Poetic Treatment Research Articles

Fujiwara Teika's "Superior Poems of Our Time": A Thirteenth-Century Poetic Treatise and Sequence

Fujiwara Teika's "Superior Poems of Our Time": A Thirteenth-Century Poetic Treatise and Sequence

Fujiwara Teika's Supreme Poems of Our Times. A Thirteenth-Century Poetic Treatise and Sequence.

Fujiwara Teika's Supreme Poems of Our Times. A Thirteenth-Century Poetic Treatise and Sequence.

Ethic and Metaphysic: A Study of John G. Neihardt

W. E. B L A C K Denver University Ethic and Metaphysic: A Study of John G. Neihardt The nature of our concept of reality determines the nature of our actions because every ethical act is performed within a meta­ physical framework. In his writings, John G. Neihardt has in­ vestigated this relation of attitude to action, of metaphysics to ethics; and especially two of his lengthy poems The Divine Enchantment, a poem of Hindu mysticism, and The Song of the Messiah, a poetic treatment of the Sioux ghost-dance religion, demonstrate his state­ ment that “our conception of values, by which we live, must grow out of our genuine belief as to what is real”.1 For Neihardt the search for the reality upon which he could predicate his life grew from a vision and an early study of Eastern philosophy. “In the summer when Neihardt was eleven .. . he had a serious attack of fever, an experience that left a deep impression on his spiritual life. . . . On his recovery . . . the ‘shaping dream’ of being a poet had become a fixed idea.”2 This illness became for him what the “power visions” had been to the Indians: the divine indication of the path he must follow. This illness also turned Neihardt to mysticism, for he relates that during the fever he was pulled through the air at such speed that the wind became glass beneath his feet. By the time he reached college age, this mysticism had led him into a spiritual journey to the East. ^ohn Neihardt, Poetic Values (New York, 1925), p. vii. 2Julius House, John G. Neihardt, Man and Poet (Wayne, Nebraska, 1920), p .9. 206 Western American Literature Armed with Max Muller’s Vedanta Philosophy, he sought and found a translation of the Upanishads. The annotations pen­ cilled in Neihardt’s copy . . . suggest his particular attraction toward the concept of the ultimate god, its warnings against both ignorance and intellectual pride. The influence of this book upon The Divine Enchantment is inescapable.3 Neihardt’s first presentation of his thought is The Divine En­ chantment, subtitled A Mystical Poem, published privately in 1900. It is the survivor of four “mythological epics” attempted during this period. The Divine Enchantment, in an edition of 500 copies, escaped destruction; yet despite favorable reviews—the Chicago Tribune providing the exception—Neihardt apparently was not satisfied with this juvenilia for, as House stated in 1920, “wherever he finds a copy in circulation, he buys and destroys it”.4 The Divine Enchantment recounts the tale of the virgin Devanaguy who, according to ancient prophecies, would bear Christna, the incarnation of Vishnu. The tyrant Kansa has im­ prisoned her to prevent this, yet Vishnu nonetheless “over-shadows” and impregnates her. “During the term of her gestation, Devanaguy was transported by a continual ecstatic dream.”5 It is the revelation of this dream which forms the central content of the poem. The book The Bible in India by the Jesuit missionary Louis Jacolliot suggested to Neihardt the use of this tale comparable to that of the Immaculate Conception; but it is the metaphysical rather than the narrative element which dominates Neihardt’s adaptation. The philosophical premises which underlie The Divine En­ chantment and Neihardt’s subsequent works are rooted in two Hindu triads. The first is composed of Brahman, Universal Being; of Atman, the ego of the individual consciousness; and Maya, illusion created not by our perception of the phenomenal world but by the concept of individuality which accepts only a partial, and hence faulty, view.6 To escape maya, it is necessary to transcend a partial view; it is necessary to attain Nirvana. The three stations leading to Nirvana form the second triad basic to our understanding of Neihardt’s metaphysics. 8George Grant, The Poetic Development of John G. Neihardt (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1958), pp. 36-37. 4House, op. cit., p. 16. 5John Neihardt, Divine Enchantment {New York, 1900), p. 5. 8John Neihardt, Poetic Values, p. 25. A Study of John G. Neihardt 207 The first station is Waking Consciousness, a state of awareness totally blinded by illusion. The second is the Dream-sleep, a partial loss of self; and the third is...

