humanities 3

Evoking the inner qualities of an object, rather than its outward, physical characteristics In other words, we're going to be leaving the outside world behind. Don't expect to see anything you recognize from the natural, material world (the world in which we live.)

ABSTRACT ART

Abstract Expressionists tap into the absurdity of Existentialism. Abstract Expressionism is another one of the little ISMs under the big umbrella of Modernism. Abstract Expressionism is actually derived from two ISMs we've already studied: 1. Abstract Art: evoking the inner qualities of an object rather than its outward characteristics. 2. Expressionism: conveying an inner, psychological state outwardly on the canvas. In other words, we'll be in the inner world of the artist (i.e. you won't see anything that's recognizable from the outside world), but you'll still be able to see how they shape their internal state externally on the canvas. Abstract Expressionism also shares some similarities with Cubism: fragmenting and then reassembling; acknowledging the two-dimensionality of the canvas and refusing to create 3 dimensional space. It also shares some similarities with Surrealism: the free association techniques of psychic automatism; a freshness from cultivating accidents, dribbles, splashes, for spontaneity and creativity; the discovered memory fragments in the unconscious, which liberates the unconscious and makes it available to the conscious for the artist's expressive intent.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

These are songs lamenting poverty, loss of love, or social injustice. The name comes from the "blue note" of jazz: slightly lower (flatter) than convention pitches—usually the 3rd, 5th, or 7th notes of a scale.

Blues

Large expanses of color on the canvas as a way to tap into a new spirituality This is another ISM in Modernism.

