Class Notes 2/26

Notes...

Eliot, not borrowing, but stealing from St. John of the Cross
**See the text circled by yellow on the scan picture from John of the Cross: Selected Writings.

Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker

In order to arrive there,To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.

HOMEWORK: Read William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, then blog about it

IMPORTANT: Dr. Sexson stressed this in class, we must catch up on our blogging & be reading the blogs of others. We have no exams in this class, therefore we are expected to show up and blog.

See Pat's blog: aesthetic hero, which we talked about for nearly the entire class period.

connected to Pater and intellectual excitement, everything is fleeting which is why we must pay attention.....

'still sad music of humanity" - walking to campus early in the morning, the sun is rising, Dr. Sexson

Rousseau, Confessions, intellectual excitement, "love of art for its own sake", give highest quality to moments as they pass...

John Keats, Walter Pater, Wallace Stevens, Henry James.....ALL aesthetes.

Walter Pater, taught at Oxford University
Epicurean, becoming aesthetic hero...... = becoming a person who is optimally aware of the world...

**Dr. Sexson said Taylor is a developing aesthete by responding to a poem as it need to be responded to, reading the poem correctly...Taylor subsequently disagreed. Taylor is responding to the poem as a whole, emotional, imagination wiped from the world:
Sexson: (to Taylor) 'You are an aethetic hero.'
Taylor: 'First thing, I am not an aesthetic hero.'
Sexson: "Yes you are."
Taylor: "No..."

to see a thing in itself which really counts in this class you are being the enlightenment

not Pater - hedonism, pursuit of pleasure for pleasure, living for the moment

figure of capable imagination
Wallace Stevens poem, working to come up with his own concretization of the aesthetic hero.

Keats - negative capability, via negativa, drain yourself, become nothing in order to have everything

DVD film: Bright Star, about John Keats, living example of who Pater thinks is aesthetic hero, which is done by being optimally aware.

Henry James, one on who nothing is lost, Ambassadors

Hopkins - Windover.....talking about a bird, bird of prey, the prey bird dive bombs, destroying, and shredding the mouse, extreme violence, but also extreme beauty...Christ do to me what the bird of prey did in that dive bomb, is the idea.

Kevin is loving Hopkins, read his blog, Holy Hopkins Batman.
aesthetic hero

Hopkins Poetry = Rice Crispies = snap, crackle, pop

Kevin: got up in front of the class and gave a clear impromptu presentation about Inscape, a rhetorical category, a means by which the aesthetic hero sees something as it really is and no other thing... one you see that an explosion happens. Also instress. The uniqueness of everything. close to the word of God....
Figure out instress of inscape
Kevin:
Hopkins - religious spin on everything, what it's about is not important, what Hopkins did with the theme is important....

I think we are also supposed to read Dillard over the weekend as well.....She is Hopkinsian