the beautiful and
benevolent qualities of nature, which creates many different beings with adaptations that are perfectly
constructed for individual organisms survival. Darwin also paints a darker picture: Nature can provide
abundance for survival, but it can also be destructive. Geography limits population growth, and natures changes
can destroy life. The search for food also creates inherent destruction, as animals must prey on plants and one
another for sustenance. These portrayals of nature as both a benevolent and cruel force can lead to the
misinterpretation of natural selection as a clash between forces of good and evil.

The discussion of the modes of selection brings up the contrasting concepts of competition and cooperation.
Nature positions species both as partners in survival and as rivals. On the one hand, the battle to survive
involves competition for limited natural resources, as only certain organisms with advantageous variations are
able to survive over others in their particular environments. On the other hand, the interaction between species
during the competition also leads to cooperation. For example, the case of a planted tree allowing other plants to
flourish around it suggests a mutually beneficial relationship between the tree and plants that ensures their
collective survival.
The concept of the struggle for existence may be applied, by extension, to human society. If geometrical
population increase is limited in the natural world due to geography and natural resources, human population
increase must also have its limits. Do humans engage in a competition for continued existence? If so, do they
have to fight one another to survive? Or, might humans work together to survive, as in Darwins example of the
tree and plants? Also, are humans with the most advantageous positions (in the workforce, for example)
winning the battle? In a broader sense, the implied question of whether humans fight to live again casts doubt
on the strictness of the separation between humans and the natural world. What Darwins work says about
human life spawned much of the controversy surrounding The Origin of Speciesand modern evolutionary
theory.
Darwin pretty much sums up natural selection in the beginning of the third chapter, "Owing to this struggle for
life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an
individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings to external nature, will tend
to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will
thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born,
but a small number can survive," (Darwin, 132).
Darwin preferred the view of competition between individuals over cooperation in groups as the main drive of
evolution, a debate that is still strong today -- how much of a species survival is determined by individual
success against group success? Social Darwinism is all about competition, and not really at all about biology at
all. However, it is an important distinction to make. Survival of the fittest is Social Darwinism, actual
Darwinism is more along the lines of the fittest having the greatest reproductive success. Social Darwinism
came about around the time of Darwin's publication, and was quite influential in an already competitive
Victorian society. Darwin himself didn't actually espouse the ideas, they were actually started by Herbert
Spenser. Social Darwinism was used as a justification for imperialism, exploitation, unchecked capitalism,
eugenics, and a slew of other evils (2). The point of this little tangent is that Social Darwinism does not equal
Darwinism, at all. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this mistake propagated by the media, specifically
network news.
Back to the book, chapter 3 is also kind of short and is all about natural struggle as well as geometric increases
in population.
Geometric increase is basically exponential increase, meaning that the population will increase steadily
exponentially rather than at a steady linear rate. This accounts for rapid increases in populations. Darwin used
the example of elephants, because they live a long time and produce a very small number of progeny. His math
leaves a lot to be desired, but he was right in a very basic sense. So Darwin proposed that an elephant lives
about 90 years and has 3 calves, and each of those calves grow up to have 3 more. Darwin estimated that after
500 years, there would be something on the order of 15 million elephants stemming from one pair (1). Well, no,
actually if we're talking approximately 5 generations, that would be 3^5 elephants, or 243. This is opposed to
linear growth in which 5 generations would yield 3x5 or 15 elephants, big difference. Did no one think to check
these calculations before publishing; I mean, if Darwin had been right, we'd be up to the empire state building in
elephants. Also, not every one of those 3 calves are going to necessarily have three calves because some of them

are going to have to be male (or else there will be no elephants). Regardless, geometric growth is how species
propagate.
Speaking of those elephants, not all 3 calves will survive to produce calves of their own, thus the struggle for
existence. "Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a
struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species or with the individuals of distinct
species, or with the physical conditions of life," (Darwin, 134). Basically, more progeny must be produced
because not all of them are going to make it. This also brings up differences in parental investment, species that
invest a great deal in their offspring generally have fewer than those who do not beyond birth, but I'll save that
for a separate blog post.
Darwin brings up the effect of climate on the struggle for existence, and how particular occurrences such as cold
winters or dry summers impact populations short term. Later in the chapter Darwin suggests that certain
varieties could mix to produce an individual better suited to a certain environment, and varieties ill-suited to the
climate will soon disappear (1). This is basically a primer for natural selection, which is detailed in the next
chapter.
He also notes the impact of one species on another. Darwin recognized the relationships between species, and
used an example of certain bees associated with specific flowers. Darwin extends this to the bees being
impacted by field mice, which are impacted by cats. Therefore, one could muse that a decrease in cats would
lead to a decrease in flowers (since the mice would increase and damage the bees in greater number) (1). This
co-evolution is widely seen today, and even in ourselves. E. coli is one such example; it has evolved to live in
our guts and we depend on it to aid in our digestion.
Darwin leaves us with this small comfort, "When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the
full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the
vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply," (Darwin, 143). Doesn't that just leave you feeling
warm and fuzzy?
7. / 9.
The author's preface to the novel, regarded as a manifesto of literary impressionism,[3] is considered one of
Conrad's most significant pieces of non-fiction writing.[4] This preface begins with the line, sometimes quoted,
"A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line".[5]
1897
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art
itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by
bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect 1887.
Conrad clearly lays out problems of surface and depth here, akin to Forsters interest in flat and round
characters these are some of the many origins of the denigration of attention to surface culture. Like Woolf,
Conrad is interested in discovering what is fundamental, what is enduring and essential the artist, then,
like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal 1887. But while the thinker plunges
into ideas, the scientist into facts, and they speak to us in common sense and always to our credulity it is
otherwise with the artist 1887.
Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of
stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal to our less obvious
capacities: to that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept
out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities like the vulnerable body within a steel armour 1887.
His appeal is less loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures
forever. The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories.

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift
and not an acquisition to our capacity for delight and wonder solidarity that knits together the loneliness of
innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear,
which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity the dead to the living and the living to the
unborn 1887.
Why is the effort made to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few individuals out of all the
disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the simple, and the voiceless? 1888. There is not a place of
splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only a passing glance of wonder and pity 1888.
Fiction if it at all aspires to be art appeals to nature. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like
all art, the appeal of one nature to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power
endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place
and time appeals primarily to the senses it must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the
colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music which is the art of arts 1888.
And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only
through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made
to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent
instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage 1888.
Its interesting that for Conrad, words are materials surfaces worn thin that need to be refaceted?
My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you
feel it is, before all, to make you see it is everything also, that glimpse of truth for which you have
forgotten to ask 1888.
To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life, is only the
beginning of the task to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment
before all eyes in the light of a sincere mode to show its vibration, its colour, its form reveal the substance
of its truth [to] attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision shall awaken in the
hearts of beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity which binds men to each other and all mankind to
the visible world 1889.
The writer who holds to these ideals cannot be faithful to any one of the temporary formulas of his craft the
supreme cry of Art for Art itself, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immortality. It sounds far off. It has
ceased to be a cry, and is heard only as a whisper, often incomprehensible 1889. Art is more like witnessing the
attempt of a laborer. Art is long and life is short (Hippocrates), and its goal is veiled in mists it is not to
unveil a secret or law, but something rarer.
To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by
the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour to make them
pause for a look reserved for only a very few to achieve behold! all the truth of life is there: a moment of
vision, a sigh, a smile and the return to an eternal rest 1889.
Heart of Darkness Conrad is not merely a spinner of yarns but also an Impressionist painter working with
sounds and images conjured up by sounds to make the reader (as he remarks in the well-known "Preface" to
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' ) "hear," "feel," and "before al, . . . see" ( NN 13). Conrad does not rely on the
intellectual cognition or decoding of mythological references in the way that Hardy does, although with the
later novelist, too, a knowledge of the classics will furnish the reader with the necessary mental bank of
images to "see" as Conrad would have him do. However, one needs neither a specific and detailed
knowledge of Bulfinch's Mythology to mediate between his consciousness and Conrad's text, nor even a general
acquaintance with the classics to feel the power of Conrad's imagery. Since Conrad would have his reader
hear and, above all, see, he fashions his symbols with images that appeal to the senses first, and to the
intellect second.
***Heart of Darkness***
to the lighthouse!!!!

Andthisis,finally,ConradsownviewoftheNiggerassetforthinthepreface:theNiggermust
simultaneouslyserveasthecentreoftheshipscollectivepsychologyandremainnothing,the
thingwithnobeingfromwhichthebeingofthecommunityarises(xlv).
He argues that the frequently identified modernist impulse in this work can be understood as an extreme
tension between the wish for a language capable of conveying important sensual truths, expressed by
Conrad in the preface, and a fear of the impossibility of attaining this goal, which is the motivating force
of the novel itself.