COLOR-FIELD PAINTING

A work combining many materials

COMBINE PAINTINGS

1. Feudalism This was a vertical system, that was based on what family you were randomly born in to. It included: King: owned all the land in the kingdom and thus lived in a huge castle with lots of servants. Dukes: owned more land than the lords, so they were wealthier because they got more cuts of the profits. Lords: owned more land than the barons, so they were wealthier because they got more cuts of the profits. Barons: took a cut of the profits of the crops the serfs farmed. Serfs: the peasants who worked hard all day to plant, care for, and harvest the crops. They lived miserable lives of poverty because everyone above them took cuts from the profits of their crops. But 90% of Feudal society were serfs. Since there were so many of them, why didn't they rise up, take over the castle, boot the king out, and change this system? A) Knights were trained to kill them if they tried to rise up out of their place. But what's the problem with killing all of your serfs? There's no one to work the land. Do the lords or dukes want to do it? No. So there is a system of violence in place, in case the workers rise up. But what if you keep the serfs in their place with an idea instead? And what was that idea? B) The Divine Right of Kings. What does that mean? That God made the king, the king, and the serfs, the serfs. The serfs were to work hard their whole lives in poverty so that the king could live a life of unbelievable wealth. This is the way God likes things. Did that idea work for hundreds of years to keep the workers in their place so the king got immorally wealthy? Yep, we've seen that in our Humanities class this semester: from the 400s up through the 1300s: feudalism was the system. Even the serfs believed this idea of the Divine Right of Kings, declaring often: "God save the king." The serfs enabled and legitimized the very system that was harming them because it was taught to them by everyone in their culture, and then they began to live and to perform it. 2. Capitalism: Now surely we would never live in a society, like Feudalism, where a very few people get immorally wealthy off the labor of their workers, who remain poor their entire lives, right? We're living in one right now and it's called Capitalism. Right now, in the United States, three people (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet) own more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans (150 million people.) Have you ever worked fast food? What tasks did you have to do there? How were you treated by your manager and by the customers? Sounds awful. I'm sure you were paid a lot to do those stressful things. What? Only about $8 an hour? How much money did your particular fast-food restaurant make, say, in an hour during the lunch rush? Several thousand dollars? Where does the rest of that money go? To the manager? How much do managers make? $12 an hour? Where does the rest of that money go? To the franchise owner? How much does it cost to start a franchise of a McDonald's? $1-2 million dollars. Does everyone just have that lying around? Where does the rest of that money go? To the CEO? How much does a CEO make every year? Millions, year after year? Well that's not fair! Why don't you, as a worker, go into your store with a gun and give out free hamburgers to your friends? A) Police with guns will come and either put you in jail or kill you on the spot. But what happens if you kill off all your workers at McDonald's? Does the CEO want to have to come make the fries in the hot grease or scrub those nasty tables? Of course not. What if we could keep the workers in their place with an idea? Feudalism's idea won't work here: that God made the CEO, the CEO, so workers, stay in your place, and make the CEO immorally wealthy while you stay poor, because that's what God likes. Capitalism needs a new idea, which is: B) Work really hard at your job and all your dreams will come true. This is some version of the American Dream. And it's taught to us by all of our trusted sources of truth: our families, our friends, our Hollywood movies, our TV shows, our schools, our churches, our social media. We can't get away from that idea, which serves to keep the poor working hard to make their CEOs immensely wealthy. But the idea isn't true. It's imaginary. What?! You mean I can't work hard as a worker at McDonald's and someday become the CEO at McDonald's? No. You might be able to become a mid-level manager and still live paycheck-to-paycheck. But CEOs do not come from workers. Where do they come from? They are traded from other companies' CEOs. How do I get that into that group? You go to an Ivy League business school. How much does it cost to go to Harvard Business school? Over $100,000 a year. Does everybody just have that? And how hard is it to get in to Harvard Business school? What if your grandfather gave $500 million for the new Harvard law library? Do you have a better chance of getting in? So, if you're born into wealth, you have more opportunities and advantages to make more wealth. Can you see how there are some echoes of Feudalism in Capitalism? Marx said in Capitalism there are two kinds of people: The Bourgeoisie: the haves. They own the means of production (e.g. the factory owners in the 1800s and the CEOs today.) They get wealthy off the labor of their workers. The Proletariat: the have-nots. They are the workers who never receive the full value of their labor. There is also: Superstructure: the ideas of a culture (like laws, politics, morality, religion, ideology, art, film). Base: the production and distribution of goods (meaning whoever is making and selling things). Now here's the kicker. Marx explained that whoever controls the base, controls the superstructure. This means whoever is making and selling things also gets to control the ideas of the people. They use their privilege to maintain their wealth, money, and power. Marx's Two Important Ideas about Class: 1) The ideas of the ruling class become the ruling ideas. 2) Those ideas function in a way that makes them look natural and invisible. Marx's Two Problems with Capitalism: Workers are alienated: 1) From their wages. This means that most of their money goes to people above them. 2) By their labor. This means that workers are doing work that is not fulfilling to them. Think of your job. Have you ever looked at the clock and thought: "Ohh, only three more hours until I get off work"? Or "Ohhh, only two more days until my day off"? If so, you may be doing work that's not fulfilling to you. You do it so that you can receive a wage. But most of your wages go to people above you. How will Capitalism end, according to Marx? Revolution. At some point, if fewer and fewer people are making more and more of the money, and more and more people have less and less of the money, that can't keep going on forever. At some point, the workers will rise up and take control of the means of production. That brings us to: 3. Socialism Here there is a more equitable distribution of wealth to everybody. But, for Marx, the stage that is the most beneficial to everyone is what comes next: 4. Communism Or, the Worker's Paradise. In the Worker's Paradise, everyone has all things in common. So there is nothing to steal, which significantly reduces crime. Almost everyone has a much higher standard of living. There is no longer any homelessness, poverty, or hunger. The Worker's Paradise solves Marx's Two Problems with Capitalism. You are no longer alienated from your wages because nobody above you is taking your wages. And you are no longer alienated by your labor because you can do the work that is fulfilling for you. If you want to be a shoemaker in the morning and an artist in the afternoon, you can do that. There is actually much more freedom in the Worker's Paradise than in our current system, even though those in power keep denying that over and over. Have there been groups who have gotten to the stage of the Worker's Paradise? Sometimes students respond to this question by saying: Russia, North Korea, China, Cuba. But do those countries really live like Marx is describing? No. They all had revolutions, but now they still have a horribly unequal distribution of wealth (a few are very rich and many are very poor.) So, just so we're clear: you may hear that these are "Communist countries" on grandma's favorite news station, but they are not Communism like Marx describes it. So are there other groups who have lived like the Worker's Paradise? Students have suggested: The Amish? They are a community that will go out and build a barn for a newlywed couple, because why should newlyweds have to start out poor? Shouldn't they have the same standard of living as everyone else? The Amish are much closer to the Worker's Paradise, than our current system. How about indigenous people, like Native Americans? They used to live in a communal system where you would share the duties and take care of the members of your tribe. Indigenous people lived a lot closer to the Worker's Paradise than our current system. How about hippie communes of the 1960s? I had a friend who taught here at NWFSC who used to live on one. I asked her about it and she said: "It was the best time of my life. We shared everything. It was a system that encouraged selflessness." That's a lot closer to the Worker's Paradise than our current system, which encourages greed and taking from the vulnerable. These varied examples show us that living in a Worker's Paradise is possible, even though those who control our system (the ruling class), try to tell us that it is not possible (the ruling ideas.) Bottom line: if you were living in the 1800s when the ideas of Marx were changing the way people were thinking, and you were concerned about the oppression of the proletariat, would you be interested in trusting in your senses like the Romantics? No, you would be concerned with real social issues, like how we could better take care of the workers. This is Realism.

MARX'S FOUR STAGES OF HISTORY:

The belief that there is a greater reality found in the unconscious and the desire to tap into it Surrealism is another ISM under the big umbrella of Modernism. André Breton was the leader of the Surrealists. He wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. The name "Surrealism" comes from "superrealism": meaning, there's a greater reality found in the unconscious, than in the outside world. What does that mean? To understand, we need to learn some ideas of Freud.

SURREALISM

1 I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. . . . 3 Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, Not an inch nor particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest. . . . 11 Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. Which of the young men does she like the best? Ah, the homliest of them is beautiful to her. Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair, Little streams, pass'd all over their bodies. An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, It descended tremblingly from their temples and their ribs. The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, They do not ask who seizes fast to them, They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray. 16 I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine. . . . Of every hue and cast am I, of every rank and religion, A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, lover, quaker, Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. 19 This is the meal pleasantly set . . . . this is the meat and drink for natural hunger, It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous. . . . I make appointments with all, I will not have a single person slighted or left away. . . . 21 I am the poet of the body, And I am the poet of the soul. . . . I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. . . . 24 Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, Disorderly fleshly and sensual. . . . eating and drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above mean and women or apart from them. . . . no more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return. . . . Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from; The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer, This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds. . . . 51 Do I contradict myself? Very well then . . . . I contradict myself. I am large . . . . I contain multitudes. Whitman felt that America, like himself, was connected by all of these diverse people. It's the diversity that makes them stronger. And yet, they are also one: joined together by a force larger than any of the individuals. Is this true? If more people believed this today, how would our society be stronger and better?

