Sally’s MODL5304 Blog

How Roosevelt’s Personality Lingers Today February 26, 2007

This poem by Ruben Dario is dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Rider, epitome of masculinity and energy and symbol of the emerging power of the US at the time of the writing of the poem.  Roosevelt represents all the jingoistic characteristics of the US for Latin Americans at the time of the Spanish American War.  This has not changed much in the one hundred years hence, although there have been Presidents who have made an effort to listen to our southern neighbors, not just overwhelm them with money and arms for acting in our best interest.

The references to historical and mythological places and people are innumerable in the poem and certainly require a classical education to understand the deeper meaning of the poem.  It’s understandable that the modernistas did not find a large reading public in Latin America for their style combines so many terms from different eras, Pre-Colombian and Colonial history, Western Hemisphere politics at the turn of the 20^th century, names from antiquity, and mythological people and places.  The reader must be well educated to begin to understand all the references. 

And while Dario criticizes the US for its attitude toward Latin America, the Spanish conquistas were certainly at least as cruel, single-minded and rapacious in their conquest of Latin America as their North American neighbors.  I only have to think of Pizarro’s words to the Inca king: “Where’s the gold,” to be reminded how greedy and uninterested they were in the indigenous peoples of the New World. 

So one hundred years later, the US is still seen as the bully of the New World.  And, while Dario makes reference to the potential ascendancy of the Argentines and the Chileans, these are currently not the countries considered strongest in Latin America, A good case could be made for the success of the Chilean economy and government, but the real powerhouse today appears to be Venezuela because of the liquid gold that they control.

In spite of all of this, the attitude of the poet toward the US and its overbearing approach to Latin America is understandable. But it certainly seems to be a subjective view of the contribution of the Spanish to the area, which still suffers from the way the countries in Latin America were ruled prior to independence.

Realism in Sentimental Education February 19, 2007

Flaubert, as one of the exponents of realism, according to Rene Wellek in the article titled “Realism in Literature”, shows a mastery of describing contemporary life in France during the middle of the eighteenth century (Wellek 2).  This style of writing is characterized by giving a “truthful representation of the real world” and a study of “contemporary life and manners by observing meticulously and analyzing carefully” (Wellek 2). In describing contemporary life writing should “do so dispassionately, impersonally, objectively” according to Champfleury who lived during the same time as Flaubert and who wrote about the realistic style in essays titled Réalisme (Wellek 2). 

There are many examples of this style in Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and sometimes a truthful representation of the world is not very pretty. When Flaubert describes the conditions in the prison where 900 inmates, including his friend Sénécal, are being kept during the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, we can almost smell the stench coming from the jail:

There were nine hundred men there, packed together chaotically in the filth, black with powder and coagulated blood, shaking with fever and shouting with rage; and those who died were left among the living. (Flaubert 363)

As Henry James says in the Art of Fiction and other Essays, and quoted in the book titled Realism edited by Lilian R. Furst ”The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life” (43). We can assert that Flaubert is skilled at representing the life of his times in even the minutest detail.  After Moreau had thrown a plate at the viscount Cisy, Flaubert describes the scene down to the pieces of broken crockery: “. . . the waiters were mopping up the wine and picking up the broken crockery from the floor” (240).  When Moreau goes looking for his friend Regimbart to tell him about the incident, Flaubert describes the tavern where Regimbart is eating as “A candle on the edge of the bar lit up the deserted room. All the stools had been placed on the tables, with their legs in the air” (240-241).

As a result of Flaubert’s use of such a realistic style, we can actually feel like we are walking the streets of Paris and living at the same time as the story was written.  Such is the talent of a writer like Flaubert to transport us into the Paris of the 1840’s.

Nature and Love in Sab and Candide February 14, 2007

In looking at the last two books we have read, I find the style of writing in Sab to evoke quite a different reader reaction from the style of Candide.  Without knowing much about romantic literature, Sab fits the stereotype of a romantic piece, full of flowery descriptions of nature and emotional passages brimming over with passion and tears.  The style of Candide, by contrast, is very matter of fact, even understated, in describing the most horrific events in the story which the hero has to endure before finding the secret to life.

We see Sab’s unrequited love for Carlota described in subjective and poignant terms.  As Sab himself says in the letter he leaves to Teresa, “Love soon had exclusive hold over my heart”, and “I would have won Carlota at the price of a thousand heroic deeds” (Avellaneda 142).  The scenes of nature, especially the tropical storms that develop, are particularly well developed by the author.  When Sab and Enrique leave for Puerto Príncipe as a storm approaches, against Carlota’s wishes, the author describes the scene by saying “The heavens opened, spewing fire through innumerable openings” (Avellaneda 50). 

But in Candid the events are described in such an understated, simple way that it almost seems funny the author could be talking about such terrible events.  When his teacher, Dr. Pangloss, is hanged, Voltaire, in a matter-of-fact tone, states “the Biscayner, and the two men who had refused to eat bacon, were burnt, and Pangloss was hanged, though that was not the custom” (Voltaire 13). What understatement!  We see no emotion expressed nor outrage at the event, but just the comment “The same day the earth sustained a most violent concussion” (Voltaire 13).  While this last statement does indicate nature’s disapproval of the deaths of the three men, it is certainly not like the violent storms depicted in such detail in Sab.  Even when Candide is separated from his beloved Cunegonde in South America, he only manages to say “What shall we do without Cunegonde?” to his servant (Voltaire 32). This is certainly not the level of passion exhibited by Sab in his burning love of Carlota. 

The comparison that comes to mind is the difference between Beethoven’s Apassionata Sonata and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  The emotion that the Romantic writer/composer is able to evoke has more raw emotion in it, while the pleasure of the classical musical style or Voltaire’s Enlightenment writing seems more cerebral.

The Child Chimney Sweeper of Today February 5, 2007

In this charming poem, I can see the horrors of the Industrial Revolution appearing in the story of the young Chimney Sweepers, Tom and his friend who is telling the story.  Thinking of all the soot that wafted into my London flat from who knows where, I can imagine an army of chimney sweepers going out each day to the houses to sweep and clean the chimneys when my flat was only one floor of a grand house on Goldhurst Terrace.  I wonder how many of them were orphans like Tom.  Certainly it sounds like no life for a child, having to work all day, but maybe he was able to at least eat and have a warm place to sleep. Think of the children of Darfur with distended stomachs and the life of a chimney sweep doesn’t seem so bad.

Every day there seem to be stories of child laborers around the world being forced to work in sweatshops.  Stories of Cambodian families selling their daughters off to be sex slaves while they are still just children were on CNN just the other day.  I suppose in comparison to this kind of life, the life of a chimney sweep is preferable.  At least you don’t die from AIDS when you are 13 years old. 

So, the question is, are children any better off today in third world countries than the child chimney sweeper of London at the turn of the 19^th century?