Bouguereau, William-Adolphe
(b. Nov. 30, 1825, La Rochelle, Fr.--d. Aug. 19, 1905, La Rochelle), French painter, a dominant figure in his nation's academic painting during the second half of the 19th century.
Bouguereau entered the Scole des Beaux-Arts in 1846 and was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1850. Upon his return to France from four years' study in Italy, he attracted a wide following with his mythological and allegorical paintings, although his portrait paintings are perhaps held in higher esteem today. His work was characterized by a highly finished, technically impeccable realism and a sentimental interpretation of his subject matter. As a proponent of official orthodoxy in painting, he played a major role in the exclusion of the works of the Impressionists and other experimental painters from the Salon. In his later years he decorated the chapels of several Parisian churches and painted religious compositions in a Pre-Raphaelite style. Modern critics tend to assess Bouguereau as a painter who sacrificed boldness of technique and originality of outlook for a highly polished but conventional treatment of the human form.
Watts, George Frederick
(b. Feb. 23, 1817, London--d. July 1, 1904, Compton, Surrey, Eng.), English painter and sculptor of grandiose allegorical themes. Watts believed that art should preach a universal message, but his subject matter, conceived in terms of vague abstract ideals, is full of symbolism that is often obscure and today seems superficial.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel,
original name GABRIEL CHARLES DANTE ROSSETTI (b. May 12, 1828, London, Eng.--d. April 9, 1882, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent), English painter and poet who helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters treating religious, moral, and medieval subjects in a nonacademic manner.
He acquired some of Brown's admiration for the German "Pre-Raphaelites," the nickname of the austere Nazarenes, who had sought to bring back into German art a pre-Renaissance purity of style and aim. It remained to initiate a similiar reform in England.
Pre-Raphaelites
Largely through Rossetti's efforts, the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 with seven members, all Royal Academy students except for William Michael Rossetti. They aimed at "truth to nature," which was to be achieved by minuteness of detail and painting from nature outdoors. This was, more especially, the purpose of the two other principal members, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti expanded the Brotherhood's aims by linking poetry, painting, and social idealism and by interpreting the term Pre-Raphaelite as synonymous with a romanticized medieval past.
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young British painters who banded together in 1848 in reaction against what they conceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy and who purportedly sought to express a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works. They were inspired by Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries, and their adoption of the name Pre-Raphaelite expressed their admiration for what they saw as the direct and uncomplicated depiction of nature typical of Italian painting before the High Renaissance and, particularly, before the time of Raphael. Although the Brotherhood's active life lasted less than 10 years, its influence on painting in Britain, and ultimately on the decorative arts and interior design, was profound.
. The style evolved featured sharp and brilliant lighting, a clear atmosphere, and a near-photographic reproduction of minute details. They also frequently introduced a private poetic symbolism into their epresentations of Biblical subjects and medieval literary themes.
Primitivism.
The art of supposedly primitive peoples had a special appeal in the early years of the 20th century. Gauguin, who had made direct contact with it in his last years, proved prophetic not only in the forms he adopted but in the spirit of his approach . Maurice de Vlaminck and Andre Derain, who met in 1900, evolved a style together based on crude statements of strong colours. Matisse had been moving more circumspectly in the same direction. The apparent ferocity of the works that the three exhibited in 1905 earned them the nickname of the Fauves ("Wild Beasts"). It appears that Matisse was responsible for introducing Pablo Picasso to African sculpture. Picasso had already shown signs of dissatisfaction with existing canons; his use of fin de siecle styles in his earliest works has a quality close to irony. Primitive art, both African and Iberian, provided him with an austerity and detachment that led after 1906 to a radical metamorphosis of the image and style hitherto habitual in European art.
GRAHAM GREENE.
The quiet American. (1955)
"There mustn't be any American casualties, must there?" An ambulance force its way up the rue Catinat into the square", and the policeman who had stopped me moved to one side to let it through. The policeman beside him was engaged in an argument. I pushed Pyle forward and ahead of me into the square before we could be stopped.