Selection from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

Freud was a famous psychologist in the late 1800s and early 1900s who was known as the "architect of the mind." He had the following important ideas: The Unconscious: there's a part of me controlling my behavior that I'm not aware of. This is Freud's big idea. Instead of thinking that we just exist as a thinking individual (Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" in the 1700s) or that the way that I think comes because of my class (Marx's idea in the 1800s), Freud, in early 1900s, understands consciousness very differently. He thinks there's a part of me controlling my behavior that I'm not aware of. Repression: instead of dealing with emotional pain at the time, I tuck it down into my unconscious to deal with it later. For those of you who have had psychology, is this the healthiest way to deal with things? No. How come? Because repressed feelings stew down in your unconscious, causing greater problems (like fears, anxieties, and stress) later. Sometimes people can even explode in rage because of these unresolved issues in their unconscious. And because they're in our unconscious, we don't even know they are there. So how do we get these repressed feelings out, according to Freud? We go to our psychoanalytic therapist (every week for months or years) who can provide a talking cure. The therapist can help us find things that we didn't even know were buried in our unconscious, bring them up to our conscious mind, process them, and let them go. Id/Ego/Superego: three parts of me (or my psyche) Id: my unconscious drives of sex and death I want to have sex with everything I can find and I love to flirt around with death (e.g. extreme sports, bungee jumping, etc.) In Bugs Bunny cartoons, it's like the devil on your shoulder. Freud says this is the strongest of the three. If this is true, how come I'm not always having sex with everyone I can find? Because of the superego (see below) which keeps it in check. Do you know anyone who always gives into their drives, whenever they want? Freud would say that they have an over-developed id. Ego: my conscious self In other words, it the only part of the three of which I'm aware. Freud called this the ich (German: "I" or "me"). Ego is Latin for "I" or "me." Freud says this is the weakest of the three. The ego mediates between the id and the superego. Superego: my internalized rules of right and wrong that I learned from my society This is what keeps your id in check. In Bugs Bunny cartoons, it's the angel on your shoulder. People create their own superegos, depending on which set of rules they internalize. For example, some people may not have sex with everyone they can find because they think God will punish them (a religiously developed superego). Others may not have sex with everyone they can find because they think they will get a disease (a practically developed superego). Some may not have sex with everyone they can find because they think society will look down on them (a societally developed superego). However your superego is developed, it keeps your id in check. Do you know anyone who always follows the rules, no matter what? Freud would say that they have an overdeveloped superego. Dreams How can one get to the unconscious? Through dreams. Freud said, "The dream is the royal road to the unconscious." The Interpretation of Dreams was a book by Freud that was finished in 1899, but he had the publisher print it on January 1, 1900, because he wanted it to usher in the 20th Century. For Freud, dreams are "wish fulfillment," meaning they are what your unconscious really wants to have happen or what it's afraid may happen. The Surrealists, then, are artists who got excited about these ideas of Freud and wanted to tap into them in their art.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

1715 Death of Louis the 14th. Who was he? The king of France who built Versailles and started the Academy of Fine Arts in 1667, which gave us the Academic Style. Now he dies and the kingdom passes to his son. 1715-1774 Louis the 15th reigns. Like his father, he has complete indifference to his people. Yet, he said, "Apres moi, les deluge" ("After me, the flood"). He knew there would be a cost to his indifference. 1774-1792 Louis the 16th reigns with Marie Antoinette. This was an arranged marriage with the very young princess of Austria. When she first came to Versailles, she didn't speak French and had never met the young prince Louis that she was forced to marry. Legend has it that someone once came to her as queen and said, "People are starving in the streets of Paris! There's no bread to eat!" And she replied: "Let them eat cake." If this story is true, what does it show? A complete lack of understanding of her people. Since she has lots to eat, she assumes everyone must have lots of eat. (We see similar behavior in our wealthy leaders today: "I have health care, so everyone must have health care. Let's open America by Easter!") 1788 Collapse of French economy. After a disastrous harvest, food prices skyrocket and there are riots in the streets of Paris. When people don't have enough food to eat, watch for the coming riots. July 14, 1789 Start of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille (a prison fortress in Paris that is liberated and destroyed by a Parisian crowd of citizens.) In the 1600-1700s, the Bastille was a symbol of absolutism. What was that? The belief in the absolute power of the king. The king could throw anyone in there for any reason if he didn't like them. They would be arrested by secret warrants called lettres-des-cachet and imprisoned indefinitely in the Bastille without accusation or trial. Thus, the freeing of the prisoners was a symbolic move against the injustice of absolutism. July 14th became Bastille Day, the national holiday of republican France. 1789 "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen." This document declares that everyone is entitled to "liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression." What does that sound like? The American Declaration of Independence. When was it written? 1776, just a few years earlier. 1792-1795 The Reign of Terror: This describes a time when the French Revolution turned on itself and got very bloody. How were enemies of the revolution put to death? With the guillotine: a device that would chop off your head into a basket. King Louis the 16th, Marie Antoinette, and many other aristocrats lost their heads to the guillotine. But what would happen if you started to question things ("There are sure a lot of heads getting chopped off")? Your head might get chopped off. 70 percent of guillotine victims were rebellious peasants and workers. Even Robespierre (1758-1794), one of the leaders of the French Revolution, ended up being guillotined. 1795-1799 First Republic of France: This is established after riots and chaos in the streets, in order to assure the people that whatever the virtues of democracy, constitutional government is essential. The Convention produces a new constitution, known as the Directory. 1799-1804 Napoleon rules France as Consul. People are so hungry for order that they prefer the military dictatorship of Napoleon. 1804-1814 Napoleon declares himself Emperor and begins to conquer the world. Does this story sound familiar? It should. It's the story of Ancient Athens. It's the story of Ancient Rome. It seems to be a cycle of all nations. You start humbly. You accomplish great things in a time of great prosperity. You start to think that you are better than all the other nations. You start to conquer other nations with force and violence, enforcing your will on them. You have a fall. Where is the United States right now in this cycle?

