Assalamualaikum. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Welcome
back to our hopefully beautiful journey into
English literature. Today we move, finally we move
from the Augustan literature, the neoclassicism
and the rules of the Quran to speak about one of
the most interesting, one of the most fascinating
literary movements in England. but also in Europe.
But our focus is English literature, so we're
going to be focusing on the romantic poets or
romanticism or romantic literature in England. So
far, we have been speaking about poetry in so many
ways. We've seen how, for example, that men
dominate poetry. Not because there's something
wrong with women, but because the way the society
was treating men and women, we have something
different here. We've seen how, for example, in
the Augustan Age, Those people, those poets, those
great poets like Dryden, Alexander Pope, and other
poets even like Milton, how they preferred to
follow a particular etiquette, a particular
decorum, particular rules in order to write
particular types of poetry? Before these people
were preaching what is called the Rules of
Decorum, we've seen something from Alexander Poppe
from his poem Essay on Criticism, how he was
saying that poetry has to be methodized because
these rules were discovered from nature, and
that's why we have to follow them, to follow, to
imitate the great ancient poets in order to
produce poetry. Only John Donne probably was
writing different poetry. And we've seen how he
was hated. He was negatively framed in so many
ways. Now, we move to a group of people who were
really fed up with the classical or neoclassical
Augustan way of expressing yourself as a poet. And
this movement is called Romanticism, Romantic
Literature, or Romantic Poetry. This is a movement
that started in the late 18th century, actually
beginning from The French Revolution. Remember we
said this before about the 17th, 18th century,
there were like so many changes taking place. In
the 18th century, in a way or another, it was
called the Age of Revolutions. People wanted real
change, radical change. In America, we have the
American Revolution. In France, we have the French
Revolution, in addition to the Industrial
Revolution and the revolutions in all walks of
life. But England did not like to change radically
because After the Commonwealth and the
restoration, they realized that stability is the
best thing we could possibly have. However, some
people said, okay, if we can't do political and
social changes, real changes, at least we can do a
revolution in poetry, in literature, and this is
the romantic poets, basically William Wordsworth
and Coleridge. So as a movement, the beginnings,
go to more or less, again these dates are not
clear cut. It doesn't mean like this is the French
Revolution, the next day people wake up and they
find themselves writing different poetry. It's
gradual, it takes time sometimes. More or less. So
after the Age of Revolutions was sweeping all
across America and Europe, England had to do
something. It didn't do it in politics. It didn't
do it in other areas. It was literature. And this
is how I usually focus on this, how literature
changes lives. how literature changes societies,
how literature makes us different people,
hopefully better people, affects us, how it
influences us positively. And this is true because
literature addresses the heart and the mind in a
way or another. It's similar to watching a movie.
Sometimes you watch a movie and you weep, you cry,
you feel sorry for something or you decide to
change something about your behavior. And this is
the power of literature. So don't undermine the
fact that It was only a revolution in literature
in England. So we speak about the two major
romantic poets, William Wordsworth and his friend,
his best friend, he's also a romantic poet and
critic, Samuel Coleridge. So Wordsworth and
Coleridge. Together, they published a book they
called The Lyrical Ballads. They called it the
lyrical palace. And they were writing totally
radically different poetry from the Augustan
poetry. Remember, The Age of Reason, The Rules.
The satire where poetry was basically an elite
subject matter, elite, highly sophisticated
language, and it's generally about the court life,
about the king, the queen, battles, heroism. Here,
everything changed. We'll talk about this in more
details today and in the coming classes. When they
published this book, many people wanted to read
it, and they sold out. So they had to work on
another edition and they added a preface. You know
preface? An introduction to the second edition.
And this introduction is so significant. In Arabic
we know, where the introduction could be more
significant than the book itself in many ways.