We were among a congregation of mourners. The police could prevent others entering the square; they were powerless to clear the square of the survivors and the first-comers. The doctors were too busy to attend to the dead, and so the dead were left to their owners, for one can own the dead as one owns a chair. A woman sat on the ground with what was left of her baby in her lap; with a kind of modesty she had covered it with her straw peasant hat. She was still and silent, and what struck me most in the square was the silence. It was like a church I had once visited during Mass - the only sounds came from those who served, except where here and there the Europeans wept and implored and fell silent again as though shamed by the modesty, patience and propriety of the East. The legless torso at the edge of the garden still twitched, like a chicken which has lost its head. From the man’s shirt, he had probably been a trishaw-driver. (1)
Pyle said, "It’s awful." He looked at the wet on his shoes and said in a sick voice, "What’s that?" "Blood," I said. "Haven't you ever seen it before?"
He said, "I must get them cleaned before I see the Minister." I don’t think he knew what he was saying. He was seeing a real war for the first time: he had punted down into Phat Diem (2) in a kind of schoolboy dream, and anyway in his eyes soldiers didn’t count.
"You see what a drum of Diolacton (3) can do," I said, "in the wrong hands." I forced him, with my hand on his shoulder, to look around I said, "This is the hour when the place is always full of women and children – it’s shopping hour. Why choose that of all hours?" He said weakly, "There was to have been a parade." "And you hoped to catch a few colonels. But the parade was cancelled yesterday, Pyle.” “I didn’t know".
"Didn’t know!" I pushed him into a patch of blood where a stretcher had lain. "You ought to be better informed." "I was out of town," he said, looking down at his shoes. "They should have, called it off."
"And missed the fun?" I asked him. "Do you expect General The to lose his demonstration? This is better than a parade. Women and children are news, and soldiers aren't , in a war. This will hit the world's Press. You've, put. General The on the map all right, Pyle. You've got the Third Force and National Democracy all over the your right shoe. Go home to Phuong and tell her about your heroic deed - there are a few dozen less of her country people to worry about.
A small fat priest scampered by, carrying something on a dish under a napkin. Pyle had been silent a long while, and I had nothing more to say. Indeed I had said too much. He looked white and beaten and ready to faint, and I thought, "What’s the qood? He’ll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
"He said, "They wouldn’t have done this. I’m sure he wouldn't. Somebody deceived him. The Communists..."
He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance. I left him standing in the square and went on up the rue Catinat to where the hideous pink Cathedral blocked the way. Already people were flocking in: it must have been a comfort to them to be able to pray for the dead and to the dead.
.
Notes:
trishaw-driver – a bicycle rickshaw
Phat Diem – a town in Viet Nam
Diolacton – an explosive substance
General The – a general who belonged to the Caodaists, one of the influential religious and political sects
The rue Catinat – the name of the street
Food for Thought
1. Speak about the paradox in the title.
2. What thematic set comes into being in the initial lines?
3. Find out all the stylistic devices used in the second paragraph.
4. Speak about the impression produced by the sight of victims.
5. Why is the decription of the victims so cynical?
6. Comment on Pyle’s words “It’s awful”.
7. What is the narrator’s attitude to Pyle? How is it revealed in the dialogue?
8. Speak about the context in which the word “innocent” is repeated.
Topics for Discussion
1. Discuss the aim of introducing the device of retardation.
2. The description is focussed not on the events as such but on the behaviour of people under circumstances. Find some instances to prove the idea.
3. Greene has a graphic eye. Speak about the details permitting the reader to supply the missing links.
4. Comment on the author’s attitude to the West and to the East.
5. Speak about the main idea of the text.
ТЕКСТЫ ДЛЯ САМОСТОЯТЕЛЬНОГО АНАЛИЗА
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A day's wait.
He came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move.
«What's the matter, Schatz?»
«I've got a headache»
«You better go back to bed».
«No. I am all right».
«You go to bed. I'll see you when I'm dressed».
But when I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the fire, looking a very sick and miserable boy of nine years. When I put my hand on his forehead I knew he had a fever.
«You go up to bed», I said, «you're sick».
«I'm all right», he said.
When the doctor came he took the boy's temperature.
«What is it?» I asked him.
«One hundred and two».
Downstairs, the doctor left three different medicines in different colored capsules with instructions for giving them. One was to bring down the fever, another, a purgative, the third to overcome an acid condition. The germs of influenza can only exist in an asid condition, he explained. He seemed to know all about influenza and said there was nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above one hundred and four degrees. This was a light epidemic of flu and there was no danger if you avoided pneumonia.
Back in the room I wrote the boy's temperature down and made a note of the time to give the various capsules.
«Do you want me to read to you?»
«All right. If you want to», said the boy. His face was very white and there were dark areas under his eyes. He lay still in the bed and seemed very detached from what was going on. I read aloud from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates; but I could see he was not following what I was reading.