7 Paintings/ Music

The painting divides easily into four vertical zones: mirror, still life, woman, and that large, vague expanse of
brushwork on the right sidewhat is that thing? At first it appears to be a flat, patterned area: a patch of floral
wallpaper, perhaps. Then I notice a form that seems to stand against the wall and frame the pattern, and I try to
read the passage as a picture on a wall or another mirror, or even a mantlepiece with a painted firescreen. I
struggle to make the brushwork cohere into a recognizable form, but none of the possibilities seems to fit. And
just when Ive decided to interpret it as a wallpapered wall and move on to another part of the painting, the
puzzle pieces finally come together for a second, and I see a bed. Of course. What else would one expect to find
in a boudoir? The strange frame shape becomes the head of the bed, a plump pillow lies below it, and under
that we see the beds side covered by a floral spread. Once recognized, the form can always be decoded, but it is
never seen as automatically as the woman or the mirror. Morisot makes us work to see the bed. By painting it so
loosely that her brushwork tends to resemble only itselfstrokes of paint on a flat surface; by drawing the
bedframe so that it doesnt obviously recede into perspective space, but seems to lie flat against a wall of paint;
by painting the floral pattern of the bedcover so that instead of following the forms of the bed it seems to climb
vine-like up a flat wall (a passage that anticipates the flattening patterns in some of Matisses works)in all of
these ways, Morisot forces us to actively construct the objects we see. The viewer becomes the painters
accomplice in the creation of meaning.

The loosest and most difficult passage in this entire paintingeven harder to understand than the bedis the area
above the still life between the womans head and the mirror. Three vertical slats with accents of color placed
between them suggest a window with a view of flowers, possibly a garden. But the area is extremely obscure; it
resists definite identification. The shape at the left that reads as a curtain might also be part of a canopy over the
bed. And if the passage is indeed a view of a garden through a window, then the style and color harmonizes so
well with the bed that we might almost imagine the garden to have invaded the boudoir. The wall between
exterior and interior blurs like so many of the paintings other forms, and the flowery background brushwork
assumes a windswept quality, like a garden on a breezy summer day. This feeling of openness mitigates the
paintings sense of enclosure and complicates any feminist interpretation that might see the woman as a
beautiful creature in a gilded cage. This room is both closed and open; like Morisots brushwork, it is
both controlled and free.
Into the light, delicate harmonies of this room the mirror intrudes like the oom-pah of a tuba among the
pleasant tones of woodwinds. With its dark color and sharp angles, this large mirror would seem wholly out of
place were it not subtly integrated into the composition by Morisots design. The straight, vertical edge of the
mirror frame frames one side of the still life/window area, while the angle of the lower mirror is (even more
wittily) mirrored by the angle of the womans left arm. This kind of visual wit is familiar to us from the works
of Degas and Manet, and its presence here comes as a pleasant surprise. But even thus integrated, the mirror still
seems like an intruder, a heavy, solid, masculine form in an airy, soft, feminine space. Should we think of the
mirror as a masculine symbol? While it is tempting to identify the mirrors implied reflectiona vision of the
woman as others will see herwith the dreaded male gaze, that Evil Eye of feminist theory, we should not
assume that the woman is arranging herself solely to meet the glances of men. Indeed, if she is preparing for a
day of visiting or receiving guests, she is dressing primarily to face womens eyes. So perhaps we should leave
the mirror itself aside for a moment and consider the frame. This heavy wooden frame is a much more
obviously incongruous, and thus masculine, element. It should remind us that all glances, male and female,
directed at this woman take place within a society framed by men, a world in which the rules and social
structures that determine much of ones life are made by and for men and (very often) enforced by women. The
rules demanding that the twenty-something Morisot (who was in many respects a conventional woman of the
Parisian upper middle-class) could only sketch at the Louvre when chaperoned by her mother, that she could
only pose for Manet under the same conditions, that her works would always (even today, by well-meaning
critics) be judged by different standards from those applied to her male peersthese are just three examples from
the elaborate system of social structures, mores and prejudices that combined to form the male-ordered frame in
which Morisot lived and worked, the frame within which all reflection, all vision, all sight occurred.
This painting exists between the extremes of mirror and bed, deconstruction and construction, and in its
center is the woman, one arm lowered toward the mirror that dissolves form, the other arm raised toward the
bed that rises into recognition. The woman is the most legible element in the painting, but even her figure
contains some puzzling obscurities. Her face and left arm have a strange, blurred quality that seems to suggest
more than just the artists usual vigorous handling. There is a hint here of a new way of seeing, better attuned to
the demands of modern life. This distanced, de-focused, indefinite way of seeing, a feature of much
Impressionist painting, is one of the conditions of modern urban life, a way of keeping our sensory impressions
down to a manageable level and avoiding overload. One unsettling aspect of Morisots painting is the
implication that this new vision is not restricted to crowded public spaces. We see it here on the womans face
and arm, even here in the boudoir, the most private of places.
In this private place the woman turns her back to us and lets a strap fall from her shoulder. In the work of
most other painters (Degas being a notable exception) this image would carry an unmistakable erotic charge, the
thrill of voyeuristic pleasure. Here, though, any erotic fantasy on the viewers part is quickly forestalled by the
blatant reality of Morisots paint. This is no airbrushed nymph out of Bouguereau, her eyes coyly lowered so as
not to interfere with our view of her photographically illusionistic body. Nor is this Manets Olympia with her
challenging gaze. In Morisots work, the paint itself stares us in the face. Instead of a smooth, inviting expanse
of soft skin across the womans upper back, we see the material from which this illusion of skin is constructed:
overlapping strips of pigment that still wear the marks of the painters brush. The artists painterly realism

leaves little room for reverie. The greatest power in this passage is the power of pigments to bind and harmonize
and create; the greatest sensuality is that of painterly touch. The only eroticism in this painting is an erotics
of paint.
Like all of Morisots best works, Woman at Her Toilette performs a delicate negotiation between materials
and representation, between the reality of paint and the illusion of form. An accomplished painterly juggler,
Morisot keeps all of the works opposing tendencies in play. This painting is both-and rather than either-or:
both paint and image, both constructionist and deconstructionist, both space as deep as a room and surface as
flat as a mirror. And amazingly, these conjunctions produce not a dissonant mess but a harmonious wholea
harmony that contains suggestions of constant change. Throughout this work there is a sense of the fluidity of
solid things, suggesting the fragility of seemingly solid social structures, of the whole bourgeois edifice within
which Morisot lived her life (and often found contentment). There is also an intimation of the artificial,
constructed nature of our lives. What is this woman doing, after all, but constructing a persona for public
view, putting on a social mask? Morisot keeps it all in play and brings the work to completion in a kind of
dynamic suspension. Constantly in a state of formation and dissolution, this painting is like a wave forever
approaching and receding, never quite breaking against the shore.
In Morisots Lady at her Toilet, she portrayed a women dressing up in front of a mirror. The woman wore a
white dress and she was making her hair. Although the painter chose to picture this woman without showing her
face, the audiences still could understand her action. Accompanying with the little chaotic background, the
brush strokes were not smooth but uneven. With a very impressionic style of painting, the subject Morisot
chooses was more important. Here, the woman was at a semi-dressing state in the toilet. In nineteenth-century,
dressing up for women was crucial because they needed to display their beauty to men. It was even believed
that the toilette was for women the same as painting for men.[4] Moreover, as a female artist, Berthe Morisot
had a precise perspective on womens life. Edgar Degas, a male impressionist artist, also painted the scene of a
woman in toilet. In his Woman in a Tub, a woman was cleaning her body with a white cloth in a metal tub.
Same as what Morisot did, Degas painted the womens back mostly without showing her face. However, the
painting illustrated the woman sympatheticly because she was washing herself solitarily and the painter did not
display any beauty of the body but folly of her action. With a different angle of seeing the domestic family, as
females terrotory, Morisot had a sensitive view about her life and portrayed females in her own perspective.
---------no ,ythology because intellect

The theme of the picture is reconciliation. After the excesses of the reign of Terror, this was an appealing idea,
and historians are fond of claiming the picture as a tribute to his wife. But the most striking thing about this
painting is that the warriors are nude. David was inspired by the idea that the Greeks had represented their gods,
athletes, and heroes in the nude. Unlike Michelangelo, David did not seek to glorify masculine beauty, but
rather to endow his heroes with a superior quality that, ultimately, was more moral than physical. With the
exception of Romulus, these nude bodies are not particularly muscular. David wanted to refine, to strip away
anything that was unnecessary, to reduce everything to a supreme, heroic simplicity.

