Marxism

Desensitized State

In Glengarry Glan Ross, a hot-shot salesman, Blake, who is supposedly encouraging the three sales men to sell out the leads in the office in this particular scene, is in Marxist terms the “bourgeois” and the others are the “proletarians.” He is the face of the company Mitch and Murray which demeans the workers ruthlessly. Blake savors his privileged and potent state and is able to adamantly exploit the others by degrading their positions in life. He is the one who enjoys the profit by extorting money from the leads. These three men, who are degraded by Blake, are selling their labor in order to earn a living. They do not have free access to the leads because they do not own the products. Therefore, a great gap is created which is obvious between these two different and alienated social groups—Blake and the three sales men.

In Blake’s view, the sales men in this scene are commodities, only there to satisfy his needs. He makes it clear that they are no more than objects, and their worth is insignificant: “You see this watch? It costs more than your car . . . That is who I am, and you are nothing” (Glengarry Glan Ross). Blake’s relation to wealth is lustful as he speaks and acts in terms of money. He sees all the others in the room—“the labourers [but] nothing else” (Marx 671) and “the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object” (Marx 653). Money is penetrated deep beneath Blake’s skin and is adhered onto it. He sees no value in people, except their ability to work: “You got leads, can’t close the leads? You can’t close nothing? You are nothing” (Glengarry Glen Ross). This is the “real” man’s game for Blake. If one cannot handle the “game” then he can “tell his troubles to his wife” or “play with his kids at home” (Glengarry Glan Ross). Blake influences his robot-like attitude which is monotonous and suitable for machines. Family and merits are at no importance, and touch with human nature is lost. Decisions here are made in profit and loss terms.

Why are the salesmen in this scene not leaving? Why are they taking all the humiliation from the man who not only looks down upon them; moreover, sees himself too as an object? The salesmen are made to believe by society that they are “free” to be whoever, and they are “freely” accepting their role in this situation—as nothings. Is Blake here Antonio Gramsci’s “intellectual?” Would Gramsci note here that everyone in this scene is an intellectual, but “not all . . . have the power in society the function of intellectuals” (Gramsci 1004)? They are all intellectuals in a desensitized state, and it is in this state where all are separated and alienated from each other by private leads, sales, and property. They are value-objects in a cruel market.

Works Cited

Glengarry Glen Ross. Dir. James Foley. Perf. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan

Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, and Jonathan Pryce. New Line Cinema,

1992. Film.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Capital, Volume 1.” The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company

Inc.: New York, 2001. 663-674. Print.

Marx Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of

1844.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd

ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 651-655. Print.

Psychoanalysis

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

The Interpretation of Dreams: The Other Side

The cryptical and esoteric world of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats is not so obscure; moreover, it can lead us to a gratifying description of how human psyche functions. The poem seems to be a dream vision of a knight where his most unaccepted and repressed ideas come to life. The unconscious stores these ideas and then represents the outcome of desires. Not only do the oppressed wishes embed in themselves the unconscious, but they are its cause. The meaning of this poem is the desire for the lady who has no mercy. The knight’s dream or the discourse he produces revolving around the lady is subject to no other reason than to fulfill unconscious desire, more specifically, to exhibit in phantasm the atonement of such crave.

Instead of searching answers where the words of this poem come from, let us first examine why they were chosen among the many. The phrases here are highly improbable, “brief, meager and laconic” (819) as Freud would have put it. There are three striking scenes in this dream-structured poem typifying the memory that is dreamt: the desolate lake where “no birds sing” (Keats line 4), the sweet relationship between the knight and the lady, and again back to the desolate lake with one distinction—visions of “pale kings, and princes too/Pale warrior . . .” (Keats 37-38) are present. Between these three scenes, able to be divided into sub-scenes (or dream inside a dream), what is the relationship? For Freud, these scenes with their relative sub-scenes can represent “foreground and background, digressions and illustrations, conditions, chains of evidence and counter arguments” (821). It can be the undertaking of psychoanalysis to discern what cohesiveness conjoins these seemingly disconnected moments, thus getting closer to an apprehension of the fantasy that is the originator of this dream.