Here the preface is so significant because William
Wordsworth and Coleridge together in a way or
another, they defined poetry. They gave us a
different definition of poetry. And they told us
poetry has to be one, two, three. I'll talk about
this in a bit. Okay, so it was later, the same
book was republished, but there was an extra
preface, introduction in which they defined poetry
and they told the people what they were doing. The
tenets, the fundamentals of Romanticism. Okay, now
one significant point. is the comparison between
the Romantics and the Neoclassicists or the
Augustans. When I say the Neoclassicists or the
Augustans or the Age of Reason, think of Dryden,
think of Samuel Johnson, and think of Alexander
Pope. You know, the couplets, the rules of
decorum, the subject matter that has to be a
particular issue. Some people say, The Romantics
were almost the very opposite of the Augustan Age.
This is true. But we have to be careful, again.
This is true, but we need to be careful because we
don't want to give the impression that the
romantics were writing poetry only to oppose and
contrast the Augustans. No. They had their own
idea of what poetry means. So what did they
change? Number one, what is poetry? In the past,
poetry was following the rules of decorum to speak
about an important issue in the society using
important, highly sophisticated language. But now,
for the romantics, poetry is an expression of
feelings. Poetry is the overflow, this is part of
the definition, the overflow of emotions, of
powerful emotions.
It's the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion.
In a way, when you ask a romantic poet, why do you
write poetry? He's not going to tell you, I'm
writing poetry to teach and delight. I'm not
writing poetry to assert eternal providence and to
justify the means of God to man or something. I'm
not writing poetry to teach you how poetry is
methodized and how poetry is discovered in nature.
I'm not writing poetry to teach you that a little
learning is a dangerous thing. No. I'm writing
poetry to self-express myself. What is poetry?
Self-expression. And this is beautiful and new and
revolutionary and different. So why would you
write poetry? I don't care. In a way, it doesn't
mean that they didn't care about the audience.
They did. But more significant than teaching and
delighting first is to express yourself as an
individual. As an individual. So what is poetry?
It's emotions. It's feelings. It's expressing
powerful emotions and feelings. The overflow of
powerful emotions.
What is the language of poetry?
For the romantics? Highly sophisticated language,
you know, embellished. We spoke about embellished,
highly embellished language where you sometimes
usually you need to check the dictionary to see
what a particular word means. Oh yeah. So the
romantics, for the romantics poetry was the common
Language, or the language of everyday man.
What does it mean everyday man? Like the language
we use normally as we speak. And not, no, no, no,
not slang. General, I don't even want to say
colloquial. It's poetic still, but you don't go
for the difficult words. One simple thing, when
students sometimes come to me and say, I want to
write poetry. I write poetry. I want to learn how
to write English poetry. I always tell them, try
to read something by William Blake. Try to read
these poems by William Wordsworth because
sometimes you would read the whole poem and you
don't even use the dictionary once because you
know all the words. It doesn't mean it's very
easy, very simple, no, but they don't go for the
difficult expressions, for the difficult language,
the language that only people who go to
university, they understand. It's a language that
if you say it to anyone, They will understand.
We'll take examples in a bit. So poetry is
different. The language of poetry is different.
The subject matter in
the past, remember, was about heroism, about God,
about Adam, about Eve, about the queen, the fairy
queen, right? Yes. About paradise lost. So the
subject matter has always been about generally
courtly life. And that's why we have courtly love
poetry about the king and the queen and even about
Adam and Eve and God and the creation. Mostly
issues according to the Augustan definition like
something of importance to the society as a whole.
But now for the romantics they said no. I can't
fix the whole society. I can't make one poem
change the whole society. I can't change one
person at a time. I can't change an individual at
a time. So the subject matter is also taken from
common life. Simple and
generally about ordinary people.
Sometimes, The people take even the title of the
book, the poem. We'll find a poem called, for
example, Chimney Sweeper. Lucy Gray. Who's Lucy
Gray? Is she the queen? Is she a princess? She's a
poor little girl. A poem called Sick Rose. will
find a lot of nature. So basically, everything we
learned about the Augustans was changed. Poetry is
no longer written in order to please the king or
the court or important, highly educated people.