The element that we probably find most seductive about this painting today is the way in which David has
projected and controlled the tumultuous movement of all the figures, which he then brings to an abrupt halt.
Hersilia and the other Sabine Women really seem to be bursting onto the scene, which they dominate. In
contrast, the armies are only suggested, rather than represented, by a forest of lances, pikes, and standards; the
leader of the cavalry puts his sword back in its sheath, the horses rear in a static, quivering motion; the two
warriors who are about to clash are frozen in their attitudes, their furious precipitation arrested as they seem
rooted to the spot. David has also tamed his colors. Of his earlier palette, he has retained only some of the vivid
reds on the shoulder of Tatius, Romulus's helmet, and the robe of the woman behind Hersilia; elsewhere, the
reds are shaded with brick-toned hues. Some yellows, not as bright as in earlier paintings, a bit of green on the
old woman's robe, and a bit of blue near Tatius's foot recall the tones David had once preferred. In contrast, the
nude bodies, the walls of Rome, the standards and the pikes, the horse's hide, and Hersilia's tunic make up a
spectrum of clear bronzed tones under a slightly tinted sky.
He has totally abandoned any attempt at chiaroscuro or shadow effects. The light is everywhere. He wants to
show the light as a triumphant but gentle mediatrix, like the Sabine Women. For a closer look, click on Hersilia.
David depicts the aftermath of these events, where the enraged Sabines have confronted the belligerent Romans
on the battlefield. The men are on the brink of battle, though they stand hindered as the Sabine women have
thrown themselves into the midst of the fighting.
David has positioned the principal figures in the foreground, emphasizing their relationship with one another. In
the front left, Tatius is leaning away from battle as if about to retreat. Romulus holds a spear in the air, poised to
attack and yet he seems to hesitate. Hersilia has thrust herself and her children between her husband and her
father. Her arms are stretched out, a desperate plea for the warriors on both sides to surrender. Her white gown
the color of surrenderstands out prominently in the composition. Hersilia has become the arbiter of conflict
and the envoy of peace, and both Romulus and Tatius appear to heed her call. Even the geometrical shapes that
David implements in these figures speak of peace. By using an oval and a circle to depict Tatius and Romuluss
shields, David shows that two seemingly disparate entities are still derivative of the same source, much like
family. The emphasis on familial conflict reflects the civil unrest in France, and as the painting depicts peace
and reconciliation, David urges others to adopt the practice.
David has strategically situated the composition around the dynamic between Tatius, Hersilia, and Romulus.
The horsemen behind Romulus are shown sheathing their swords. Both the Sabines and the Romans have
repositioned their spears towards the sky, rather than each other. Women have thrown themselves, and their
children, into the battlefield to stop the fighting. David has incorporated the children to echo the sentiments that
war does not merely affect those involved, but future generations as well.
While The Intervention of the Sabine Women took David nearly four years to complete, its message has
resonated throughout time. What began as a call for France to repurpose itself in the post-revolution era became
a message of peace to the world. And centuries later, in a world that is once again wrought with violence and
bloodshed, Davids message is once again relevant.

The five surviving portraits are bust length and in front view, without hands. The canvases vary in dimensions
but the heads are all close to life-size.
In Gericaults Monomania: Portrait of and Excessively Jealous Woman, the artist captures the pure emotion of a
woman suffering from a debilitating mental disease. The composition is symmetrical for the most part and the
subject is positioned in the center of the canvas, which emphasizes her more as a point of focus. The brushwork
is visible, but disappears around her face where there is great detail to clearly show her emotional state. The rest
of her contains very visible brushwork, and its very sketchy. Most of her body doesnt even seem to be
brushed, but more like the paint has been blocked in with a palette knife, thus making the details of the face
stand out more. Contours have been completely eliminated in this painting; he uses direct tone and color instead
to convey the painting. There seems to be no direct light source everything seems to be in the dark, perhaps
hinting at the subjects mental state of mind. The only thing that seems remotely lit up is the womens face
drawing more attention to the expression on it. The colors are of a darker palette, and there is a slight sense of
complimentary colors with the red and a very deep dark green. The repetition of the color red in her clothes and
again in her eyes is a very strong emphasis in this painting. It helps draw more attention to her expression thus
adding more emotional content to the painitng. Plus, the red in her eyes alludes to her instability. There is no
sense of deep space. The women seems have been painted from straight on, although there is something to the
right of the artist that is drawing her attention that way, quite possibly making her have her present expression.
He really captured the intent glare of a jealousy. Her scour is chilling its so full of envy. Gericault manipulates
all the elements of this painting to draw attention to the volatility in her face, thus setting the mood for the
piece. Its not just her expression that hints to her illness. She is very unkempt which also lets the viewer know
she is not of sound mind. Her bonnet isnt tied but rather just thrown on her head. Her hair is sticking out on the
left side. One does not just see how the disease is affecting her physical appearance, but she is painted in such a
way that you almost feel like you are inside her head feeling what her disease is doing to her.
According to Thomas Crow Gericault produced his paintings about mental patients in wake of his disappointing
reviews over The Raft of Medusa. He had produced ten paintings, however five survived. They are dated back
to his final return to England in 1822 until the last years of his life two years later. The portraits are connected to
a psychiatrist named Etienne-Jean Georgette. He published a statement arguing for the expansion of the insanity
plea in capital cases. As a result he was denounced by royalist for downplaying their role in society. His
argument was based on the psychological findings of J.E.D Esquirol who had created different categories for

mental illness such as monomania. Georgette theorized that there were many different aspects of mental
dysfunction. A surge of monomaniacs emerged. The whole idea of it all was very revolutionary at the time.
Gericault represents all these types of mental illnesses in this portrait series. Others included theft, gambling,
and the kidnapping of children. This painting clearly depicts a woman who suffers from a condition that makes
her overly jealous (295-99).
Gericaults style is typically Romantic. The visible brushstrokes were meant to contrast with the neoclassical
style of virtually no visible brushstrokes. The expression on her face is also typical of the Romantic time period.
She is meant to have a strong expression on her face because Romanticism was about showing great emotion;
this was to contrast with the stoic expressions that are commonly found in many neoclassical paintings.
Romanticism was more about finding a strange beauty in more unusual subjects that werent blatantly appealing
to the eye. Gericault was going against the grain and creating artwork that was not considered aestically
pleasing at the time. There is nothing in the painitng that is ideally beautiful. However, the lines in her face, the
glare in her eyes, or the way her bonnet is draped around her head glowing like a halo gives the portrait an eerie
beauty that is magnetic.
At the time it was believed that there was a strong correlation between appearance and personality. Features like
the shape of a head or the expression in the eyes could provide a clue to personality disorders. For this reason
psychiatrist Etienne Georget thought that by studying the face of the woman in Gricaults Monomania: Portrait
of a Excessively Jealous Woman c1822, he would be able to work out what was wrong with her. For that reason,
he commissioned Gricault to paint ten portraits of his clients to
use as demonstrations in his courses on pathology.

Suzon stands alone in a crowded room. The look on her face is detached, melancholy, distracted from her job
serving at the bar in the vast crowded room reflected in the glass behind her. There is a locket around her neck
that is a token of another life, a love a long way from this job.
This is an unusual portrait because it is of someone at work, and someone who to our eyes is defined by her
work and is profoundly unhappy with it. She is alienated from her surroundings, as if there is a glass pane
between her and everyone else in the room - the drinkers, chatters-up, lovers, liars, thieves and businessmen.
Manet conveys Suzon's estrangement from her world by the fact that she is the only person in this painting who
is not reflected in glass. Everyone else in the painting is seen in the big bar mirror: the quickly painted, harshly
reflected faces and bodies, a woman in gloves with her lover or client, someone else looking at the scene with
binoculars. They are objects she is looking at - but at one remove, through a glass darkly.

The only solid realities are the marble bar top and the bottles - crme de menthe, champagne, beer - a bowl of
oranges, two flowers delicately placed in a vase. She has both hands firmly on the bar as if she needs to touch
something solid, in case she should be carried away by the vortex of light and shapes reflected in the mirror.
The dislocation of Suzon's world is deliberate. Paris is a hall of mirrors where Suzon floats helplessly, clinging
to her bar. The flowers are a touching attempt to preserve a little humanity, as are her neat blue clothes and
whole demeanour. It's amazing that contemporary critics saw her as a prostitute.
Inspirations and influences: A Bar at the Folies-Bergre is a modern version of Velazquez's Las Meninas
(1656-7), the most profound meditation on the portrait. In Las Meninas, ostensibly a picture of the royal Infanta
and her retinue of children, pets and dwarf, Velazquez includes the king and queen reflected in a mirror at the
back of this palace apartment. He himself stands painting them on a vast canvas looking at us, and we are the
royal eye, looking back at the world that exists for our regal gaze. Manet worshipped Velazquez, and transferred
this aesthetic of reflection to modern times, to create a world that only exists in mirrors; this turns the viewer
into a spectral, disturbing presence, part of the crowd that Suzon looks at with such disillusion. The 20thcentury painter whose portraits owe most to Manet was the flatly ironic Andy Warhol.
The model for the barmaid was a genuine employee of the Folies-Bergre. Named Suzon, she posed for Manet
in his studio behind a reconstructed bar. It is a question of academic debate as to whether the character in the
painting is not only a barmaid but also a prostitute. The look on her face is one of the most famous and
mysterious in art.
The barmaid is of a lower class than the people she serves. Her cheeks are reddened by an evenings work, her
facial expression seems melancholy, and her hands are un-gloved, a sign of her status as a working girl but
perhaps also of availability. In the mirror, she is depicted leaning towards a top-hatted man, who may be simply
purchasing a drink or perhaps something for later in the evening. The world of barmaids, artists models and
prostitutes often overlapped, as girls who sold goods or themselves. A contemporary critic even suggested that
the barmaids hair had recently been chopped off and that she had sold her long locks.
Our first thought is that the woman is standing behind a marble counter that is reflected in a large mirror just
behind her. But, as Jonathan Miller says " . . . none of the supposed duplications adds up." There is a figure just
behind the barmaid in the same pose and wearing the same clothes, but she is clearly at the wrong angle to be a
literal reflection of the barmaid facing us. In fact, the marble bar and the gold frame defining the mirror just
above it are exactly parallel to the picture plane, so the barmaids reflection would be hidden from view directly
behind her. But let us suppose that Manet was invoking artistic licence in positioning the reflection, asking us to
bend the geometry a little to allow the reflection to be visible. How would the rest of the picture map out?
Directly behind the barmaid is a marble countertop holding several bottles that are plausible replicas of those to
our left. This counter must be a reflection of the one that anchors the lower border of the picture. But we have
immediately learned that the bar, which looks so substantial under the barmaids hands, comes to an end just at
her right. In the open space thus revealed we see some indistinct figures under what appears to be a mezzanine
supported by a red pillar. The impressionistic figures above the gilt dcor of the mezzanine wall-front resolve
into patrons with their arms resting on the velvet-covered rim. These are evidently two begloved theatre-goers
watching the action on stage to our left. One is accompanied by a swell sporting a monocle, the other,
unaccompanied, is observing the entertainment through a pair of opera glasses. Behind them a couple seems to
be sauntering toward their seats. All are apparently oblivious of the diversion of a trapeze artist caught in midswing above their heads. Manet has depicted this as a kind of suspended animation, almost as an afterthought to
the evocation of the audience.
The elements of this scene may each be a logical component of a theatre composition, but their spatial relations
make a bizarre mix. If the barmaid is standing before a mirror, the counter-top on which she is resting seems to
be suspended in space over the heads of the patrons below the mezzanine. There seems to be no room in front of
her for customers to approach the bar. The logical architecture would be to have a mezzanine that continues on
the near side of the stage matching the part that we see on the far side of the stage. (Of course, since we are
looking in a mirror, these actual spatial relations would be reversed, but the symmetry of the pairing on either