«How do you feel, Schatz?» I saked him.
«Just the same, so far», he said.
I sat the foot of the bed and real to my self while I waited for it to be time to give another capsule. It would have been natural for him to go to sleep, but when I looked up he was looking at the foot of the bed, looking, very strangely.
«Why don't you try to go to sleep? I'll wake you up for the medicine».
«I'd rather stay awake».
At the house they said the boy had refused to let any one come into the room.
"You can't come in", he said. "You mustn't get what I have".
I went up to him and found him in exactly the position I had left him, white - faced, but with the tops of his cheeks flushed by the fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed. I took his temperature.
"What is it?"
"Something like a hundred", I said. It was one hundred and two and four tenths.
"It was a hundred and two", he said.
"Who said so?"
"The doctor".
"Your temperature is all right", I said. "It's nothing to worry about".
"I don't worry about", he said, "but I can't keep from thinking".
"Don't think", I said. "Just take it easy".
"I'm taking it easy", he said and looking straight ahead. He was evidently holding tight on to himself about something.
"Take this with water".
"Do you think it will do any good?"
"Of course it will".
I sat down and opened the Pirate book and commenced to read^ but I could see he was not following, so I stopped.
"About what time do you think I'm going to die?" he asked.
"What?"
"About how long will it be before I die?"
"You aren't going to die. What's the matter with you?"
«Oh, yes. I'm. I heard him say a hundred and two».
"People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two. That's a silly way to talk.
"I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can't live with forty-four degrees. I've got a hundred and two".
He had been waiting to die all day, ever since nine o'clock in the morning.
"You poor Schatz", I said. "Poor old Schatz. It's like miles and kilometres. You aren't going to die. That's a different thermometer. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. On this kind it's ninety-eight".
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutly", I said. "It's like miles and kilometers we make when we do seventy miles in the car?" "Oh", he said.
But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too, finally, and the next day it was very slack and he cried very easily at little things that were of no temperature.
Food for Thought:
1. Compare the condition of the boy in the initial lines and in the closure of the text.
2. Why did the author mention Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates?
3. Explain the boy’s wish to stay awake.
4. What is the reason for misunderstanding?
5. Speak about the title and the boy’s behaviour.
WALTER SCOTT.
Ivanhoe.
Chapter X.
The Disinherited Knight, therefore, stept boldly forth to the front of his tent, and found in attendance the squires of the challengers, whom he easily knew by their russet and black dresses, each of whom led his master's charger, loaded with the armour in which he had that day fought.
``According to the laws of chivalry,'' said the foremost of these men, ``I, Baldwin de Oyley,
squire to the redoubted Knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert, make offer to you, styling yourself, for the present, the Disinherited Knight, of the horse and armour used by the said Brian de Bois-Guilbert in this day's Passage of Arms, leaving it with your nobleness to retain or to ransom the same, according to your pleasure; for such is the law of arms.''
The other squires repeated nearly the same formula, and then stood to await the decision of the Disinherited Knight.
``To you four, sirs,'' replied the Knight, addressing those who had last spoken, ``and to your honourable and valiant masters, I have one common reply. Commend me to the noble knights, your masters, and say, I should do ill to deprive them of steeds and arms which can never be used by braver cavaliers.- I would I could here end my message to these gallant knights; but being, as I term myself, in truth and earnest, the Disinherited, I must be thus far bound to your masters, that they will, of their courtesy, be pleased to ransom their steeds and armour, since that which I wear I can hardly term mine own.''
``We stand commissioned, each of us,'' answered the squire of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, ``to offer a hundred zecchins in ransom of these horses and suits of armour.''
``It is sufficient,'' said the Disinherited Knight. ``Half the sum my present necessities compel meto accept; of the remaining half, distribute one moiety among yourselves, sir squires, and divide the other half betwixt the heralds and the pursuivants, and minstrels, and attendants.''
The squires, with cap in hand, and low reverences, expressed their deep sense of a courtesy and generosity not often practised, at least upon a scale so extensive. The Disinherited Knight then addressed his discourse to Baldwin, the squire of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. ``From your master,'' said he, ``I will accept neither arms nor ransom. Say to him in my name, that our strife is not ended - no, not till we have fought as well with swords as with
Lances - as well on foot as on horseback. To this mortal quarrel he has himself defied me, and I shall not forget the challenge. - Meantime, let him be assured, that I hold him not as one of his companions, with whom I can with pleasure exchange courtesies; but rather as one with whom I stand upon terms of mortal defiance.''