Timeline of The French Revolution

Individual Invention: Adds passion/feeling to the broken color of Impressionism

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

When was World War II? 1939-1945. Let's give a brief history. To do this, let's go back to the end of WWI. When was that? Nov. 11, 1918: Armistice Day. World War I ends. Our current Veteran's Day holiday commemorates that event. June 28, 1919: Treaty of Versailles. Germany is ordered pay a backbreaking $130 billion in war reparations, causing huge inflation. Oct. 29, 1929: The Stock Market crash in the U.S. launches the Great Depression in throughout the world. Jan. 20, 1933: Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, after promising to "Make Germany Great Again" by bringing order to the chaos. 1938: Hitler invades Austria, announcing that Germany and Austria are "reunited." (The ending of The Sound of Music depicts this.) March 1939: Hitler invades Czechoslovakia. Sep. 1, 4, 1939: Hitler invades Poland; Britain/France declare war. May 1940: France falls to Germany. Dec. 7, 1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor; the U.S. enters WWII. Feb. 20, 1942: The U.S. President, FDR, begins moving 100,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps in the interior states (Colorado, Arkansas, etc.), thus causing Japanese Americans to lose their homes, possessions, and freedom, just because they looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. May 16, 1943: The Warsaw Jewish ghetto falls. Any survivors are shipped to death camps and the ghetto is completely destroyed. June 6, 1944: D-Day. The allies invade Europe (the coast of France) in the largest invasion force in history, comprising 4,000 invasion ships, 600 warships, 10,000 planes and more than 175,000 Allied troops. The Allies begin to push the Germans back towards Germany. Soon one million Allied troops will be in Europe. April 12, 1945: FDR (in his fourth term as President) dies of a brain hemorrhage; Truman sworn in as President. April 30, 1945: Hitler marries his mistress, Eva Braun, in his bombproof bunker as Russian shells are falling in Berlin. He then poisons her and kills himself. His remains are never recovered. May 7, 1945: The Germans surrender to Gen. Eisenhower in France and the Soviets in Berlin. June 5, 1945: US, Russia, England, France agree to split Germany into two halves. Aug. 6, 1945: The Unites States drops an atomic bomb (with the destructive power of 20,000 tons of TNT) on Hiroshima, Japan, killing 80,000 and seriously injuring 100,000. 98 percent of the city is destroyed. The bomb explodes 1850 feet above Shima Hospital, vaporizing the building and all patients instantly. 88% of people within 1500 feet die instantly. The temperature at the center was 5,432 degrees. Aug 9, 1945: The U.S. drops a second atom bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. This time 35,000 are dead, 60,000 seriously injured, and 5,000 vanished. Those Americans in power who performed this horrific massacre of innocent civilians put forth the idea that it was a good thing because it probably saved American lives. Any way you look at that ideology (imaginary reality), you see that it comes from the imaginary notion that some lives on one side of an imaginary border are more valuable than others. March 1946: Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, speaking to college students in Fulton, Missouri announces: "An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent, allowing police governments to rule Eastern Europe." The Cold War begins. WWII is the deadliest war in history, costing more than 38 million lives. The Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews and other "undesirables" (LGBTQ people, gypsies, the disabled, etc.), called "the Final Solution" by Hitler, "the Shoah" by the Jews, and "the Holocaust" by the world, takes more than 11 million lives.