It's to please, to address, to communicate
internal powerful emotions with the masses. with
the individuals, with the individuals. Simple
language, subject matters are taken from ordinary
life, from nature mainly. The romantics were
fascinated with nature.
I'll come back to this many times, especially when
I talk about William Wordsworth. So the general
features of the romantic poetry, these are very
significant. We have general features for the
whole school, and we have each individual poet has
extra particular features. We'll see William Blake
in a bit. So the romantics, number one, they use
simple language. And then also simple subject
matter from common life, common daily life. For
example, the sick rose, the daffodils, Lucy Gray.
Who's Lucy Gray? She's not the fairy queen. She's
an ordinary little girl. The chimney sweeper,
little lamb, nature, simple people. And what does
this mean? When you change the language, when you
break the rules of decorum, you are certainly
employing new poetic forms. I always like to liken
John Donne to the romantics in the way he broke
the rules, in the way he wanted to change so many
things. But there are different issues. Those
people were focusing more on feelings, emotions,
powerful emotions, personal individual
experiences. We have this in John Donne, but not
in this particular way. And those people were
fascinated with nature. Fascinated with nature. So
like John Donne, the idea, the meaning is more
important than the rule. And that's why we'll see
new poetic forms. We'll see long lines, short
lines. We'll see extra, many extra syllables here
or there if this is necessary. So like John Donne,
they would follow the rules unless The rule is
hindering, is not helping the message, so they
break the rule of the Koran. How did the
mainstream predict poetry's move from the Quran?
That's a very interesting question. When John
Donne was writing poetry, it was the beginning of
the Renaissance, the heyday of neoclassicism.
People were writing poetry imitating horrors of
people in the past. And John Donne was alone. So
many people criticized him. But here this came,
this movement naturally came at the end of an era
where people in a way or another were tired of the
same poetry, were fed up with the same poetry
about the same subject matters. People wanted
change, wanted things to be different. And now the
romantics started doing this. So yeah, many people
were like, oh wow, we like this, we want this.
especially after the giants were no longer around.
Dryden was dead. Alexander Pope, I think, was
dead. They were nowhere to be seen. So sometimes
you're lucky to be born in a particular age.
Okay, so important features here. And then for the
romantics, they focus on the heart, the emotions,
the feelings. They care more about particular
feelings rather than the mind and the intellect
and the age of reason. The Augustan age is called
the age of reason, where the mind is more
important, more significant. The heart was
dangerous, but now for the romantics, the mind is
dangerous. Meaning feelings and imagination, the
power of imagination, feelings and imagination are
above reason and intellect. They were encouraging
individual people to just depend, rely, express
themselves, their feelings, rely more on their
hearts, just release and free their imaginations.
In the past, you didn't have the freedom to
express yourself. And by the way, naturally, if
you want to depend on imagination and feelings,
naturally, you will break the rules, because
sometimes the rules would limit your imagination,
right? When I tell you, for example, write me a
Shakespearean sonnet about a particular
experience, you will find yourself tied up. But
here, the experience, the feelings are more
important. So you break the rules in order to fit
your feelings. And nature was the source of
inspiration. Those people hated the city very
much. Some people consider romantic poetry to be
anti-city literature. Can you guess why? They
hated the city. Remember Marvel? He didn't like
the city. They hated the city, but in principle,
Marvel was getting old and tired of politics, so
he said, okay, I want to go to the countryside and
enjoy my life because the society is corrupt. When
we speak about... Yes, please. Countryside
symbolizes love, nature. Yeah, also purity,
innocence. Symbolizes trading, maybe money and
Europe. Money, corruption, but more than this, we
have the Industrial Revolution. attracted a lot of
people from the countryside and the villages to
work in factories. So many people thought, OK, if
I go to the city, to London, to work in the town,
in the cities, in the factories, I will be rich. I
will make a lot of money, and I'll be rich. I'll
improve my life. So people were, in a way, moving
in masses. But they ended up being slaves to
capitalism, to factories. And the factories were
polluting everything. London was one of the most
polluted cities in the world. There was
corruption, there was poverty, there was death,
there was disease. Only very few people, the
owners, the rich people were getting richer, but
the poor were still getting poorer. The ordinary
people would only take the bare minimum just to
keep themselves alive so that they can work. And
this destroyed the relationships in the society.