side of the implied stage is just as compelling.) However, there is no sign of a mezzanine to support the bar
reflected in the mirror. The bar is clearly the sole entity in its immediate vicinity, with open space behind it.
And what a mezzanine! Once we look at it, is seems to be crowded with people. It clearly goes back well
behind the pillars. This is far from a normal theatre configuration. Nobody in the nether regions could see the
stage to our left. Is it possible that this is yet another mirror, running along between the pillars, reflecting the
patrons in the front of the mezzanine? To confirm this, we look for evidence of our barmaid but find none.
Perhaps her reflection is again hidden behind her , so the conundrum remains unresolved.
So, let us suppose that the theatre is asymmetric and that it has some kind of platform to support the bar and the
mirror. Does the picture then add up? Now we begin to notice that the group of reflected bottles, which has the
right mix of grenadine, beer and champagne in both cases, is at the far edge of the marble counter both in direct
view and in the reflection. If it were a true reflection, bottles at the far edge of the actual counter would appear
at the near edge of the reflection. The detailed arrangement of the bottles also fails to match, with the beer being
alongside the grenadine in the near view but at an angle to it in the apparent reflection. Evidently, Manet is
playing tricks with us, evoking the sense of reflection but avoiding commitment to its geometrical requirements.
?With our attention drawn to the bottles, we now notice that there are two more sets of similar bottles over by
the right edge of the picture. The symmetry of the main group on the bar reinforces the symmetry of the
barmaids pose, standing four-square in the centre of the picture with both hands resting on the bar. This
symmetry is softened by her averted gaze, by the flowers and fruit near her left hand, and by the displaced
symmetry of the lights on the pillars behind her. But we cannot help noticing the similarity of the champagne,
grenadine and even the trademark Bass ale in the two groups of bottles. Only the presence of a Cointreau bottle
distinguishes them. Behind the barmaids reflection, we see the cap of another champagne bottle, reinforcing
the sense that this is a reflection. Manet seems to be evoking a subtle interplay of the symmetry relations both
laterally and in depth in the spatial arrangement of the bottles.
On top of the geometric relations, the evocation of space and atmosphere in the picture is superb. The glow of
the light under the reflected bottles, as it spills around their bases and reflects up from the marble surface, is
deftly captured. The smoke arising from the orchestra seats and the haze that mutes the lights as they recede into
the distance is lapidary.
What, then, of the barmaid figure with her back to us at the right of the picture? Is there some way that this
could be the reflection of the central figure? The pose is identical but the position and angle could work only if
we were at an angle to the bar, which we are not. Is Manet playing some kind of cubist trick of projecting
multiple viewpoints in the same picture? Suppose we did angle the mirror, would the view then make sense?
Directly in front of the reflected barmaid is a gentleman in the requisite evening dress who seems to be
ordering a drink. He has a kind of looming presence at the edge of the picture that is compelling once you notice
him. However, in order to be a reflection, he would have to be immediately in front of the barmaid facing us. He
is not there, so the only conclusion is that this formal figure is in fact us, the viewer. On this interpretation,
Manet is compelling us to adopt the identity of this patron of the Folies Bergeres, moustache, goatee and all.
However, if that is his intent, he is inconsistent in structuring the rest of the scene, which does not support the
oblique interpretation of the mirror geometry.
An alternative view is that the scene to the right is a kind of materialization of the barmaids reflections, a
visual pun on her inward gaze. She is thinking about the gentleman she has recently met, or would like to meet,
and how he could liberate her from this narrow space between the counter and the mirror. Although we see her
only from the back, the figure in the reflection seems far more attentive and supplicant than the resigned woman
facing us. The idea that this interchange represents a vignette of the barmaids thought processes has clear
appeal. Perhaps Manet is deliberately making the geometry of the reflections illogical to instigate our own
reflections about the reflections of the introverted barmaid.
The Bar at the Folies-Bergere is one of the most unsettling of the worlds great paintings, although at first
glance it can come across as a rather warm and inviting image. An attractive and neatly dressed barmaid awaits
her next customer who is, by implication, the viewer of the picture. Her dark dress is trimmed with lace. She
wears a bouquet of flowers in her bodice and a locket, strung on a black velvet choker, around her neck. Her
hands rest on the polished marble counter where she mixes and serves drinks. She inhabits what amounts to a
cornucopia of glittering, superficial pleasure. All around her are shiny containers of alcoholic consolation:

bottles of champagne, whisky, crme de menthe, wine and also a tribute to the export muscle of the
nineteenth-century British brewing business a couple of dark brown bottles of Bass Pale Ale, with its
distinctive red triangle trademark on the label.
But attention is inevitably distracted from this enticing array of consumer drinkables by the devastating
expression on the barmaids face. She looks up with weary detachment, ready to take another order; but behind
her mask of forced, professional impassivity there is an expression of infinite sadness. It is reminiscent of the
sadness seen in the face of the Virgin Mary in much older forms of painting, and Manet may have intended
lightly to suggest just such an association. He has placed the young woman exactly in the middle of the painting
(the buttons on her bodice mark the centre line of the canvas), a device often used in devotional pictures to
emphasise a figures sacredness. Manets barmaid is the ghost of an icon, a kind of secular madonna.
Behind the barmaid, reflected in the mirror hung on the wall at her back, a blurred crowd of people drink and
smoke under the bright white glare of electric light. This was a new form of illumination at the time; and the
Folies-Bergeres was itself a new kind of establishment, designed to promote and exploit the plentiful,
conspicuous public consumption of alcohol. It was owned by the talented entrepreneur Leon Sari, under whose
management it became a cross between a London music-hall and a gin palace. Sari charged admission for the
various spectacles that he staged, which included circuses, operettas, ballets and variety acts. Tonights main
attraction would seem to be a trapeze artiste, to judge by the attenuated pair of legs standing on a trapeze in the
top left-hand corner of the picture. But the principal profits were generated by the sale of drinks. This was
reflected in the rules of the house, one of which stipulated that customers were obliged to replenish their glasses
at regular intervals.
Bar staff were hired for their attractiveness and encouraged to maximise turnover by flirting with the clientele.
They acquired a reputation for doing rather more than flirting, which may explain why so many of the critics
who wrote about Manets painting when it was first shown assumed that the barmaid was also a covert
prostitute. It is possible that the artist intended to include that rather grubby assumption in the texture of his
picture, in the form of its most curious and spatially illogical detail. To the barmaids left, in the mirror behind
her, the painter shows her in reflection, leaning forwards to talk to an apparently importunate top-hatted man.
This reflection has been placed at an impossible angle, leading some to criticise the detail as a mistake, an
unhappy error of perspective. But Manet did not as a rule make mistakes of that sort. A more ingenious
explanation might be that he deliberately set out to represent a predatory mans view of the vulnerable barmaid.
In which case the reflection where man meets girl embodies not something that is actually happening, but the
dream which a customer might have of making an assignation with her. It shows us not the truth about the girl,
in other words, but a sexual fantasy. This might explain why her second reflected self leans towards the man in
the mirror at a much more eager and confidential angle than the flesh-and-blood barmaid before us. Yet it is also
possible that Manet meant us to conclude that she is an unwilling prostitute, on occasion. Perhaps this is
something that comes with the job, however little she likes it. Then the mirror image would be the painters way
of suggsting the shadowy side of her existence, the part that she regrets. This might help to explain the pain in
her eyes.A Bar at the Folies-Bergeres is a very ambiguous painting. There is no way of proving what it is
really about. But I have a feeling that one of the thinsg that it is about is the birth of a new world, governed by
the rules of a relentless, money-driven economy and dedicated as never before to packaging, consuming,
selling. The Folies-Bergeres is Manets epitome of that world, a place designed to get people drunk and squeeze
as much money as possible out of them in the process. Everything in it glitters; everything in it is either for sale
or designed to promote sales. To survive in such a world, manet impliues, people have to package themselves up
too, to endure the indignity (and perhaps the reality) of being regarded as commodities of a kind. The painter,
incidentally, did not exempt himself from his own acerbic commentary. He has signed his name on the bottle at
the extreme left of the canvas, adding the date 1882. Even vintage Manet trades under a label. Painters and
paintings are for sale, too.
9.