WORLD WAR II

1) The Industrial Revolution What was this? It was the time in early- to mid-1800s when machines (factories, steam engines, the train, etc.) began doing more work. While this was good for those who owned the means of production, it was not very good for their workers. How come? Because now workers could be fired and machines could do their jobs. If you were part of the massive unemployment or deplorable working conditions faced by the workers, are you interested in the fantastic symphonies or paintings of Romanticism? No. You're interested in solving real social problems, like class inequality. This is Realism. 2) European Colonialism What was this? It was when European countries since at least the 1400s had been invading poorer countries around the world and ruling over them. They believed that they were better people to rule than those who lived there. And they enjoyed exploiting the natural resources. There was a famous saying: "The sun never set on the British Empire." What does this mean? It means that the British had colonies all over the globe. Where? America used to be one. But there was also Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, countries in Africa, and many other places (see the red, above). If you were part of a colonized country that had foreigners ruling over and exploiting you, are you interested in the healing power of nature? No. You're interested in solving real social problems, like Imperialism. This is Realism. 3) The Ideas of Charles Darwin Who was he? Darwin was a scientist who sailed around the world on the HMS Beagle in 1831. He studied geological formation, fossils, and the distribution of plants and animals. What did he see in the Galapagos Islands? Finches that had different beaks than the finches he knew. How did they get that way? If, through an advantageous mutation, a finch developed a beak that was stronger than before, it would be more likely to live longer, reproduce, and pass that trait down to its offspring. What is this called? Natural Selection. Darwin thus became convinced that species were not fixed categories, but were capable of variation. He substantiated the view of his predecessors that complex forms of life evolved from less complex species to more complex species. He published these findings in his ground-breaking work, On the Origin of Species (1859). Later, he began to expand upon the properties of Natural Selection. If we can see that complex species evolved from less complex species, did it happen with people, too? Did humans descend from less complex anthropoids? He publishes these ideas in The Descent of Man (1871). Who had a problem with these ideas? The church. Why? Because of the Judeo-Christian creation myth found in the book of Genesis that teaches that God created the world in seven days, created the first man from the dust, and the first woman from the rib of the man. The church denounced Darwin's findings as heresy. But this was a long time ago--back in the 1800s. I'm sure this is settled science now, right? How are these ideas still being fought about today? In 1999, the Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 to remove all references of Darwinian evolution and the origin of the earth from classrooms. In 2005, that same School Board voted 6-4 to begin teaching intelligent design in classrooms. Some people would argue that it's no problem if you want to teach the Judeo-Christian creation myth. But maybe that should be taught in a religion class or in a church, not in a science class. In a science class, you should teach science's explanation for "Where did we come from?" rather than your particular church's view. Besides, there are hundreds of creation myths in the world. If you're going to teach the Judeo-Christian creation myth in science class, shouldn't you also teach the Mayan creation myth: that we all sprouted from the heavenly ear of corn? Or the Greek creation myth, where Prometheus creates people from the mud and Athena breathes life into them? And then all of a sudden, you've spent all of 8th-grade biology learning the world's different creation myths. What were you taught about Darwin and Natural Selection in your high school? If you lived back in the time of Darwin, and you were interested in how science could help you better understand the "Where did we come from?" question, are you going to be interested in the witches and goblins of Romanticism? No, you're going to want to answer the important questions of society. That's Realism. 4) The Ideas of Karl Marx One historian in our day has written: "with the possible exception of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx has had a greater impact on twentieth-century history and thought than any other figure the nineteenth century produced." Is that true? Even if Marx was in the top ten of people from the 1800s who influenced how we see the world today, I'm sure you spent a lot of time in elementary, middle school, and high school studying his ideas? No? Just a few minutes in high school and then you'd hear, "But that would never work"? We better spend some time on this important theorist today. Marx said: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness." What does that mean? It means: "the way that I think comes from my class." Is that true that the way that I think comes from my class? Imagine that I brought in two guest speakers for you today: Kim Kardashian and someone who doesn't have enough food to eat. What if I asked them both: "How does the world work?" or "What were you thinking about today?" Would their answers be the same? If not, then Marx was on to something. Now this is very different than what Rene Descartes' famous saying during the Enlightenment (the 1700s). What was it? "I think, therefore I am." In other words, "I exist as a thinking individual." Now, in the 1800s. Marx is saying, "You don't just exist as a thinking individual. They way that you think comes from your class." Let's try to understand this by looking at some more ideas of Marx's:

move from Romanticism to Realism 4 reasons:

Debussy [pronounced "DEB-you-see"] was one such composer who created Impressionism in music. Debussy was a gifted pianist who experiments with breaking rules. While studying music, one of his professors asked, "What rules do you observe?" He responded, "None, only my own pleasure!" The professor shot back, "That's all very well, provided you're a genius." Come to find out, he was. I don't know the name of that professor, but I certainly know the name of Debussy. Debussy wondered why music had to be composed in the same, established way with set patterns of exposition-development-restatement. He wanted to leave behind the tradition of Wagner (a Romantic composer from Germany) to create a new kind of music for France. He abandoned the concept of the development of themes and aimed for the constant changing flow of sound. Instead of dealing with human emotions, his music evokes the atmosphere of the wind, rain, sea, etc., like the Impressionists were doing in their paintings. Like Monet or Renoir, he wanted to create intangible sensations. Debussy said: "My desire is to reproduce what I hear." He also said: "I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, and open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become academic art."

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Existentialism is another one of the small little ISMs in Modernism. See if you can memorize all the bold, one-line definitions for the little ISMs in this module, just like you did in the last one. Imagine that you survived the Holocaust or some of the other horrors of WWII. What might you be asking yourself? "Why didn't God protect his chosen people? How could a loving God let such cruelty and death happen?" The result is Existentialism: there is no God, no ultimate plan, no meaning to our lives. The only possible meaning in my life may come from my individual choices, but even that seems unlikely. One of the leaders of the Existentialists was Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). He famously said: "Existence precedes essence." In other words, the only thing we can know is that we exist. (This is where the name "Existentialism" comes from.) Sartre believed it was the duty of every person to think about the implications of atheism. If there is no God, there is no blueprint of what a person should be, and then there is no ultimate significance in the world. Our aloneness forces us to make many insignificant choices. Another famous Existentialist was Albert Camus (1913-1960). He wrote The Myth of Sisyphus in 1942. What was the original Greek myth upon which it was based? Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to roll a heavy boulder up a mountain. He'd struggle to push it up uphill and just when it got to the top, it would roll back down. Sisyphus, discouraged, would run back down the mountain and push the boulder back up again. The same thing would happen. Sisyphus will do this for all of eternity. Sisyphus is like you, and me, and all of us. We think the things we do have meaning. In reality, they don't. Nothing matters. Nothing has value. Life is absurd. So how do we find meaning in a world where there is no meaning? Camus argues that the only choice we have is to rebel by rejoicing in the meaninglessness. Rejoice in the act of rolling the boulder up the mountain. Existentialism is an attempt to help people understand their place in an absurd world; to know what kind of meaning and ethics are available in a world with no absolutes. The human condition is one of anxiety experienced in the face of nothingness and the inevitability of death. Each individual is the sum of their choices and completely bears the responsibility for those choices.