It depersonalized human beings. You are no longer
a human being. You are no longer a name, a person
with a story, with feelings and emotions. You are
part of the machine. And that's why They said, OK,
nature is our mother. Let's go back to our
innocence and purity. And this is, by the way,
criticized by many people. If there's a problem in
your society, you escape. Do you escape? Do you
escape? What do you do if there are a lot of
problems in your society? You either face them or
you just deal with them. Yeah, like you deal with
them or you run away. Now, the romantics, many of
them were like, OK, let's go back to nature. They,
that's why some people call them escapists. You
know escape when you escape, oh sorry, I escaped.
When you escape here, it's just you don't want to
deal with the problems at all.
So they are escapists, many of them. They just
want to leave the trouble behind. But I don't
think this is accurate because Poetry itself is
change. Poetry itself is a revolution. When you
change individuals and people's ways of life and
thinking, I think you can do a lot to real life.
So the city was a source of corruption and vices
and sins. Another feature, childhood is a source
of innocence and inspiration. In the past,
remember all the texts we read before this was
about old people, adults. Children were nowhere to
be seen because they were supposed to be
controlled, to be educated, to be regulated. But
for the romantics, actually William Wordsworth
says the child is the father of man. The child is
the father of man. That's a paradox, right? Why?
Is the child the father of man in real life? In
real life, no, literally. But how can,
metaphorically speaking, the child be the father
of man? Please.
Wow, this is an amazing idea. So our childhood
influences the way we grow up, defines us as we
grow up. Wow, that is an amazing idea. But what
else? Can we learn from the kids? Do we learn from
the babies? Do we change? I know a friend of mine
was telling me some time ago that he only really
started appreciating his parents when he had kids.
He then realized that because kids teach us to be
selfless, to give, to love, to care, to work hard.
In many ways. So childhood was significant and a
source of inspiration. So this is basically the
major features. We'll come to them again and
again, especially when we talk about individual
poets. Any question before we move to William
Blake?
Everything is new, different type of language,
subject matters, structures, poetic forms,
inspirations, feelings, hearts, childhood, nature.
Any questions? Okay. The first romantic poet is
William Blake. Many people describe William Blake
as a pre-romantic. because he was writing poetry
this way before even William Wadsworth and Samuel
Coleridge. Now, William Blake, he was born in
London and he lived in London, and this will see
the difference between him and the other poets who
went to the countryside to live in the village,
you know, among natural elements. Two things to
focus here or to focus on. Number one, he has a
particular individual view of the world. And this
individuality is actually a romantic feature. It's
no longer collective. You know the collective
idea? of we must praise God, every individual is
free to do whatever he or she wants to do, as long
as you're following your pure and innocent nature,
your purity, your original pure status. And in his
poetry, we'll see, for example, how this
influences his styles and ideas and sensibilities.
Everything he writes, in a way, contrasts with the
order and control of the Augustans. Again, this is
a romantic feature. You can say a romantic feature
contrasts the order and control of the Augustans.
Who are the Augustans? Remember? Like Dryden, like
Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, the
neoclassicists. Another feature we'll see in a bit
for William Blake is symbolism. He uses a lot of
symbolism.