The repetitions of the lines in the opening and ending stanzas “Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,/And no birds sing” (Keats 47-48) and their relationship to a more positive image of “I met a lady in the meads,/Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;” (Keats 13-14) indicate a longing for a caring woman figure (the repressed wish) as opposed to the one with no mercy. In the ninth stanza it becomes apparent that the dreaming night is falling asleep inside a dream. The mood and tone changes here are indisputable. What is left of previous pleasures is now only pale, horrid, and dying, which make the moments portrayed here as less real and “appearances [being] deceitful” (Freud 822). The desolate lake is still here, but only followed by additional elements that bring forward instances from the other dream. The knight that is already in a dream is dreaming inside his dream: “And there I dream’d—” (Keats 34). This moment indicates the knight’s strife to recapture the preceding dream by vaguely realizing that this cannot be achieved. What has changed in this second dream is that it is another representation and this other representation does not demand to be something other than it is.

Could we say that something that was once the knight’s desire is now presented under a rather different lens? From Freudian viewpoint, the daily residues stored in the knight’s mind become to represent his most repressed desires in the form of several dreams. Although, different in content, “the portions of this complicated structure stand . . . in the most manifold logical relations to one another” (Freud 821). Above and beyond, the representations in various scenes of this poem denote in its dramatic configuration present some essences from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Works Cited

Freud. Sigmund. “From The Interpretation of Dreams.” The Norton Anthology of Theory

and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.:

New York, 2001. 814-824. Print.

Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad. ”The Norton Anthology: English

Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. 8^th ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.:

New York, 2006. 899-900. Print.

Enlightenment

The picture--"Primary Chaos" by C.S. Bauman

Labyrinthine associations in the mind . . . Reason? Insanity? Awareness? All? All that breathes, all that walks, all that becomes . . . Making sense . . . Sensing the moment, feeling as if destined to serve, to be . . . To be unique. A complete lack of understanding the systematic arrangement of order itself. Randomness of thoughts . . . Preferring one over the other . . . Actions . . . The next one, and the next one, as if the chain is linked to an unbounded space . . . A host of fortuitous molecules and random elements that form this matter . . . Is it like the haphazardly disposed accumulation of water droplets that form a cloud? No . . . No affinities . . . It is more complex . . . The knot is not being untied . . . Why can’t others see the variations? Perhaps those are not as scientific as the vacillation of a pendulum in a clock, or the billowing of a rock down a versant, or the crushing of surf on a cliff. They are not linear for them to see the horizon of this divide. The expected and the random . . . Anything that can possibly ever take place, will take place next . . . How random then are thoughts? Knowing the probability of any event, depending on what just happened. My mind is determined to possess a tenuous amount of rationality. Yet it won't. It is complete chaos . . .

Daintiness and Antipathy: Burke’s Sublime

All that ensues from one’s sentient relationship to the world, with the fashion reality inflicts the body on its centripetal surfaces—aesthetics is born. As a social phenomenon, this branch of axiology takes significant room in the Enlightenment. “Primary Chaos” by C. S. Bauman represents the beautiful and the sublime, which for Edmund Burke are bases of “pain and pleasure” (460). The constant state of interior change in this “chaotic” painting is uniform and universal. It gives rise to emotions such as pain, pleasure, terror, delight, joy, and grief. One’s social life, as well as imaginary thoughts are portrayed here. Burke is enchanted by what one feels when he sees the daintiness and antipathies for instance in this particular painting.

The aesthetic experience is limited to the few. The intricate ideas of “Primary Chaos” create turmoil in the mind which evokes the sublime in the viewer. It crushes one into venerating compliance, resembling a forceful as opposed to a consensual sovereignty: “The ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure” (Burke 459). Why does one feel more disturbed when looking at this painting than delighted? The sublime is correlating with venture, antagonism, and individualism. It is the armor that builds itself when confronted with danger. Nonetheless, the danger that is encountered ornately and vicariously is in the pleasurable realm of human comprehension that no harm will take place.

Work Cited

Burke, Edmund. “From A Philosophical Enquiry into theOrigin of Our Ideas of

the Sublime and Beautiful.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed,

Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 454-

60. Print.

CRITICISM OF FORMALISM

"Butterflies" by Unknown Author

The Narrative:

Mere butterflies . . . Camouflaged in the man-made, squared and stony walls. A flight towards the artificial, the unnatural. By not simply standing on the wall, the butterflies indicate the non-harmonious relationship between them and the wall. Nature in its tiniest elements is endangered by the dominative blue shades of the wall which try to swallow the butterflies, vanquishing them in its cold pretense. Negative effects of man, his habitat and his attempt to bring the artificial with the organic create environmental catastrophes. Soft lines of the butterflies are in strict contrast with the sharp squares of the walls manifesting the same notion—the impossibility of the clash of their universes. The natural is always superior to the artificial. Is this to suggest that humans are unnatural? No. Human constructs are and so is the synthetic and bare effort of human intelligence to break any natural law.