EXISTENTIALISM

Schubert wrote this song when he was 18. That's the age of some of us in this class! It was set to a poem written by Goethe. It tells of a legend that whomever is touched by the Elf King must die. This is program music: music that tells a story. Here there are four characters who sing: the narrator, the father, the child, and the monstrous Elf King. At the beginning, you can hear the hooves of the horse riding swiftly through the night, carrying the father and the son. Is it in major or minor? At what parts? What does this mean? Listen to this recording to see what happens. Can you tell a story like that? How does this song show characteristics of Romantic music?

"Erlkönig"

This song is autobiographical, like many of his works. It was a personal reaction to the tragedy of his loss of hearing. Can you hear the deep anger, sadness, and loss in it? That passion/feeling is Romanticism. Watch the first couple of minutes of twelve-year-old Tiffany Poon feeling the passion of this piece:

"Pathetique" Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor

In this piece, Schoenberg abandons traditional harmony. Remember, during the Baroque style, major and minor harmonies were established. Now Schoenberg wonders why, for 300 years, we've been stuck in the boring system that's always the same: start in the tonic (home key), wander through dissonance to maximum tension, and then resolve back into the tonic. Schoenberg writes atonal music: music that deliberately avoids traditional chords and harmonies. There is no framework of a key. Therefore, there's nowhere to return to. There's maximum tension at all times, with no relaxation or resolution. Can you see how this is Modernism? There is no resolution, only instability and fragmentation. Pierrot Lunaire [pee-yair-OH lune-AIR] is about a demonic clown named Pierrot. At one point he holds his own heart as a "horrible red sacrificial wafer." Schoenberg also invents and uses sprechstimme: "speech-singing." The singer speaks the German words, with a rise or fall in pitch, rather than strictly singing the notes. Schoenberg indicates this by having an "x" through the stems of the notes. Listen to this brief clip:

Arnold Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire (1912)

1. Passion/Feeling: Enlightenment reason has failed. We're back to passion and feeling. 2. Individualism: Wasn't this a characteristic of the Enlightenment? Yes, but where Enlightenment individualism is about knowing things for yourself, Romantic individualism is about feeling things for yourself. The Romantic artist's own emotions and senses are what are most important. 3. Freedom/Anti-Authority: Romantics did not like being told what to do. 4. Trusting the Senses: What matters is what I can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Notice how important these senses become, especially in the Romantic poetry. 5. Love of Fantasy and the Exotic: The Romantics want to live "long ago and far away." They would love to be on a desert island or Ancient Egypt. As Romanticism progresses, this turns into a love of nightmares, blood, and death. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein during Romanticism. 6. Love of Nature: Painters turned to landscapes; composers sought to evoke the rustling of leaves; poets tried to express their union with the natural world. They loved the wild, unpredictability of nature which echoed the artist's own temperament. At the beginning of Romanticism, nature is what heals us. As Romanticism progresses, nature will be loved for its ability to kill. 7. Alienated, melancholic artists who see themselves as visionaries: What does "alienated" mean? Feeling like an outsider from society. What does "melancholic" mean? "Very sad." Romantic artists were the depressed outsiders who also saw themselves as the new prophets, able to see what society can't. 8. Nationalism: Many Romantic artists were at the forefront of national/political movements. And they will want to use their music to glorify their country. Wagner will want to create a new kind of music for Germany. Delacroix will want to create a new kind of painting for France.

Characteristics of Romanticism

Listen to the first two minutes of this clip. What do you feel is happening in this song? It's based on a Mallarmé poem about a faun awakening. Can you almost picture the mythical faun (half human/half goat) as he wakes up in the forest? How do the Three Musical Reforms of Debussy work in it?

Claude Debussy, Prelude to "Afternoon of a Faun"

Henry David Thoreau [pronounced: "Ther-OH"] was another American Transcendentalist who loved nature like the Romantics. On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved out into nature, by himself, for two years at Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts. While he was there, he wrote an essay called "On Civil Disobedience," which influenced the nonviolent noncooperation with injustice of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Thoreau also wrote about living a simple life in nature in his book Walden.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Nonsense for the sake of nonsense as a way of rejecting everything In 1916, a group of artists, writers, and intellectuals gathered in Zurich, Switzerland to create this movement. What was happening in that time and place? Switzerland was neutral during WWI, so it attracted artists who rejected the violence of war. Such artist reasoned that since the world has gone mad (as evidenced by WWI), shouldn't art be equally mad? WWI is the outcome of science and rationality. All tradition and values are now meaningless. Anti-art is the only ethical position in Modernism. Where did the name Dadaism come from? Legend has it that Tristan Tzara, the leader of the Dadaists, stuck a knife in a French dictionary and it randomly landed on dada, meaning "hobbyhorse." The Dadaists thought that was the perfect name for this artistic movement that should be the opposite of reason. (Tristan Tzara, in his Dada Manifesto, later said the word doesn't mean anything.) Dadaism is a rejection of everything. It's a complete rejection of all prevailing styles in art: anti-order, anti-authority, anti-reason, anti-bourgeois. Artists should be like children and just play. Art should be product of chance, accident, or outrageous behavior. Art should violate good taste and be an assault on all forms of rational order and artistic convention. Art should be shocking for the sake of shocking Art should have contradictions and strange juxtapositions of words and images. Art should champion anarchy and clear the way experiments and innovations. This should be the ISM to end all ISMs.

