#7 Burnt Norton V

 Select the one modernist poem or text that you found spoke to you most directly. Quote the text and tell us how the text moved you.

Section V of T.S Elliot’s “Burnt Norton” is the closing of a truly miraculous perspective of the way human beings are able to create words to allow us to see things that we’re constantly trying to comprehend. The power of the word choice seizes to amaze me “Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.”. When we are placed in a situation, such as arguments, we tend to retaliate in the heat of the moment. In this pice words play a part in the cause and effect of any circumstance, this is the nature of language in human experience. Words are trying to carry some meaning for us, they help us understand.

These words are the powerful concepts that we as human beings create ourselves, “words move, music moves.” resulting in the ideas on paper being one thing but in life, it is a powerful experience. However the idea of love, “love is itself unmoving, only the cause of the end of movement” can be seen as a strong element in the development of our words. Religious ideologies are placed in this text as a representation of love, insisting that before time there was love and now the being at the places where we are is the implications of love and it works and flows in a creative way. Words also reach into our core and as such an internal silence, this can be seen as atmospherical silences and this compliments the mood that T.S Elliot is surrounded with. 

After reading this piece more than once it has become more aware to me that is surrounding mainly by the theme of time. It’s as if people are stuck in the past and are unable to see the beauty of the present. “Quick, now, here, always– Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.”, the finishing words of the text truly spoke to be as it was alluded to be a call to anybody reading this to give a childlike perspective of life to live in the moment without getting caught up in the rush of life and to see the world for what it really is. 

https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-4964354-stock-footage-zooming-busy-city-pedestrian-traffic-time-lapse-of-times-square-area-using-a-circular-blur-effect.html

“Burnt Norton” Part V 

Norton Anthology D – Page 398-399

 

#2 Emerson’s ‘Nature’

How has Emerson’s ‘Nature’ given you a clearer sense of what it is you are looking for in your own life?

The idea Transcendentalism came as a shock to me. Not physically but mentally. For years I understood that something of this nature existed but I never had the knowledge the term, which it was related to. Transcendentalism as being repeatedly aware of is a title, which is hard to define and decipher, however, it can be illustrated as a philosophical movement in American Literature. The two main figureheads in literature of this movement are known to be Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau but I would just like to hone lightly on Emerson’s essay “Nature”.

Emerson’s essay “Nature” is mainly about how nature is a way of understanding who we are and being reminded not to let the noise surrounding our lives cloud our judgment on our own thoughts and truths. He does this through the quote “I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am a particle of God.” (Chapter 1). It is a way that Emerson can express that what we see is a remarkable part of our being; it is the part that is original and warranted.

Each chapter following has been given separate key messages or ‘sub- messages’ which is portrayed to the reader as each one is interconnected to the main idea of understanding ourselves and to listen to our own opinions. Chapters 2,3 and 4 represent the value of nature through its commodity, beauty, and language. Through these chapters, they create a sense of awakening in my own life especially as these three themes are current issues in today’s day and age that is something that strikes a chord with me personally. Hearing about the longing for a physical possession or society’s value of an image and the way we express ourselves through our language.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay ‘Nature’
Penguin Books ‘Nature’ Cover