Tess of the D'Urbervilles

• Polanski's Tess

   

• TV Movie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126100/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_14

 

"Lapis Lazuli" by W. B. Yeats

I notice that you have much lapis lazuli; someone has sent me a present of a great piece carved by some Chinese sculptor into the semblance of a mountain with temple, trees, paths and an ascetic and pupil about to climb the mountain. Ascetic, pupil, hard stone, eternal theme of the sensual east. The heroic cry in the midst of despair. But no, I am wrong, the east has its solutions always and therefore knows nothing of tragedy. It is we, not the east, that must raise the heroic cry.

-Yeats, letter to Dorothy Wellesley, July 6, 1936


Lapis Lazuli
William Butler Yeats


I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,'
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instmment.

Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay. 




Source: http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/777/

"Easter, 1916" by W. B. Yeats

Easter, 1916

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/247616#poem

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

Biographies:

• Poets.org
• Poetry Foundation
• Encyclopaedia Britannica

To read the author's works, click here.

The Irish Question

Some useful sites to read about the Irish question:

http://dawndenmar1.hubpages.com/hub/History-of-The-Irish-Question-in-British-Politics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/elizabeth_ireland_01.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/overview_victorians_01.shtml

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Easter_Rising.html

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1916_easter_rising.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion



To read the lyrics, click here.



To read the lyrics, click here.

"The Impercipient" by Thomas Hardy

The Impercipient

Thomas Hardy

THAT from this bright believing band
An outcast I should be,
That faiths by which my comrades stand
Seem fantasies to me,
And mirage-mists their Shining Land,	5
Is a drear destiny.
Why thus my soul should be consigned
To infelicity,
Why always I must feel as blind
To sights my brethren see,	10
Why joys they’ve found I cannot find,
Abides a mystery.
Since heart of mine knows not that ease
Which they know; since it be
That He who breathes All’s Well to these	15
Breathes no All’s Well to me,
My lack might move their sympathies
And Christian charity!
I am like a gazer who should mark
An inland company	20
Standing upfingered, with, “Hark! hark!
The glorious distant sea!”
And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon dark
And wind-swept pine to me!”
Yet I would bear my shortcomings	25
With meet tranquillity,
But for the charge that blessed things
I’d liefer have unbe.
O, doth a bird deprived of wings
Go earth-bound wilfully!     .      .      .      .	30
Enough. As yet disquiet clings
About us. Rest shall we.

Source: http://www.bartleby.com/121/43.html

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

Biographies:

• Poetry Foundation
• Poets.org
• The Victorian Web

To read Hardy's works, click here.

Hypertextuality

• Hypertext(uality)

Links/Connections

Theodor Nelson (1981): docuverse
Gerard Genette: Palimpsests

• Transtextuality/Intertextuality

Relationship between texts

Gerard Genette

Julia Kristeva

• Transmedia

Henry Jenkins

"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning

"How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43



To read more about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, click here and here.
To read her works, click here.