DADAISM

French Expressionism, distorting through the use of strange color Expressionism starts in Northern Europe. As it moves down into France, it gets a new name: Fauvism. What does "Fauvism" mean? It comes from the French word for "wild beasts" [French: les fauves). During a 1905 exhibit of Expressionist paintings (which included the work of Matisse), one critic described the art as "Donatello in a cage of wild beasts." The Fauvists re-appropriated that pejorative (insult) as their new name. Using outrageous color becomes the primary concern for the Fauvists.

FAUVISM

The admiration of machines with force, speed, and strength The Futurists were artists living in Italy who wanted to destroy the past in order to bring about a new future with a new society and new art. They loved the values of industrial civilization and despised the artistic culture of the past. They wanted to destroy museums, libraries, and universities to make way for their particular wave of the future. They rejoiced in technology, such as planes, trains, and automobiles. They admired mechanical motion, force, speed and strength.

FUTURISM

Another Romantic composer is Franz Schubert. He didn't have a lot of money and sometimes would sell his songs for the price of a meal. He knew the despair of the Romantic artist: "No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they pass each other by." He also said: "My music is the product of my talent and my misery. And that which I have written in my greatest distress is what the world seems to like best." This is Romanticism: the emotion of deep despair. Schubert died when he was only 31.

Franz Schubert (Austria, 1797-1828)

Individual Invention: Develops Pointillism Building on the broken color of the Impressionists, Seurat develops a new technique known as Pointillism: filling the canvas with tiny dots of color. When viewed from a distance, they merge to form a brilliant effect of light and color on your eye.

Georges Seurat (1859-1891)

Yet another Romantic composer is Hector Berlioz, from Paris. His contemporaries there were the artist Delacroix (Liberty Leading the People) and the author Victor Hugo (Les Miserables). Berlioz gave up studying medicine for music; his parents were so angry, they cut him off from the family. In his Memoirs he tells of his infatuation for a woman, Harriet Smithson: "I became obsessed by an intense, overpowering sense of sadness. I could not sleep, I could not work, and I spent my time wandering aimlessly about Paris." This shows his Romantic temperament. When they wanted to get married, there were violent clashes over objections with both families, including one in which the Berlioz attempted suicide. He was revived and the Hector and Harried were married. Berlioz was one the boldest musical innovators of the Nineteenth Century. His approach to music was wholly original.

Hector Berlioz (French, 1803-1869)

1. Doubt, Anxiety, Alienation This is how you were feeling if you just lost absolute time and space or just came home from WWI. 2. Fragmentation In WWI you may have seen bodies fragmented. That fragmentation is now projected into the art. The world is no longer whole, innocent, perfect, or beautiful. 3. Experimentation/Innovation As Modernist writer, Ezra Pound, said: "Make it new." Virginia Woolf, another Modernist writer, said: "No experiment is forbidden, only falsity and pretense." Modernism is anti-Realism, because Realism implies absolutes, which are no longer with us. Modernism is a much less stable mode of reality. In fact, the whole nature of reality is now in question. We need to rejecting previous models of art. We need to upset the bourgeois audience. We'll shock and disgust them out of their normal way of thinking. The term "avant-garde" means "ahead of the group." That's how the Modernists viewed themselves: ahead of society, pushing the boundaries. 4. Loss of Reliance on Authority Just like Wilfred Owen came to learn, the older generation lied to us. They said that war was glorious. It's not. We shouldn't trust them anymore. 5. Belief in the Power of Art There is one last thing that we can trust, and that's art. Art still has the power to change society.

Here are the characteristics of Modernism:

1. Passion and feeling: This will be music that you really feel. 2. Breaking the rules: Beethoven puts a choir and solo voices in his 9th Symphony. You can't do that, can you? Nobody had ever done that before. But Beethoven didn't care. 3. Radical, surprise shifts in meter, tempo, and dynamics: What's meter? How many beats per measure. What's tempo? How fast or slow a song goes. What's dynamics? Louds and softs. All of these will change like crazy throughout Romantic music. 4. The orchestra gets huge: It becomes up to five times bigger than it was in classical period. This creates a greater range of sound (with higher-pitched instruments and lower-pitched instruments). Who has been to a Symphony performance? That huge orchestra that played got that size during Romanticism. 5. Exotic, fantastic themes: You can't write music about a monstrous Elf King that kills a little boy, can you? Or write a symphony about a composer that kills his girlfriend, gets beheaded, and ends up in hell where he dances with her, can you? Some Romantic composers did.