Reading upwards from the gold frame, then, we see the marble counter, and we
see the left-hand end of it, which isnt visible in the space on our side of the
mirror. We can see that the marble is an inch or so thick, and the corner is slightly
rounded. On it there stands a group of bottles including one that looks like the
bottle of Bass on the counter in front, a bottle of some reddish wine or liqueur,
and some bottles of champagne which are mostly behind her arm. But the ones in
the mirror are not where they ought to be: in front, the red liqueur and the beer
are level with each other, in the mirror the beer is considerably nearer to us.
On the right-hand side of the picture, behind the dish of mandarins, the gold
frame of the mirror is visible again. But here too things begin to go awry, because
the line of the frame on that side is an inch or two lower than the one on the left,
and in fact is tilted downwards slightly from right to left. If the barmaid werent
there, we could see that the two parts of the frame wouldnt join up. (As a matter
of fact, that part of the frame is tilted exactly as much from the horizontal as the
barmaids head is tilted from the vertical). Above the line of the frame theres the
back of a young woman the barmaids reflection is how its usually described
who, unlike the young woman whos facing us and standing upright, seems to be
leaning slightly forward, engaged in some transaction with the man in the top hat,
most of whom is out of the picture altogether, and whose face is sketchily painted
very close to hers. Ill come back to her in a minute.
Then theres the reflection of the barmaid, which I mentioned a minute ago. If the
mirror is parallel with the plane of the picture surface, then her reflection should
be directly behind the barmaid and invisible to us. And yet its some way to one
side; and where on our side is the man whose face is so close to hers, and whose
reflection we see on that side? Those two figures, the man and the reflected
barmaid, are seen as they would be if firstly there were a man in front of her, and
secondly if the mirror were swung away from us, the right-hand side close and the
left further away; but the slight tilt in the frame at the bottom, which I mentioned
before, implies that if its swung at all, its swung the other way.
All very puzzling, if we take it literally, if we think of a painting as a window into a
space. This space doesnt seem to make sense.5
Painting became self-conscious in their hands. The modernists in literature
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf show narrative becoming self-conscious in the same
way. It was no longer necessary to find a grand, noble, dramatic, historical,
religious subject for your work of art or literature to be taken seriously: the
thoughts passing through the mind of an ordinary man during an ordinary day in
Dublin, or an ordinary woman on her way to buy flowers in London, or the way
light flickers and divides in a mirror, or the way the sun glows as it sinks behind
the smoke of a railway station the substance of daily life, especially modern life
with all its glitter and variety, was more than enough material for the new selfconscious consciousness to work on. A little later, Picassos most profound and
revolutionary explorations of the nature of seeing and representation were

conducted on the most ordinary and everyday subjects: a pipe, a bottle, a

newspaper on a table.
But I still havent mentioned the greatest mystery of all, an enigma so profound
that even if we solved the difficulty of how to describe
the rest of the painting in words, wed still have to throw up our hands in despair
at the impossibility of resolving it, and its this: what does her expression mean?
What is she thinking about? How on earth do we describe it? It is the most
unreadable expression I know in any painting. It is far more mysterious and
enigmatic than that smirking Florentine we know as the Mona Lisa. At the heart of
this scene of pleasure, of glittering light and the sensuous richness of a dozen
different textures, with the promise of delicious things to eat and drink, with music
(you can almost hear the band) and conversation and laughter and applause as
the trapeze artist swings fearlessly across the auditorium, with the hint of sexual
bargaining as well (the Folies-Bergere was well known for that) at the very
centre of this world of brilliant surfaces, at the very point to which our attention is
led by the line of her arms and the buttons on her jacket, there is this pretty
young face expressing that profound, inexplicable ... What is it, sadness? Regret?
Unease? Alienation? Her face is flushed; it might be simply that shes warm under
all those lights; it might be the flush that suffuses the cheeks of a young child
kept too long from her bed. Shes by no means a child, but for all the corseted
fullness of her figure, she does look young; she looks innocent; at the same time,
we wouldnt be surprised to learn that the conversation in the mirror between her
reflection and the man in the top hat concerns her availability for quite other
purposes than pouring glasses of wine and selling oranges.
But perhaps theres a clue in that. Which is the real girl, this one, or the one in the
mirror? The reflection is displaced: is she displaced in another way as well made
strange, made different, a Mr Hyde to a Dr Jekyll (which Stevenson wrote,
incidentally, only a year or two after this picture was painted)? Is she two people,
one whose character is as shallow as that of the man in the hat, as shallow as
everything else in the mirror, only as deep as the glass itself, no more truly there
than anything else in that glittering surface, because its all surface and the
other who is as complex and profound as the expression on her face, a look that
defies all description?
patiently, thinking of something else, in a dream, abstracted, miles away all
those expressions that mean not there. The one in the mirror is not really there,
and the one who is really there is not there either. Shes somewhere else, thinking
of her lover, or her debts, or her parents in the village she comes from, who
havent heard from her for months; or her little sister who has consumption ... or
thinking of nothing. And of course she cant think really, shes not real at all
shes a painted surface, just like the reflection that isnt a reflection.
9

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere is about a bar at the Folies-Bergere, its about the
mystery of that unfathomable expression on this ordinary young womans face,
its about those legs suspended at the very end of the acrobats swing, its about
champagne and oranges and tobacco smoke and chandeliers and fashionable
dress; but its also about seeing, and about recording the way the light glistens on
those oranges, and the way things in a mirror are different from things in front of
our eyes; its about the sensation of sight and the mysteries of representation; its
about painting itself.
Presented in this painting is the scene of a young, engaging barmaid at the Folies-Bergre music hall. She is
standing behind a marble counter, which is covered with wine bottles, fruits, and flowers. Behind her are the
essential element of the painting; the mirror that reflects the setting in which she is serving, as well as a peculiar
man with a moustache. The barmaid, is confined to the narrow space behind the bar, however in the reflection,
Manet introduces the new recreational activities of the elite, and sophisticated Parisians. Despite her lack of
expression, Herbert clearly states that Manet has given the barmaid facing the audience a feeling of dignity and
self-worth, contrary to the Parisian customs. It was thought that women were hired to increase the sales of
drinks, and were made as vehicles for sexual favors, and other kinds of business. Herbert also says that
barmaids at the time were known for "loose morals." He says that the lady has an ambiguous demeanor, yet her
frontal image is "correct, even distant from us." She conceals her character in a firm way, and does not solicit
any other information. Collins states that Manet's primary objective was to "capture in paint that life's particular
character and interests." However, in the mirror, an entirely different disposition is seen, in which she is giving
herslef over to the man, and releasing all tension of which she shows in the frontal image. Herbert states that
this "provokes the issue of male-female commerce." He claims that it is incredible that a man can influence a
woman in the field of romance and desire. The mirror serves as a means for showing the other perspective to
this situation. Herbert comments on the distinct tension between the real and the reflection within her "yielding
nature" showing her discomfort and desire to please. Herbert feels that the climax of this painting occurs when
the viewer realizes his own role in the painting, and identifies where the illicit man should be placed. Herbert
also questions the notion of who really is the viewer of the painting, and what purpose do we, as spectators
serve. He concludes that the pinnacle of this painting is the game that Manet is playing with the viewer. Because
of the intense look in the man's face, we are inclined to assume the woman's role as a stereotypical barmaid.
This is countered though by her stoic perception toward the viewer. Ultimately, though, Herbert feels that the
painting was directed toward a male audience, and the reflection in the mirror allows for this to occur, yet
disguising the frontal image.
In Flam's essay, he emphasizes that the purpose of the mirror is to see the opposing views of the woman. He
states that perception, and reality of her image is dependent upon where the viewer gazes at her. The

entanglement of all the objects around her add to this distortion; hence we are introduced to the man in the
reflection in a different fashion. Flan emphasizes that she portrays two entirely different personas, suggesting
innuendos of respective regard. Therefore, the viewer is encouraged to interpret this in various manners. He
states that Manet intended for the mirror to be a source of connection between the imaginative and real world,
however excluding all kinds of inhibitions that went along with realism. He states that the lady, herself, is
clearly the only real person in the picture. Flam also sustains the idea of Herbert that which, once the
abstruseness of the lady is discovered, whether her purpose be desire, objectivity, lust, or prostitution, she is no
longer scrutinized, but rather these material perceptions are looked at as being distorted. Clark also focuses on
this aspect, in which the events of the painting, once understood, influence the viewer to see life in a different
light. He also emphasizes that the Parisian society had a skewed outlook on life, because their morals were
slanted by the stereotypes of society. Hence, Flan concludes that the painting is somewhat analogous to Parisian
social status. What may have seemed like an unoriginal form of art, was actually the emergence of an entirely
different take on the reality of people.
9.