What is a symbol? Yeah, in English, how would you
define it? When you use something, To refer to
something else. To inspire a particular idea of
something else. Like how a rose inspires,
symbolizes what? Love, childhood, nature. Now some
of his symbols are clear to understand, easy to
understand. We'll see in a bit. But some of his
symbols are really very personal and not easy to
understand. It doesn't mean like we can't
understand it. It means we can't agree what it
means. We'll see this in a bit. He published two
collections. The first one is called Songs of
Innocence. Songs of Innocence. Even the name
suggests purity and innocence. And the other one
is Songs of Experience. Experience doesn't
necessarily mean like when you work and have a job
and work for two, three, five years and then you
have a lot of experience. Here it means the
opposite of innocence. It's like corruption in a
way. So most of his poems, you will have the poem
and its contrast, a state of innocence when you
are pure, when you are good, when you are a child.
But for him, innocence is not necessarily for
children. But most children are almost always
innocent. You can grow up. keeping and protecting
this state of innocence, and you are still
innocent. But some people will be corrupted by
life, by society, by the city. And he exposes this
in the songs of experience. Songs of experience.
Let's see the examples here. So this is taking us
back to the symbolism issue.
So, generally, two types of symbols for William
Blake. What are they? Number one, simple, direct
symbols. Simple and? Simple. And direct. Like, you
can see where he's going. Like, for example, he
uses the lamb. You know the little lamb? The lamb?
Yes. Silent B here? Lamb, silent B? Yes, lamb. The
lamb, the little lamb, the little sheep. Yes. What
does it symbolize?
Innocence, purity, simple life, simplicity, right?
But what if the poem is tiger? It's going to be
more. It's about more than simplicity and
innocence. It's about complexity. It's about
experience. It's about power. Thank you. It's
about mystery. Thank you. And some of his symbols,
especially in his late poems, are really, again, I
don't want to say complex or difficult to
understand, but they don't easily reveal what they
indicate, in the sense that you could read a poem
and we could have ended up with 10
interpretations. So what does the symbol refer to?
It's not clear. It refers to many things. It's
very personal. He uses symbols for the first time
that no one else has used them before. Two
examples here for symbolism. Number one, from the
lamb, how it symbolizes innocence. In
Christianity, it symbolizes Christ. You know,
Jesus Christ is usually like the shepherd, and we
are like, the people are like the lambs. Little
lamb, look at the poetry. These are difficult
words here. It's like poetry for the kids, but
it's also for us because it addresses this state
of innocence. Little lamb, who made the dust down?
Who created
you? Oh, little lamb. Notice the repetition of
the. We have never seen a repetition of the same
word in the previous poetry. Because I think in,
I'm not sure about English. In Arabic, when you
have a poem, you can't repeat the same word at the
end of the line, unless you count like seven
lines. So you say, you can't
repeat the word, until you go for seven more lines
and if it shows up again, it's okay. But before
that, it's a sign of weakness. In English,
definitely there's something similar here. But
here, it's just a couplet with the same word. And
this is why how a romantic poet doesn't care much
about the sophistication of the rules as long as
this conveys the message. And yes, this could be a
poem for kids, but it is about simplicity of life.
This is the lamb. Little lamb who made the dust
down, who made the... Even the language, even the
tone, the atmosphere. Very poetic and very
innocent in. However, when he talks about the
tiger as a symbol of experience. Can someone read?
Please. Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forest
of the night. What immortal hand or eye could
frame thy fearful? Fearful. Symmetry. Someone
else, thank you. Hin, please.
Not immoral,
immortal.
Thy fearful, thy meaning your fearful symmetry.
Can you think of a better tone or atmosphere than
this because if you're saying tiger tiger it's
like saying little lamb who made thee but this is
a tiger here can you give it a try please yeah go
on very
good
so i think it's more like this tiger look at the
old writing here tiger tiger burning bright in the
forest of the night What immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry? Even the word
fearful here is part of the tone. The ta-ta, burn
it, taiga, taiga, burning bright. And even the
burning bright. Ta-ta. There is alliteration.
Thank you for seeing this. So he creates the
atmosphere of the whole poem changes, shifts from
innocence of the lamb to the seriousness, the
darkness, the complexity, the experience of the
tiger. If you count the syllables, can we count
the syllables together? Tiger, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, right? So seven syllables. One,
two, three, four, five, six. Seven syllables. One,
two, three, four, five, six, seven. Interesting.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Symmetry.
