mod. b: rhapsody on a windy night Flashcards
1
Q
futility, modern world
street-lamp
A
The street lamp sputtered, the street-lamp muttered
- personfication
- motif
- fragmentation
- dissociative nature
- facilitates series of vignettes
- illuminates darkness of modern world
- imagism - ezra pound
- reflects darkness of modern world
- anti-aesthetic imagery
- parallel syntax - enhances isolation of persona
- sordid and solitary existence of flaneur
2
Q
isolation
fatalistic
A
every street lamp that i pass
beats like a fatalistic drum
- street-lamps beats metaphor for the persona’s heartbreat
- persona feels that isolation due to decay of the modern he can hear his own heartbeat
- persona yearns for companionship and genuine social connection
- street-lamp is the only source of light in the darkness of the urban world
- motif of darkness and sense of decay manifests the sense of mortality
- self-imbued sense of isolation and alienation
- sordid and solitary existence of flaneur
- imagism - ezra pound
- reflects darkness of the urban world
- facilitates series of vignettes
- fragmentation
- personfication
3
Q
futility, modern world
geranium
A
midnight shakes the memory, as a madman shakes a dead geranium
- similie
- anti-aesthetic imagery of flowers
- juxtaposition - society’s willingness to murder the toughest of plants
- geraniums symbolise everyday life
- reminder of what life once was, but is no longer - geraniums once possessed beauty but no longer do as they have been neglected
- persona is in moonlight rather than sunligh - sense of fatalism
- flowers symbolise a sense of vivacity, reminder that everything of substance will fade
- from french symbolist Jules Laforgue
- describing lunacy, or temporary insanity brought by changes in the moon
- absurdity of image represents the complexities of the modern pysche and loss of ontological ground - struggle for deeper meaning
- motif of time - fragembtation, fragmented nature of poem and reflection of the modern psyche
- fractured, dispered structure of poem reflects the sense of dispersion in modernist life in his time
- inevitability of one’s mortality with each passage of time
- time attempts to add structure to the poem, as it the only location of meaning of stability and meaning in the poem among the decay of urban life in the landscape
4
Q
isolation
spring
A
a broken spring in a factory yard
rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
- spring represents persona’s mind
- rust symbolises decaying of mind as to decaying of the urban world which further emphasises the disconnection persona feels from the world
5
Q
futility
paper rose
A
a washed-out smallpox cracks her face, her hand twists out a paper rose
- anti-aesthetic imagery of disease paralleled with the traditionally beautiful rose
- representation of identity breaking apart - disonnection, struggle for companionship
- inevitability of death
- paper symbolises fragility of flower, artifical
- continued flower imagery
6
Q
modern world
knife
A
the bed is open…
the last twist of the knife
- imagery of mundane life
- paradoxical rhyme schme life/knife subverted by elliot’s fragmentation
- urbanised life/knife = futility