But in Renaissance views, there can be another world. Everyone is safe, rigid, disciplined. Roads, buildings,
doors, walls, towers: these things are squared and ruled. Straight lines and flat surfaces run upright or on level
pavements. And the essential point is not simply the clarity of these things. It is the difference between a place
and what inhabits this place.
For example, imagine a city and its people. Sometimes there is a very populous scene, but still a sharp division
exists between the fixtures and the figures. Or the other hand, sometimes there can be a totally empty space, a
townscape deserted but still there's separation between the place and the implied figures who occupy it. But
then, turn to Baroque or Romantic pictures. Worlds have now shifted, and sometimes radically.
There is Eugne Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus. It has a story, if you care. Sardanapalus is the last king
of Assyria. He has failed in battle. He is about to die. He broods among his intended victims. Around him, his
naked slaves are being murdered, and his possessions are being destroyed. At last, his court will be burned. But
nobody really cares what this picture is about, beyond a generic scene of Oriental Despotism.
The spectacle is all. The king relishes his sights. In the same way, the painting encourages us to enjoy this
scene. This vast canvas is full of beautiful chaos. There is flesh and rich fabric and gorgeous colour. There is
turbulence and cruelty and opulence, ruin, decadence, slaughter, luxury, despair, violation, helplessness,

sacrifice, the whole business. The massacre is coming to its finale. One after another, the deeds are falling
down.
Meanwhile, the stage itself has lost its limits. Its surroundings are nothing but a total scattering. Its activities
exist in an earthquake scenario. The great divan, with its golden elephants, spreads outwards into the crazy
pageant. And at the same time, more dense stuff and violence enters from the outside, breaking inward through
the edges of the picture. One force is centrifugal. Another force is centripetal. But there is no sustaining
structure.
We see the scene is constructed only out of bodies, furnishings and smoke. Where is this horse based, with its
plunging hooves? You can't tell. Where do all the legs and cushions lie? They pile up and pile up with no visible
foundation. And the whole stage simply drops down below the front. There's nothing more to define or support
these elements. There is no ground. There are no bounds. The scene lacks a floor, a wall, a visible level surface,
a permanent stay. It has no grip and no hold.
Here everything floats, flows, floods, in flux. Delacroix whips up a wild romp. The whole scene is like a rolling,
riding bed. Or like a sea, tossing and turning, surging and lapping, cast on a tide. Or like a sliding earth slip or
even a bouncy castle. It's an unsolid, unsteady, unstable creation. There's no distinction here between the fixed
space and its occupants. It is the opposite of a Renaissance location. This scene has lost all definition between a
room and bodies. Space has gone haywire. The world dissolves and tumbles.
So it's a world where disorientation has both a spatial and a moral dimension. Nothing and nobody cares about
up or down or right or wrong. There is no difference between killing and being killed, no difference between
calm and ecstasy, no difference between animate and inanimate. All the same, these disasters are not too fatal. A
universal catastrophe takes the weight out of mere human terrors. It lightens them. Humanity and the world fall
together. This busy doom is almost welcoming.
Byron merely hinted at the outcome of his play, which he dedicated to Goethe: besieged by his enemies in his
palace, Sardanapalus committed suicide. Delacroix, however, imagined that the king also burned his worldly
possessions and everything that had given him pleasure: women, pages, horses, dogs, and treasures. The painter
gave expression to his idea through a personal style resulting from his prodigious pictorial culture, a blend of
French, Flemish, Dutch, Italian, English, Oriental, classical, and modern influences.
As the city burns in the distance, the palace seems swept away on a raging wave that destroys all notion of
hierarchy, gender, species, and rank. All logic is lost as masters, soldiers, slaves, men, women, animals, bodies,
objects, attitudes, movements, materials, life, and death are tangled together in piteous disarray. Brutally cast
into the furnace because of the king's arrogant refusal to surrender, the figures are reminiscent of certain biblical
characters, the groups in Charles le Bruns series of paintings from the life of Alexander, or the massacre of the
princes in Jacques-Louis David's Funeral of Patroclus.
One of the finest feathers in my cap
The women resemble the female figures painted by Correggio or Rubens; contrasting with the king's perfect
stillness, they are convulsed with horror, and take their own lives before having their throats slit by officers and
slaves. The king's favorite, Myrrha, lies at his feet, her back naked, her head and arms outstretched on the bed; a
guard facing her draws his sword to kill a bare-shouldered female slave. Against a harmony of rich, muted, and
refined tones at the bottom right of the funeral pyre, echoing the royal couple, a guard kills a slave whose
voluptuous body and pearly golden skin are reminiscent of Rubens's sea nymphs (in the Galerie Mdicis in the
Louvre). The bust of a naked woman lying in front of this couple evokes Delacroixs Mulatto Woman; to their
right, a man submits to his fate, head in hands, while another beseeches the king, one arm outstretched. In the
half-light at the top right of the painting, Aischeh (whom the painter mentions in the Salon booklet) has hung
herself. The central figures are set off by a more compact group to the left of the pyre. At the top, level with the
king, his cup-bearer Baleah (also named in the booklet) presents him with a ewer, basin, and towel. A woman
just below veils her face before a man who stabs himself in the chest. The brightness of the central scene is
balanced by the bottom left corner, with the dark but translucent forearm of the black slave and the dapple gray
of the horse he pulls toward the pyre. This small group, like the overall composition, recalls the vigor of
painters such as Thodore Gricault, Antoine-Jean Gros, Pierre-Narcisse Gurin, and Tintoretto.

Delacroix used well distributed colors, contrasts of light, shadow, and halftones, extremes of red and white,
swift brushstrokes, and a subtle play of bold, vibrant impasto juxtaposed with clear bright glaze to glorify the
smoothness of flesh, the shimmer of fabrics, and the gleam of the jewels and treasures in the foreground of his
painting. This technique, coupled with rich and intricate ornamentation, creates a strong sense of life,
movement, and aesthetic unity.
The many preparatory sketches made by the painter over a six-month period, in which he analyzed the
movements and positions of the bodies, the accessories, the groups, the tension and dynamics of the scene, and
the intensity of expressions, reflect his desire to dominate the overall composition yet preserve its spontaneity.
The various aspects of Romanticism come together in Eugene Delacroixs Death of Sardanapalus (1827). The
painting is based on the play Sardanapalus by Lord Byron and depicts the death of the king Sardanapalus. On
first glance, the painting causes uneasiness in the viewer that is difficult to articulate. The scene is both chaotic
and confusing. Women and servants are in poses of great distress as they are being killed on the kings orders.
In particular, the execution of the nude woman in the lower right hand corner of the painting elicits a range of
emotions from the viewer. We are at the same time both horrified and mystified. We feel sympathy for her, yet
we cannot stop from looking. The chaos of the scene is further felt in the very organization of the scene. This
is not a regular, straightforward perspective in which we can clearly see the whole of the scene. There is a
disjunction between the foreground and the background. As for what is going on in the upper right hand corner,
it is anyones guess. The people in the scene are arranged around Sardanapalus bed in a way that creates a
spinning affect as the eye of the viewer moves from one figure to the next. Even the use of color enhances the
disorder of the painting. One the one hand, Delacroix uses bright exotic colors to excite the viewer. Yet he is
careful not to give everything away. Delacroixs use of shadow and space mask what is happening in the
background of the painting. He is therefore making it more difficult for the viewer to understand what is going
on and creating a curiosity that extends beyond the boundaries of the scene.
Yet the chaos surrounding the king in his bed does not seem to match his attitude of calm indifference.
Sardanapalus is relaxed and contemplative, seemingly unaffected by the events around him. He is most likely
reflecting on his approaching death. This quiet and accepting response to death is very romantic, and viewers
are meant to admire the kings reserve. This is also the case for the way in which the king dies in the play,
which is different than the scene in the painting. At the end of the play, Sardanapalus burns himself with his
mistress in a final act of heroism and drama. This grand show of self-glorification causes readers to admire him
for his nobility and fearlessness in the face of death, in the same way viewers admire the king in the painting.
Delacroixs Sardanapalus also contains notions of the Oriental. Darker skinned figures line the shadows
accompanied by exotic animals. The animalistic nature of the figures and the blatant sexuality would remind
any European viewer of the immoral Oriental. In this sense, the painting seems to serve as a moral
checkpoint for Westerners. It is a reminder that we are civilized and they are not. Europeans who looked at this
painting would immediately judge the Oriental as disorganized, insensitive (as Sardanapalus appears), barbaric,
etc. At the same time though, viewers cannot escape the curiosity associated with the Oriental. As discussed in
both Confessions of an Opium-Eater and Orientalism, the Oriental carries a degree of mystery and sublimity for
the Westerner. There is no doubt that this painting elicits both wonder and fear, both for the 19 th century and the
modern viewer.Romanticism.