``My master,'' answered Baldwin, ``knows how to requite scorn with scorn, and blows with blows, as well as courtesy with courtesy, Since you disdain to accept from him any share of the ransom at which you have rated the arms of the other knights, I must leave his armour and his horse here, being well assured that he will never deign to mount the one nor wear the other.''
``You have spoken well, good squire,'' said the Disinherited Knight, ``well and boldly, as it beseemeth him to speak who answers for an absent master. Leave not, however, the horse and armour here. Restore them to thy master; or, if he scorns to accept them, retain them, good friend, for thine own use. So far as they are mine, I bestow them upon you freely.''
Baldwin made a deep obeisance, and retired with his companions; and the Disinherited Knight entered the pavilion.
``Thus far, Gurth,'' said he, addressing his attendant, ``the reputation of English chivalry hath not suffered in my hands.''
wise
Food for thought.
1. Revise what you know about Scott’s style.
2. Define the subject matter of the passage under study; speak on the “laws of chivalry” as presented in the text.
3. Account for the ways the material culture of the epoch is introduced.
4. Comment on the manner of speech in the text.
5. Account for the last paragraph. What is the idea of the text in the light of the last passage? Pay attention to the variety and origin of names.
CHARLES DICKENS.
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
Chapter 2.
A private sitting-room having been engaged, bedrooms inspected, and dinner ordered, the party walked out to view the city and adjoining neighbourhood. We do not find, from a careful perusal of Mr Pickwick's notes on the four towns, Stroud, Rochester, Chatham, and Brompton, that his impressions of their appearance differ in any material point from those of other travellers who have gone over the same ground. His general description is easily abridged.
"The principal productions of these towns," says Mr Pickwick, "appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine stores, hardbake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military. It is truly delightful to a philanthropic mind, to see these gallant men staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits; more especially when we remember that the following them about, and jesting with them, affords a cheap and innocent amusement for the boy population. Nothing (adds Mr Pickwick) can exceed their good humour. It was but the day before my arrival that one of them had been most grossly insulted in the house of a publican. The barmaid had positively refused to draw him any more liquor; in return for which he had (merely in playfulness) drawn his bayonet, and wounded the girl in the shoulder. And yet this fine fellow was the very first to go down to thehouse next morning, and express his readiness to overlook the matter, and forget what had occurred.
"The consumption of tobacco in these towns (continues Mr Pickwick) must be very great: and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to the dirt which is their leading characteristic;
but to those who view it as an indication of traffic and commercial prosperity, it is truly gratifying."
Punctual to five o'clock came the stranger, and shortly afterwards the dinner.
Food for thought.
1. Pick out the words belonging to the scientific and high poetic style. Does sentence structure in the passage remind you of any functional style?
2. Analyse the discrepancy between the form and the subject matter of the text. What is its stylistic function?
3. Speak on Mr. Pickwick’s character as shown in the passage. What is Dickens’ attitude to him? Explain the difference between Mr. Pickwick and Charles Dickens in the opinion on the towns.
4. Find the examples of parenthesis, zeugma, bathos and pun in the text. What is the function of these stylistic devices?
5. Comment on the title of the book.
THOMAS HARDY
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Chapter 39.
It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his father. With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him. He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of.
The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum and with leer of a study by Van Beers.
His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description. After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone far outside themselves as to test feasibility of their counsel. "This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the pagan moralist. That was just Clare's own opinion. But he was perturbed. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene. Clare chimed in cordially, but his hart was troubled all the same. How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him their method!
His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an outsider.
He was embitted by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishement was deserved.
Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate and drank without tasting. As the hours droppedpast, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and word and ways.
Wiertz Museum - a museum in Brussels.
van Beers - Led by a reaction against Romanticism, set in about 1860, writing became characterized by acute observation, description of local scenery, humour, and, not infrequently, a basic pessimism, as could be seen in the poetry of Jan van Beers.
Food for thought.
1. Define the general mood of the text. What devices helped you to do it? How does syntax contribute to it?
2. Analyse the function of art terms and names of artists in the passage.
3. What do the names of philosophers reveal about Angel Clare? Do you know the name of “the pagan moralist” mentioned in the text? What is the author’s attitude to Angel Clare?
4. What is the reason of Clare’s unhappiness? When do we find it out? What device does the author use?
5. Comment on the closure of the text.
OSCAR WILDE.