Symmetry. Two. Symmetry. Two or three? Three.
Symmetry.
Vowel, vowel, vowel. You can take out this as a
schwa. You can remove the schwa and say it
symmetrically. But it's still going to do the same
thing. So this is A. Look at the rhyme scheme. A,
A. I think
it's B, B. But it is imperfect.
Symmetry is three. Even if you say symmetry, there
is something the poet is doing. Listen, in poetry,
in literature in general, poetry in particular,
the poet usually hides, indicates a message or an
idea where he or she creates something called
tension. You know tension, something that doesn't
fit, something that is different, something that
doesn't follow the norm, the pattern, the rules.
Listen, here we have seven, seven, eight. Why? Why
did he shift from seven, seven, eight? And we have
A, A, perfect rhyme, and then A, B, imperfect
rhyme. So we raise a question here. Why is the
poet doing this? What is he doing? Can someone
tell? Can you guess? Why is he adding an extra
syllable And why is there an imperfect rhyme here?
There is always a reason.
Okay, interesting suspense, like, Oh, what's going
on? Why is this extra here? Maybe we can't count
the extra syllable as we read, but we definitely
can feel the imperfect rhyme. I symmetry. Yes,
more. Why? The question is again, why is there an
extra syllable, and an imperfect rhyme here,
Shayman. Very good, very interesting answer. He's
not following the rules, simply. But he doesn't
break the rules because he wants to break the
rules. He wants to indicate something. He wants to
tell us something. What is he telling us? That's
my question, in a way or another. How?
What does the tiger symbolize, in your opinion?
Power. Power. Yes. Wow. What else? Nature. Nature.
The dark side of nature. What else? The forest.
The forest? Like, tiger, tiger. Seriously, look.
When you go home today, Google image pictures of
tigers. And look at them. They're really
fascinating. Beautiful creatures. How everything
is like a perfect painting. And indeed, when you
look at it, it's perfect. And it's fearful. It
creates this, whoa, whoa. So in my opinion, the
tiger could symbolize the Industrial Revolution.
or the machines, or the factories, or the city
itself. The city sounds... When you look at the
city from afar, maybe you hate a particular city,
but you are in a plane and you look down, they all
sound majestic, magisterial and beautiful. Why
would the poet do this? The irony, I'm not sure if
you paid attention to this, the irony is the word
symmetry. What's symmetry? What does it mean in
Arabic? Balance. Balance, like perfect, something
perfect. And the word symmetry itself is not
symmetrical.
The word symmetry breaks the symmetry of the
poetry. And that's in a way ironic. How does it
break the symmetry? By the extra syllable and by
the imperfect rhyme. In my opinion, I think The
idea I have in mind is that the poet is saying
that if this symbolizes life or the Industrial
Revolution, it looks perfect. But in reality,
there is something missing. There is a problem
here. There is something lacking here. This is the
facade. This is just the appearance. But the
essence and the reality, they are lacking. There
is something missing here. How does he do it? by
playing on the rules, playing on the number of
syllables and the number, the perfect rhyme, the
imperfect rhyme, yeah. One more example from our
friend William Blake. We actually have this one
and another one. So let's see quickly. This is a
poem, sorry I didn't add this, I was in a rush.
The inverted commas, never forget the inverted
commas for the text. The Sick Rose. Look at the
title of the poem. It's again and it's a very
short poem. This is the whole poem. It's no longer
a thousand lines, two hundred lines. It's no
longer about Adam and Eve and some synagogist and
a paradise lost. A Sick Rose. Can someone read
here, please?
Okay. What's going on here? Do you think there are
many difficult words here?
Which one? Crimson? It's a color, crimson like red
or pink or something like red. I think other than
this, if you don't know what howling is, and
listen, think of yourself as a native speaker.