MOZART LA CI DAREM LA MANO

The opera contains many such instances of mozarts seduction. L ci darem la mano, the aria in which
Giovanni promises to marry the peasant Zerlina, narrates her surrender in a sequence that exercises strong
musical persuasion. There we shall join hands, there you will say yes, Giovanni sings of his country house in
a tune of childlike in- nocence. Look, it is not far, come my sweet, lets go. The slow duple meter is soothing
and gentle, and Giovannis simple stanza, just as with Donna Elvira, creates the musical expectation for a reply,

which Zer- lina readily gives: I want to and yet I dont; my heart has misgivings; I should indeed be happy, but
he might be bluffing me. The music
Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007
184 Sincerity and Seduction in Don Giovanni
conveys Zerlinas indecision in a series of faltering, downward steps in the next exchange. Come, Giovanni
coos, I will change your life. She stammers, But I pity masetto.... Then quick, Im not strong (I: ix, 938).
Now mozart begins to work on us. In the second stanza, he returns to the opening innocent tune, but Giovanni
has to sing only two lines instead of four to get Zerlina to answer. This doubles the pace of the conversation and
stirs anticipation. mozart adds a nice dramatic touch by gracing Giovannis lines with a flute and grounding
Zerlinas with a bassoon. We feel them coming together even if we do not consciously register why.
And as the meter shifts to a pastoral 6/8, they do come together. The translator Avril Bardoni has them saying:
Then come, then come, my sweetheart, to remedy the torment of an innocent love!7 Zerlina may well be
swept away and think her love is pureand, whatever his true intentions, Giovanni echoes that sentimentbut
the sexual na- ture of the scene is intimated in that strange last line: a ristorar le pene dun innocente amor.
The cognate to restore (or even to refresh or to revitalize) is much closer to ristorare than to remedy,
Bardonis choice. Lurking near le pene, pains, is il pene, penis. In its context, ris- torare may be meant to carry
a rather more pointed physical connota- tion: not to remedy, but to slake and reawaken.
At the words innocente amor, the violins trace a brief chromatic descent that is conspicuously out of character
with the happy duet (see Example 8). Is it a warning that Giovannis intentions are not at all innocent? Perhaps.
But given what we later learn about Zerlina, it might well be an indication that Giovanni and Zerlina both know,
and both embrace, what would have happened in the big country house had Donna Elvira not come along.
Daniel Heartz links that chromatic descent to moments in Fin chhan dal vino, when Giovanni orders
Leporello to bring girls off the streets to his party, and in the sextet Ah non lasciarmi! late in the opera. In that
ensemble, Donna Elvira believes she is alone in the dark with Giovanni, whom she once again calls her
husband; she also declares that she is scared to death. In this opera chromatic lines spell death, Heartz writes,
but also the related
Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007
Johnson 185

Example 8. From L ci darem la mano, Don Giovanni.

phenomenon of love death, or the sexual act.... If the censors had only known how suggestive of the erotic
mozarts music could be, they would surely have banned it (1990, 181).
La ci darem la mano This duet between the Don and Zerlina is a musical illustration of how he has
seduced 2,065 women. Yes, he usually promises them marriage, which, because of his fortune, would be
attractive. But the real power of his seduction is through his music. His opening melodic line urges, with
sweetness and force, that Zerlina give in. He is pleading for it. He sings a solo line and then Zerlina
responds an octave above. She echoes his melodic line, but uses it to express her confusion at her
emotions: Vorrei, e non vorrei: I want it, and I dont want it. Finally, when they sing together, she has
both musically and physically acquiesced to his musical advances.
Don GiovanniThere well be hand in hand, dear,There you will say, I do.Look, it is right at hand, dear;Lets
go from here, me and you.Zerlina(I want to, but its not pure,My heart is ill at ease.I would be happy, Im sure,

But it may all be a tease.)Don GiovanniCome, sweetest love, lets hurry! Zerlina(Masetto gives me worry.)Don
GiovanniIll change your life forever. ZerlinaSoon, dear... I dont feel clever. Don GiovanniLets go! Zerlina
Lets go!TogetherLets go, my love, lets go,To heal the pain and woeOf love thats innocent.

DESCRIPTION:Thefirstimpressionthispicturemakesisthatofanenormous,deep
redsunsetoverastormyredbrownsea.

Thesunslicesthescenewithagleamingdaggeroflight.
Lookingmorecloselyonecanseeseveralthings:asailingshiponthehorizongoing
towardstheleft,andbodypartsandchainsstickingoutofthewater.
Ifwelookevenmorecarefully,wecanseeanumberoffish,seamonsters,andsea
gullscirclinglowoverthewater.
Thesailsoftheshiparenotunfurled,andsprayfliesaroundandoverit.Thejagged
cloudspointtoacomingstorm.
Thehandsandleg(inforeground)stickingoutofthewateraredarkskinned,w/
chains:slaves.

Theredmasts:asiftheywerepaintedontheskywithblood.
INTERPRETATION
The coming storm might symbolize the downfall of slave society, and it might cast doubt on Turner's belief in
the "free market" society as a radically better society.
General symbolic level.The small ship tossed about by the elements water, wind and fire.
The ship in a storm symbolized the Catholic Church in medieval times;later the "ship of life" was an allegory
for human life.
An allegory of the fight of humankind with the elements, the desperate fight between nature and civilization.
The sinking sun, the brooding storm, the whipping, devouring waves: transcendental powers; replaced the
anthropomorph image of God.
Philosophical concept of the "sublime" coined by Edmund Burke
Sublime: heightened sensation through terror especially in face of nature. Overpowers the senses.
Contemporary critic William Thackeray: wasn't sure if he found the painting "sublime or ridiculous" -- little
objects floating around.
"The Slave Ship" (1840), by Joseph Mallord William Turner, is a perfect example of a romantic landscape
painting. His style is expressed more through dramatic emotion, somtimes taking advantage of the imagination.
Instead of carefully observing and portraying nature, William Turner took a landscape of a stormy sea and
turned it into a scene with roaring and tumultuous waves that seem to destroy everything in its path. Turner's
aims were to take unique aspects of nature and find a way to appeal strongly to people's emotions.
The Historical Context of "The Slave Ship"
William Turner was inspired to paint, "The Slave Ship" after the publishing of a book, "The History of the
Abolition of the Slave Trade". This book by, Thomas Clarkson, characterized an incident that happened in 1783,
involving a ship filled with slaves. Many of the slaves onboard were sick, but the captain's insurance company
would not pay him for slaves that died on board the ship. He would only be paid for the slaves that were lost at
sea. In order to earn the money he wished, he ordered all the sick and dying to jump off the ship and into the
sea.
Romantic Techniques
Turner is also showing the power of nature by making the ship in the paining not the main focus. Even though
its name is The Slave Ship the sun and the ocean are the most conspicuous parts of the painting.
Light and Color
The use of light and color is the technique used to add the dramatic effect that this painting has on its audience.
It contains a variety of colors from dark maroons, to yellows, reds, oranges and blues. The main focus is on the
maroon spots in the water representing the bodies of the slaves and the vividly bright red and orange colors of
the sunset. These colors are warm and intriguing, but instill a sense of fear and pandemonium. Acting as a
trademark to the Romantic era, the colors of this painting represent hues of nature and the emotions of the sea.
In this specific painting, Turner used a technique where pure colors are filtered through the other layers of the
painting and can be seen shining through, creating a glowing, and luminous effect. Light also plays an important
role; especially where it casts the shadows of the waves. It allows the viewer to envision the intensity of the
waves and how large and dangerous they are. The reds and oranges and the presence of a sinking sun portrays
the sunset during the scene; which also gives the painting a romantic feel, through a sunsets connection with
nature.
The Ocean and Wind
The ocean is a distinct portrayal of the capabilities and powers that nature can take hold of on earth. The strong,
fierce waves highlight the ominous storm. With the various paint strokes, the ocean coincides with rough winds
that over looms the context of the painting. The primary context, or instant image, of the painting is clearly a

ship sailing the open waters during a harsh rainstorm, however; when looking more closely, one would realize
that the secondary context, or deeper understanding, highlights the magnificent power of nature. Also,
throughout history, it is percieved that in Turner's eyes, the ship was a punishment to the earth's habitants and
their industrial actions. It is also important to note that among the upset waters, the sunset in the background
portrays nature's beauty, serenity, and peace.
The sea is on fire. Yellow, red, orange; color churns and spits. The sky spills into the ocean, the ship lifted and
tossed. On the left, a storm builds, a fist ready to pound. Above the storm a dirty red smoke rises, as if the blue
grey were not a storm but water on an angry furnace. And in the bottom right of the canvas, a shackled foot
gracefully and terribly prepares to sink.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851) originally intended this painting to be titled Slavers
Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On. It was painted in 1840 response to an incident
in 1781 when an illness on the slave ship Zong caused the slavers to throw sick slaves overboard to their deaths,
as their insurance covered the losses at sea and not losses from illness. The painting was sold to an
abolitionist from Boston, where it has remained at the MFA Boston since 1899.
The painting is brighter and lighter than I remembered it. The right half of the canvas is almost a buttercream
yellow. That perverse color moves clockwise over the canvas, caressing the drowning foot, continuing to mirror
the sunset and finally rushing upwards again to join in the typhoon. Is that putrid buttercream simply formal, so
that the canvas comes together in a cohesive whole? To think that in depicting horror, such things could even
matter.
Murky brown and mud red, small upward strokes poke out of the gentle curve between breaking waves. The
hands are very small, almost could be a texture in the stormy sea. But they have fingers.
This painting is scary. It is fairly small, but it hits you like a truck. It captures the violence of nature, both of
humans and of the sea, in a revolting way. It is hot and messy and unforgiving. The light doesnt make sense, it
seems to release the colors of heaven and hell rather than those of the sea. A triumph in matching the terror of a
moment.
berlioz symphonie fantastique
Part one
Daydreams, passions
The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called
the vagueness of passions (le vague des passions), sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of
the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly,
the beloved image never presents itself to the artists mind without being associated with a musical idea, in
which he recognises a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to
the object of his love.
This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double ide
fixe. This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which launches
the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of
aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its
religious consolations all this forms the subject of the first movement.
Part two
A ball
The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful
contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town or in the countryside, the
beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion.
Part three
Scene in the countryside