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The preface.
THE artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there
is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a
glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own
face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in .the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable
mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about the work of art shows that the work is new, complex and
vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it immensely.
All art is quite useless.
Notes.
Caliban is a character in Shakesspeare's "The Tempest", half man, half beast.
Food for thought.
1. What is the stylistic function of a preface generally?
2. Define the role of an artist, a critic, a reader.
3. What are the relations between art and life?
4. Explain O. Wilde's viewpoint on the morality of art.
5. Speak on the paragragh organization antd the usage of capital letters in the preface.
6. What is the function of the allusions used in the text?
7. Give some examples of paradox in the preface and explain their function. How are they created?
8. What does the preface reveal about the idea of the novel?
CHAPTER 11
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been subjected to fasting and scourging, and .the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the jotl-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser," and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
Notes.
Juruparis, ture, teponatztli - musical instruments of South and Central America.
“Tanhauser” is an opera by Wagner based on the story of a knight-minstrel Tanhauser who fell in love with Venus and spent his life in vain pursuit of her.
Food for thought.
1. Speak on the choice of words in the passage.
2. Analyse the sentence structure and the range of stylistic devices used by the author.
3. Comment on the instances of alliteration and its function.
4. Study the contrast between barbaric and classical music and explain its significance. Account for the allusion to “Tanhauser”.
5. Comment on the usage of epithets in the text; pay your attention to colour pattern.
6. What is the function of abundance of proper names in the text?
7. What do the interests reveal about Dorian Gray?
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and lovers.
Lad-and-girl love.
Coming to the edge of the wood, they saw the sky in front, like mother-of-pearl, and the earth growing dark. Somewhere on the outermost branches of the pine-wood the honeysuckle was streaming scent.
"Where?" he asked.
"Down the middle path", she murmured, quivering.
When they turned the comer of the path she stood still. In the wide walk between the pines, gazing rather frightened, she could distinguish nothing for some moments; the greying light robbed things of their colour. Then she saw her bush.
"Ah!" she cried, hastening forward.
It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.
Paul looked into Miriam's eyes. She was pale and expectant with wonder, her lips were parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him. His look seemed to travel down into her. Her soul quivered. It was the communion she wanted. He turned aside, as if pained. He turned to the bush.
"They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves", he said.
She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in worship.
Food for thought.
1. Comment on the role of nature in revealing the characters' mood.
2. Speak about the colour pattern.
3. Build up a thematic set of religious words and comment on their function.
4. Comment on the strong positions and the meaning of the word "love" for the characters.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
Death of a Hero.
They had crossed the road outside Bushey Park and entered the palace gates. Between the wall which backs the Long Border, the Tudor side of the palace, and another long high wall, is the Wilderness, or old English garden, composed on the grandiose scale advocated by Bacon.* It is both a garden and a 'wilderness', in the sense that it is planted with innumerable bulbs (which are thinned and renewed from time to time), but otherwise allowed to run wild. George and Elizabeth stopped with that sudden ecstasy of delight felt by the sensitive young - a few of them - at the sight of loveliness. Great secular trees, better protected than those in the outer Park, held up vast fans of glittering green-and-gold foliage which trembled in the light wind and formed moving patterns on the tender blue sky. The lilacs had just unfolded their pale hearts, showing the slim stalk of closed buds which would break open later in a foam of white and blue blossoms. Underfoot was the stouter green of wild plants, spread out like an evening sky of verdure for the thickclustered constellations of flowers. There shone the soft, slim yellow trumpet of the wild daffodil; the daffodil which has a pointed ruff of white petals to display its gold head; and the more opulent double daffodil which, compared with the other two, is like an ostentatious merchant between Florizel and Perdita.** There were the many-headed jonquils, creamy and thick-scented; the starry narcissus, so alert on its long, slender, stiff stem, so sharp-eyed, so unlike a longuid youth gazing into a pool; the hyacinthblue frail squilla *** almost lost in the lush herbs; and the hyacinth, blue and white and red, with its firm, thick-set stem and innumerable bells curling back their open points. Among them stood tulips - the red, like thin blown bubbles of dark wine; the yellow, more cup-like, more sensually open to the soft furry entry of the eager bees; the large parti-coloured gold and red, noble and sombre like the royal banner of Spain.