"Papillon" by Salvador Dali

Just a note . . .

The author of the "Butterflies" painting recreated Dali's "Papillon" in a new light by using cooler colors as opposed to Dali's painting's warm shades. Dali's "Papillon" serves as a "foil" device in this essay, by shaping the interpretations of the "Butterflies" painting in criticizing formalism.

Art as Technique: Eccentric Notions?

Disregarding any instances of author’s life or historical period may seem ignorant, yet it empowers one to confront the work as a self-contained, independent unit. Is formalistic emphasis on the form of the work too imprecise? It is strictly going against empiricism, disregarding any sense experiences. For instance, the authors in this case have thought of butterflies. One may ask, what are the authors’ premises? Looking at the work from a formalist viewpoint, the question will vanish in the vacuum. However, insufficiencies generate for explications of fundamental questions of the work’s and its author’s reality and the reality of their comprehension.

Examining this particular painting, “Butterflies” by an unknown author, formalistically, one may distinguish two butterflies and square-colored walls. It is unknown whether the butterflies are physically standing on the wall or flying towards it. This is just an unlively observation which Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky in his Art as Technique may refer to as “algebraic” (1). Through perception, one sees art as just an untarnished entity of figures. Shklvosky talking about objects, notes that “we do not see them in their entirety but rather recognize them by their main characteristics” (1). The technique or form of this particular painting as a dynamic structuring principle is a fundamental question of artistic creation. Also, the systematic series of transformations are embedded with technical elements. Nonetheless, these technical elements by themselves do not elucidate the character of the artistic process. This operation is carried about by means of the artistic device, but cogitates far more than its prolific processes.

Only objects . . . No feelings, no emotions, and no intertwined thoughts about their histories. Mere butterflies and walls . . . This stupor or “defamiliarization” (2) as Shklovsky calls it, is not the central point in an artistic device; rather the significance lies in object’s complexity. This requires an abstract lens, discrete from the standpoint of the object of inquiry, more specifically, discrete from the self-apprehension of the prolific proceedings in art. One may conclude that there is the need of aesthetic experience. Shklovsky is faltering in his rigorous explanations of art as technique by generalizing his examples. For instance, in his expression “art exists . . . to make the stone stony” (2), Shklovsky neglects the role of emotion by pushing forward the unsteady notion of making the object more inanimate than it already is. The “stoniness” of a stone, used by Shklovsky as a general concept in his dissection of formalism, does not apply to any and every work of art. Does art in Shklovsky’s perception exist to make these butterflies more “butterfly-y” or the walls more “wally?” And does this “butterfly-yiness” or “walliness” consist in butterfly’s shape or wall’s stoniness? Or does the wall particularly act as an endpoint or purpose for the butterfly to fly towards or act as a resting point for it? In order to find answers to such questions in the frames of this painting, one should study the object as a part of a larger context, such as author’s viewpoints, emotions and not only observing the work as an independent creation.

The undisclosed author imitated Salvador Dali’s “Papillon” painting, in order to represent it through his/her perspective. Why did the author choose these particular shades and colorings as opposed to something else? If one is to view both paintings as a formalist, he will see the same butterflies—the same objects. However, these two paintings are very distinct considering the stories of their foundations behind their mere objectification. In examining the “Butterflies” painting, one may ask about the absence of shadows of the butterflies, as opposed to Dali’s butterflies in “Papillon.” Scrutinizing the latter only by its form is an absurd. Formalism, here, fails by completely neglecting Dali’s Freudian viewpoints on the painting and as Ignacio Javier Lopez suggests in his essay “Film, Freud, and Paranoia: Dali and the Representation of Male Desire in ‘An Andalusian Dog’” there are technically four butterflies representing his family, including the shadows (47). Again, formalism fails in the “Butterflies” painting by disregarding the author’s attempt to bring nature and the artificial together—the butterflies representing the former and the man-made lines and walls representing the latter. The absence of shadows from the “Butterflies” painting indicates that the two butterflies are not on the wall, but indeed they are far away from the wall; however, flying towards it. It, as mentioned above, is a mere attempt to bring the organic and the artificial together, but as seen in the painting , is yet to be accomplished; however, impossible at the moment.