One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the distance dialoguing with their ranz des vaches;
this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the wind, some causes for hope that he has
recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his
thoughts a happier colouring. He broods on his loneliness, and hopes that soon he will no longer be on his
own... But what if she betrayed him!... This mingled hope and fear, these ideas of happiness, disturbed by dark
premonitions, form the subject of the adagio. At the end one of the shepherds resumes his ranz des vaches; the
other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder... solitude... silence...
-1Part four
March to the scaffold
Convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak
to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he
has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The
procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and
solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of
the march, the first four bars of the ide fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.
Part five
Dream of a witches' sabbath
He sees himself at a witches sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of
every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts
which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble
and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to
the sabbath... Roar of delight at her arrival... She joins the diabolical orgy... The funeral knell tolls, burlesque
parody of the Dies irae,** the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.
**A hymn sung in funeral ceremonies in the Catholic Church. [HB]
The ide fixe pervades the volatile and tempestuous first movement. The opening melody of the slow
introduction (itself taken from an early song composed by Berlioz, cf. his Memoirs chapter 4) alludes to it, and
prepares the listener for the first full statement of the theme at the start of the allegro (bar 71 and following).
The allegro is in sonata form, but hardly has a second subject. After a series of long and stormy developments
the end of the movement alludes retrospectively to the introduction.
The second movement, an elegant waltz rather like a rondo in form, makes a complete contrast with the first.
The movement is notable for its scoring, at once delicate and brilliant, and the use of two harps gives the music
a festive glitter that is characteristic of Berlioz compare the harps in Part II of Romeo and Juliet, the last
movement of the Te Deum, the Trojan March, and Berliozs orchestration of Webers Invitation to the Dance.
The ide fixe is heard twice, in bars 120-162 in its complete form, then more briefly in bars 302-319 before
being swept away by the whirlwind which brings the waltz to a brilliant close.
The autograph score of the symphony contains a part for solo cornet added by Berlioz at a later date, but not
reproduced by him in the full score of the work published in his lifetime. Performances and recordings of the
symphony sometimes include this part for cornet. The movement is presented here in two versions, the first
without and the second with the cornet part.
The long third movement is the musical heart of the symphony, as well as the pivotal point in the drama: from
the world of imagined reality in the first three movements the music moves to the world of imagined nightmare
in the last two. The origins of the movement are complex, though Berlioz fuses the different elements together
to form a seamless whole. The main subject (bar 20 and following), briefly hinted at in the first movement (bars
4-5), is now known to have been used previously in the Gratias of his early Messe Solennelle of 1824-5
(rediscovered in 1991), though as well as a change of key from E major to F major, the treatment of the theme
in the symphony is much more elaborate and varied; the movement is in effect a set of variations on the main
theme. The shepherds piping heard in the introduction (bars 1-20), then again at the close of the movement

(bars 175-96), recalls through its similarity of key, instrumental colour (the use of the cor anglais) and mood the
romance of Marguerite in the Huit Scnes de Faust composed not much earlier, in 1828-9 (H 33), as though
these were two versions of the same idea. Beyond this the movement is also an obvious homage to Beethoven
whose discovery in 1828 put Berlioz firmly on the path of symphonic music. The movement recalls the Pastoral
Symphony, written in the same luminous key of F major, and there are intentional echoes, notably the discreet
allusions to the bird song of the end of the second movement of the Pastoral Symphony in bar 67 and following.
The mood of isolation which pervades the movement is, however, very different from Beethovens celebration
of nature in dance and song. The ide fixe, briefly alluded to early in the movement (bars 38-41), reappears in
the stormy middle episode in the wind and in a modified form in the basses (bars 87-102), then again more
quietly in the concluding pages (bars 150-4).
Two technical points on this movement:
(1) In several places in this movement the viola section is divided in two. In this version, in order to preserve
the evenness of tonal balance, the viola parts have been notated throughout as divided, even when they play in
unison (except for the final bars 197-9).
(2) In order to obtain a semblance of crescendo and decrescendo on the timpani rolls at the close of the
movement, it has been necessary to notate some bars using shorter note values than what Berlioz wrote (bars
177, 182-3, 188-9; the same applies to a few passages earlier, bars 14, 16, 159). A transcription of bars 175-196
as notated in the original score is available on this site; in this notation the crescendi and decrescendi of the
timpani do not reproduce as they are meant to.
The fourth movement originated as a march of the guards in Berliozs early opera Les Francs Juges (H 23),
composed mainly in 1826 and revised in 1829. In adapting the piece for the Symphonie Fantastique Berlioz
added a strikingly unexpected reference to the beginning of the ide fixe at the climax of the march: the artist,
led to execution for murdering his beloved, remembers her on the scaffold, but the melody is abruptly cut off by
the fall of the guillotine and the concluding uproar (bar 164 to the end of the movement).
The fifth movement is the most obviously provocative of the whole symphony and goes well beyond
anything that had been attempted in this kind of music before. The nearest model available at the time, the
Wolfs Glen scene at the end of Act II of Webers Der Freischtz, is only partly comparable: it uses a mixture of
speech, song, melodrama and orchestral music, whereas Berlioz relies solely on the orchestra. The movement is
also the freest in form of the symphonys five movements, though is actually very carefully constructed. After a
brief introduction which sets the atmosphere (bars 1-20), the ide fixe makes its last appearance, only to be
subjected to musical vilification and quickly dismissed (bars 21-78). The real business of the night can then
begin: first the Dies irae (bars 127-221), then the Witches Sabbath (bars 241-347), with in the end the
inevitable coming together of the two as the music hurtles to its headlong conclusion (bars 348-524).
FAUST*****
First
movement:
Largo
Molto
allegro
Reveries,
passions
In the first movement, the idee fixe is presented by the violins and flute, accompanied by a minimal string
accompaniment. The theme is deliberately imbalanced; its phrases are of unequal length, marking an
immediate departure from the preferred order and balance of the Classical period. Berlioz goes for
intensity in every phrase, with much chromaticism and very detailed expression marks:
2
Second
Movement:
Waltz
Allegro
non
troppo
A
ball
The second movement begins with a lilting waltz, but it is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of
the idee fixe, its rhythm changed to accommodate the triple meter of the waltz:
Third
Movement:
Adagio
Scene
in
the
countryside

The third movement begins with two shepherds answering one another with their pipes - the cor anglais
calls plaintively and the oboe answers from off stage. The idee fixe is presented first by flute, then
answered by the clarinet and later the oboe:
Fourth
Movement:
Allegretto
non
troppo
March
to
the
scaffold
In the fourth movement, the artist dreams that he has murdered his beloved, and has been condemned to
death and is being led to the scaffold. At the end of the march a solo clarinet begins to play the idee fixe
but is savagely interrupted by a very loud chord representing the fall of the guillotine's blade:
3
Fifth
Movement:
Larghetto
Allegro
Dies
Irae
Sabbath
Round
Dream
of
a
Sabbath
ight
The final movement, Berlioz musically depicted the descent of the executed Artist into hell, where his
murdered Beloved and a host of witches greet him. Rhythmic distortion of the idee fixe indicates the
transformation of the Beloved. As the composer himself points out, the "noble and timid" idee fixe theme
loses its character and sounds vulgar and raucous when played by the squeaky high Eb clarinet, and
when parodied to a fast jig rhythm, with trills and grace notes adding to its "triviality":
Throughout the five movements, the presence of an idee fixe creates a motivic connection among all the
movements resulting in what is called the cyclic form. Although there are some relationships to
conventional musical forms in its first four movements (e.g. the sonata form), Berlioz relied more on the
programmatic content of his music, and the resulting forms were loose, but logical. And in the fifth
movement the composer even abandoned traditional forms and relied on his program to organize the
music.
Berlioz was the first to exploit fully the recent improvements in instruments, such as the fully
4
chromatic valved horns and cornets. Colorful new ways of writing for instruments, both alone and in
combinations, abound in his scores. For example, in the second movement, Berlioz adds two harps to
better project the spirit of the Waltz and to brighten up his orchestral palette. Berlioz scores the third
movement for woodwinds, horns, strings, and four timpani. An imitative passage between the oboe and
English horn opens the third movement, where the oboe was placed offstage in order to achieve an echo
effect. Precise use of dynamic markings is shown by the clarinet solo at pppp. At the end of the third
movement, the English horn returns to the accompaniment of distant thunder sounds produced by the
four timpanists, played with sponged-tipped sticks on four differently tuned timpani. It is not until the
fourth movement that all the brass and percussion instruments enter the action. Berlioz creates a
menacing atmosphere with the opening orchestral sound, a unique combination of muted French horns,
timpani tuned third apart, and basses playing pizzicato chords. The finale requires special effects such as
off-stage bells and wind portamenti, wind trills, muted strings and bass pizzicati. The violins and violas
are required to produce a clattering sound by playing with their bow-sticks bouncing on strings (col
legno), creating an eerie effect suggesting skeletons dancing. The movement ends with the grand bass
drum rolls played by two players. Symphonie fantastique holds a unique position in the history of music
as one of the few surviving program symphonies. It well documents Berlioz's position as one of the
orchestral pioneers of the early nineteenth century.

8.