‘The Honey on the Cup’ in Oppian and Others

Towards the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius Oppian of Cilicia wrote a didactic epic of some 3,500 lines on sea-creatures and the methods of catching them, entitled Halieutica. This literary, rather than scientific, enterprise was hardly an original one, for Athenaeus, whose Deipnosophistae must have been published not long after the death of Commodus in A.D. 193, tells us that he was acquainted with five such hexametrical Halieuticas, those of Caecilius of Argos, Numenius of Heracleia, Pancrates of Arcadia, Poseidonius of Corinth, and lastly Oppian, whom he describes as τὸν ὀλίγῳ πρὸ ἡμῶν γενόμενον Όππιανὸν τὸν Κίλικα. The wider context of Oppian's work is that whole tradition in Greek of didactic epic as a merely literary exercise, which for us begins with Aratus in the early third century B.C., but which seems more precisely to have been initiated by Aratus' teacher Menecrates of Ephesus, who about 300 B.C. turned to the old Hesiodic tradition with the composition of an Erga. Aratus too was reviving an old tradition that seems to have flourished in the sixth century B.C. of versifying astronomical and meteorological lore. As is well known, his Phaenomena and also probably the Diosemeia are essentially a verse paraphrase of a treatise by Eudoxus, a treatise which already in Aratus' time did not provide the most up-to-date and reliable information. Later, whether only shortly or more than a century later, Nicander of Colophon likewise adapted, certainly in his Theriaca and perhaps also in his Alexipharmaca, the technical prose writings of a poison-expert Apollodorus. These are but two examples, and, as far as we can tell, typical ones, of what was done by a large number of poets from Aratus' time onwards for a considerable variety of poetically unpromising subjects, which, apart from astronomy, poisons and fishing, we know included astrology, medical prescriptions generally, hunting, agriculture, bee-keeping, geography, stones and the flights of birds, whilst the poetic treatment of yet other subjects, such as dicing, ball-games and swimming, is recorded by Ovid (Trist. 2. 471 ff.).

Herbert and Crashaw: Two Paraphrases of the Twenty–Third Psalm

HROUGHOUT the history of English literature, poets have written verse-paraphrases of passages from the Bible. Many of these are confined to several verses or a psalm, but others include complete books such as Job, the Song of Solomon, or Isaiah. reasons behind such paraphrases are as varied as the poets who wrote them. Some were dissatisfied with the prevailing versions of the Bible and wished to give more accurate translations to the public. They believed that the portions of the Old Testament originally in Hebrew poetry lost too much in the prose versions. Others were interested in metrical paraphrases which could be chanted or sung in worship services. psalms were most frequently paraphrased, since they could either be used in worship or give the poet opportunity to express his own religious fervor in the words of the Scriptures. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, psalm paraphrases were written by many famous poets including Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, George Gascoigne, Sir Philip Sidney, Francis Bacon, John Donne, George Herbert, and Richard Crashaw. Many of these paraphrases are perfunctory treatments which lack originality and enthusiasm. If the poet attempted to be too literal, his paraphrase lacked imagination; however, if he aimed for originality, his final poem often became so free that it moved outside the realm of paraphrase. George Herbert's The Twenty-Third Psalme and Richard Crashaw's Psalm 23 are two of the best seventeenth-century paraphrases, and they illustrate the variety possible in this genre. Herbert's paraphrase remains close to the scriptural source, yet reveals poetic imagination. Crashaw's is much longer, expanding into seventy-two lines; but his poetic treatment falls within the limits of paraphrase. By definition, paraphrase is not a literal translation but a rephrasing in which the poet is free to build upon the original by developing images more fully provided he does not lose sight of the basic structure and intent of his model.

Whitman on Architecture

Research Article| March 01 1957 Whitman on Architecture Charles R. Metzger Charles R. Metzger Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (1957) 16 (1): 25–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/987850 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Charles R. Metzger; Whitman on Architecture. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 March 1957; 16 (1): 25–27. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/987850 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search This content is only available via PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Poetic Treatment of a Platonic-Christian Theme

The Poetic Treatment of a Platonic-Christian Theme

Four Treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim called Paracelsus.

Born near Einsiedeln in 1493, Philip Theophrastus von Hohenheim, who later called himself Paracelsus, was the son of a physician. His thirst for knowledge led him to study arts in Vienna, then medicine in Italy, but the instruction left him disillusioned. He had learned to see nature with his own eyes, undiluted by the teachings of books. He was a rebellious spirit, hard-headed and stubborn, who travelled all over Europe and the British Isles to practice medicine, study local diseases, and learn from any source he could, humble as it might be. In these years of wanderings, Paracelsus developed his own system of medicine and a philosophy of theology all his own. Though he wrote a great many books that covered a wide range of subjects, only a few of his works were ever published in his lifetime. When he died in Salzburg in 1541, one of the most forceful personalities of the Renaissance died with him. Here are collected four treatises which illustrate four different aspects of Paracelsus' work. The first gives a passionate justification of his character, activities, and views, and gives a picture of the man and his basic ideas. The second treatise is a study of the diseases of miners, with whom Paracelsus had spent a great deal of time. Then follows a treatise on the psychology and psychiatry of Paracelsus. Written at a time when mental diseases were beginning to be studied and treated by physicians, this pioneering essay anticipates a number of modern views. The last essay, entitled A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, is a fanciful and poetic treatment of paganism and Greek mythology, as well as a good sample of Paracelsus' philosophy and theology. Together these essays show one of the most original minds of the Renaissance at the height of his powers.