Formalism views art as a technique void of emotions, going against all aesthetic notions of art representing something that is present which was not there before. Literally, the word “art” in Latin and Greek means “trade,” “know-how,” and “skillful transformation” (Gortais 1241). According to Shklovsky’s doctrine, a vision is created in viewing the object of the object itself, rather than attempting to find means of knowing the object (6). This is literally contradictory to the definition of art and theoretically seems like an eccentric notion. Formalism fails to note that art, in both paintings, is a mimesis itself in a form of an object or an event of a subjective reality by means of idioms that are perceptible not only to the senses, but to the whole transcendent realm.

Works Cited

Gortais, Bernard. “Abstraction and Art.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences

358.1453 (2003): 1241-49. Print.

Lopez, Ignacio Javier. “Film, Freud, and Paranoia: Dali and the Representation of Male

Desire in ‘An Andalusian Dog.’” Diacritics 31.2 (2001): 35-48. Print.

Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Technique.” 15 July 2010

<http://vahidnab.defam.htm>. Web.

Classical Literary Theory

On Sublimity: The Vastness of Human Contemplation

Shakespeare’s King Lear’s last words before his death prove that madness attached to his name has much ponderous content; moreover, proving that his deep and earnest feelings transcend any bathetic emotions. Longinus’s “sublimity” is no stranger in the end of King Lear, as it is pregnant with instances of expropriation and designation. The speaker of Lear arrives and vanishes into his own text, leaving his audience in the midst of traumatic experience as his sublime effect outlives his vocalization. The author, in this case, has already accomplished what seems to be an essential point of sublimity—painting the picture on a canvas that he has intended himself.

Lear’s ending is not in the redemptory manner brought about by gleams of apprehension; nonetheless, it is occasioned by his profound spirit. He represents the one with lofty thoughts, effects, the unusual, and the absolute. Lear’s capacity to imitate these marvelous prospects of nature and their sermon to captivate all aspects of representation in grandiloquent tones is something extraordinary. His words, while holding Cordelia’s dead body, “O, you are men of stones. / Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so / That heaven’s vault should crack. She is gone forever” (Shakespeare 5.3.262-64), tag the borders of reason and manifestation with a signification of what might be anticipated beyond those borders, tangenting the transcendent.

Longinus’s comment on Sappho’s poem; it bringing togetherness to the senses, also to the body and mind, can as well mark Lear’s words from the above (Longinus 140). The “tongues,” “eyes,” from the senses and “stones” representing the feeling of senselessness, cultivate the experience that escapes from ordinary understanding. When the power of this situation is such that vernacular phrases and strong comparisons embedded in metaphors are not enough; it is then when the sublime resorts. The notion of the infinity surpasses emanation. However, Longinus’s all five sources of sublimity are present, emphasizing the effectiveness of it. King Lear has the natural genius whose “words [are] great [because] thoughts are weighty” (Longinus 139). His noble and inspirational diction, word choice, and elysian emotions are well within the frames of Longinus’s idea of sublimity.

Audience’s fictitious affiliation with the speaker is the result of the speaker’s power to carry his listener into his message. This very occurrence is the result of what Longinus calls “phantasia,” in which “enthusiasm and emotion make the speaker see what he is saying and bring it visually before the audience” (Longinus 143). This is not in much contrast with what might be called the more modest everyday instances of citing. In truth, the design of quotation comes to be incorporated in the very idea of sublimity, while the sublime might as well be distinguished in terms of inescapability of reiteration or citation. King Lear’s tone stays the same towards the end, “And my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no life? / Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no life at all?” (Shakespeare 3.2. 312-13). Longinus notes that “real sublimity contains much food for reflection . . . makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on the memory” (138). It is through repetition of the same-toned utterances that the speaker inscribes sublimity not only within himself but also lasts in the memory of the audience.

Sublimity . . . contained in the vastness of human contemplation found its place in one of the works of Shakespeare, King Lear. It is on a sense another tragedy, but seems more because of the immense sublimity presented in itself and concealed like a great work of art. There is a much deal of treasure intertwined: character, compelling emotions, poignancy, and philosophy. Yet everything has its decent place and everything is where it is ought to be. It has the quality of the sublime—united and harmonious in and out of itself.

Works Cited

Longinus. “On Sublimity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent

B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 136-154.

Print.

Shakespeare, William. “King Lear.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen

Orgel and et. al. Penguin Books Ltd.: New York, 2002. 1574-1615. Print.