English spring flowers! What an answer to our ridiculous 'cosmic woe', how salutary, what a soft reproach to bitterness and avarice and despair, what balm to hurt minds! The lovely bulb-flowers, loveliest of the year, so unpretentious, so cordial, so unconscious, so free from the striving after originality of the gardener's tamed pets! The spring flowers of the English woods, so surprising under those bleak skies, and the flowers the English love so much and tend so skilfully in the cleanly wantonness of their gardens, as surprisingly beautiful as the poets of that bleak race! When the inevitable 'fuit Ilium'**** resounds mournfully over London among the appalling crash of huge bombs and the foul reek of deadly gases while the planes roar overhead, will the conqueror think regretfully and tenderly of the flowers and the poets? ...
Notes.
Bacon, Francis - an English philosopher. Here is the allusion to his essay "Of gardens".
Flonzel and Perdita —characters from Shakespeare's "Winter Tale", who love each other with clear, idyll love.
squilla = squill
fuit Ilium - Troy was - a phrase used to remind of Troy's being destroyed.
R. Aldington. Death of a Hero.
Food for Thought:
1. What is the symbolie meaning of the train?
2. Analyse all the epithets used in describing the scenery in France.
3. Speak about the stylistic function of antithesis “dark - brilliantly lighted”?
4. What does the word “barrier” symbolize?
5. Explain the meaning of Elizabeth’s words addressed to George.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
The Man of Property.
Part I. Chapter I.
Never had there been so full an assembly, for mysteriously united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms against a common peril. Like cattle when a dog comes into the field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared to run upon and trample the invader to death. They had come, too, no doubt, to get some notion of what sort of presents they would ultimately be expected to give; for though the question of wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way - "What are you givin'? Nicholas is givin' spoons!" - so much depended on the bridegroom. If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking, it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect them. In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by a species of family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived at on Stock Exchange - the exact niceties being regulated at Timothy's commodious, red-brick residence in Bayswater, overlooking the Park, whrer dwelt Aunts Ann, Juley and Hester.
The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the simple mention of the hat. How impossible and wrong would it have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which should ever characterise the great upper-middle class, to feel otherwise than uneasy!
The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance as though he found what was going on around him unususal. hE had an air, too, of having a joke all to himself.
George, speaking aside to his brother Eustace, said: "Looks as if he might make a bolt of it - the dashing Buccaneer!"
This "very singular-looking man", as Mrs. Small afterwards called him, was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown face, a dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and hollow cheeks. His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his head, and buldged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen in the lion-house at the Zoo. He had sherry-coloured eyes, disconcertingly inattentive at times. Old Jolyon's coachman, after driving June and Bossiney to the theater, had remarked to the butler: "I dunno what to make of 'im. Looks to me for all the world like an 'alf -tame leopard."
And ever now and then a Forsyte would come up, slide around and take a look at him.
June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity - a little bit of a thing, as somebody ones said, "all hair and spirit" with fearless blue eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose face and body seemed too slender for her crown of red-gold hair.
A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at these two with a shadowy smile.
Her hands, gloved in French gray, were croosed one over the other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of all men near were fastened on it. Her figure swayed, so balanced that the very air seemed to set it moving. There was warmth, but little colour in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft. But ti was at her lips - asking a question, giving an answer, with that shadowy smile - that men looked; they were sensitive lips, sensuouos and sweet, and thruogh them seemed to come warmth and perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.
The engaged couple thus scrutinised were unconscious of this passive goddess. It was Bossiney who first noticed her, and asked her name.
Food for thought.
1. What image is created in the initial lines of the text? Analyse the detail simile.
2. Explain the repetition of the words “uneasiness, uneasy”.
3. What is implicit in Bosinney’s portrature-drawing?
4. Compare the description of June and Irene.
5. Find out and analyse analogy in portrature-drawings of the main characters.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American. Chapter IV.
The men looked at the water and then, as though by a word of command, all together, they looked away. For a moment I didn't see what they had seen, but when I saw, my mind went back, I don't know why, to the Chalet and the female impersonators and the young soldiers whistling and Pyle saying, "This isn't a bit suitable."
The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuckup out of the water like a buoy. There was no blod: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back, and I suppose every man of us along the bank was thinking, "Two can play at that game." I too took my eyes away; we didn't want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously dath came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, exept by taking a look around at the little I would be leaving.
1. Analyse the stylistic device used in the very first paragraph of the text.
2. What is implicit in the metaphor “Irish stew”?
3. Comment on the stylistic function of similies in the text.
4. Divide the text in two parts thematically and analyse the main idea of each part.