Even if you are 13 or 14, you will be able to know
what crimson is. Storm and howling. So, oh rose,
there's a personification here. Thou means you
are, are, are here. Oh rose, thou art sick. The
invisible worm, so who are the people, who are the
characters in this text? Number one? Rows. Rows,
or the rows, because here he says the sick rose,
here he says rose. And then there is? A worm. A
worm. And this worm is? Invisible. Invisible. And
secrecy, darkness, generally not positive. The
invisible worm that flies might darkness, In the
storm, in the howling storm. Howling storm. Yeah,
the sound is there. Has found out thy bed, thy,
the rose's bed, your bed, of crimson joy, and his
refers to? His? The rose seemingly female. The
one, yes? So the rose is personified as a sick
human being and also the worm is personified as a
woman or a man? A man. His love. Love is good,
right? But this is not only secret, but also dark.
It's like a horrible person in secrecy at night,
in the storm, in the howling storm, invisibly
trying to take advantage of the rose, making it
sick. And his dark, secret love does thy life,
your life, destroy. That's the poem. What is it
about? What does the rose stand for? Can you
guess? Okay, could be about how life was destroyed
by the industrial revolution, by the city, the
corruption.
Could be. So life was good, was pure, innocent
until Capitalism and Industrial Revolution. Yes.
Thank you very much. This could be a symbol of
women. It could, by the way, it could be a
particular woman. He knows. Or all women
destroyed. What could be about childhood?
Children. How children are destroyed by life, by
parents, by corruption. Or it could be about a
simple rose. It could be about nature.
One of your friends in another group was saying
that this could also be about women nowadays,
today. I said, how? He said, there are many people
on Facebook, many guys, many dudes, who just go on
Facebook and try to stalk particular girls and
tell her, deceive her, trick her, oh, I like you,
I love you, something, and then they destroy her
life. And then they just disappear. I was like,
hmm, interesting. I'm sure William Blake did not
mean this. But as readers here, we can see this
idea in this poem. In my opinion, this poem is
about everything you said. And it's about the
power of imagination. Remember when we read
Alexander Pope? The poem was about one thing,
satire. Remember? We had one meaning, one idea,
one interpretation. Don't feel sad for this if a
poem has several interpretations. Because as a
reader or in your exam, you only need to pick one
idea. If you tell me in your exam that I think
this symbolizes nature and you explain it, it's
OK. It's correct. I think this symbolizes
childhood and loss of innocence. Yeah, show me how
in the text. But look at this poem and how
beautiful and how simple in its language. The
features are there. Simplicity, subject matter,
nature, imagination.
The symbolism, I don't think this is complex.
There are more complex than this. But yeah, there
is symbolism here. This is William, William Blake.
Individual.
Thank you. As Palestinians here, we could take
this as how colonizers and imperialists, how
occupiers come, take everything good, and destroy
our lives. Pretend to be good, in love, that we
care about you. Thank you. It could be many
things. Okay, in one minute, before I stop here,
can we see the rhyme scheme? Sek. Wam. B, C, I
think this is B but it's still not perfect because
this is torn, this is one, one, has found the eye
secret, bed of crimson joy, C, destroy, B. So one
imperfect, and the imperfect works with the one,
because the one is the imperfect that destroys
this perfection of the whole thing, disrupts it in
a way. If you count the, you're not required to do
this, but it's really cool if you start counting
the feet, how many feet we have, and the
syllables, because in my opinion, there is
something here. So if you say one, two, three,
four, five. One, two, three, four. And then one,
two, three, four, five, six. See? He doesn't have
to follow. Is this poetry? This is beautiful
poetry. But many people will say, no, no, no. This
is not poetry. It's not following the rules. You
have to go for 10 syllables or eight syllables, so
you have four feet or eight feet in a way or
another. I think if Alexander Pope or Samuel
Johnson or Dryden were alive, they would be
pulling their hair. They would be acting angry
like they reacted to John Donne. I wanted to have
time for this poem, but we can do it next class.
Blake's London. Thank you very much and please if
you have any questions, do ask.