Here are the characteristics of Romantic music:

This is a purely American art form. It originated in New Orleans and then moved to northern cities like Chicago and New York as African Americans moved up north.

Jazz

Langston Hughes was a writer in the Harlem Renaissance. Here are some excerpts from this poem: Play that thing, Jazz band! Play it for the lords and ladies, For the dukes and counts, For the whores and gigolos, For the American millionaires, And the school teachers Out for a spree. . . . . . . You know that tune That laughs and cries at the same time . . . . . . May I? Mais oui, Mein Gott! Parece una rumba. Play it, jazz band! If you read those lines out loud, what does it sound like? You can almost hear the syncopated rhythms of a nightclub. What kind of people are welcome in the nightclub? Everyone: the rich, the poor, the privileged, and the non-privileged. What languages are spoken there? Many different kinds: English, French, German, Spanish, etc. In other words, the nightclub is the great equalizer. Everyone is equal there, in a way that they are not in the outside streets. Perhaps you can feel Hughes' great longing for the equitable society that is enabled in the nightclub to be enacted in the outside world.

Langston Hughes, "Jazz Band in a Parisian Café"

The composer Ludwig van Beethoven starts in the Classical Style but becomes the transition figure that brings the musical world into Romanticism. He was the prototypical Romantic artist because of his love of nature, his passionate belief in the freedom of the individual and his fiery temperament. He once wrote to one of his patrons, a prince: "There will always be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven." He had a difficult life. As he was growing up as a young boy in Bonn, Germany, he received training in music from his father, who was an alcoholic and who would force him to practice at the keyboard for hours, often locking him in his room. His father would come home from drinking bouts and beat Ludvig mercilessly. In 1792, at the age of 22, Beethoven goes to Vienna to study with Haydn which, because of Beethoven's impatience, did not make for a good relationship. But it was here that he was schooled in the classical style of music. Only later in his life would Beethoven begin to extend the emotional range of his music. In 1796, when he was 26, he began to go deaf. By 1802, at the age of 32, he is completely deaf.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Many Humanities textbook authors struggle to come up with characteristics of Post-Impressionism. This is difficult to do because what makes Post-Impressionism unique is that each artist creates a different style. So here's a better way to understand Post-Impressionism:

Post-Impressionism

If you had lived through the chaos and bloodshed of the French Revolution, would you imagine that the world is filled with reason, order, and balance? No. A new style arises that reflects how people are feeling at the time: Romanticism. Time periods are always problematic but Romanticism is roughly about 1770-1830.

ROMANTICISM

When Romanticism comes to the United States, it becomes known as Transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American writer who wrote essay called Nature in 1836, after meeting Wordsworth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

For this new style of Realism, let's learn a one-line definition: Depicting life as it is (imperfect), rather than as you wish it were (perfect). Who else had a style that used Realism? Then Ancient Greeks, in the Hellenistic Style. Now in the mid-1800s, people are tired of the escapism ("long ago and far away") of Romanticism. The Realists want to confront real social issues like class inequality and the horrors of war.

Realism

In 1814, the 16-year-old pregnant Mary Godwin eloped with the 22-year-old poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary's infuriated parents disowned her. During the first year of their marriage, they struggled financially and their baby, born prematurely, died (perhaps sowing the seeds for her future novel, Frankenstein). In June 1816, Mary and Percy were invited on holiday to a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, the poet Lord Byron, and his personal physician John Polidori. Byron had already slept with Clair by the time of the gathering, but was already over their relationship, even though she was not. 1816 was the "year without a summer" due to a volcanic eruption in Indonesia that caused so much sulfur dioxide pollution that global temperatures dropped. The resulting cold and dreary climate, combined with never-ending torrential rain, kept everyone indoors. One night, during the thunder and lightning, Lord Byron suggested a contest: Who could write the scariest story? Mary based her story on a dream she had at the villa in which a "hideous" man awakens to a new life: the creature. She had also recently seen a demonstration at the Royal Institute in London showing how electricity could be used to induce movement in dead muscles. With these elements, the 18-year-old Mary told a tale of a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who uses electricity to reanimate the dead body parts of a creature, who then feels very alone. She won the contest. She wrote the novel Frankenstein in nine months and it was published anonymously on January 1, 1818. In 1831, she published a revised version, this time bearing her name. In this selection, the narrator, Victor tells of his love of Enlightenment science and knowledge; his foster sister Elizabeth (with whom he falls in love) is filled with the passion of Romanticism:

Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

Berlioz writes: "He sees himself at a witches' sabbath surrounded by a host of fearsome spectres who have gathered for his funeral. Unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of laughter. The melody of his beloved is heard, but it has lost its noble and reserved character. It has become a vulgar tune, trivial and grotesque. It is she who comes to the infernal orgy. A howl of joy greets her arrival. She joins the diabolical dance. Bells toll for the dead. A burlesque of the Dies Irae. Dance of the witches. The dance and the Dies Irae combined." Listen, below, from 1:30-2:30 to hear the musician waking up in hell. You can also hear the idée fixe of his girlfriend, but it is now twisted and scary. Jump ahead and listen, below, from 3:18-4:50 to hear the Dies Irae and then the twisted idée fixe of his girlfriend, alternating back and forth. Do you remember what the Dies Irae was? It was the the medieval song that people would sing during a funeral march to the grave. It means "Day of wrath, day of burning, see fulfilled the prophet's warning!" But it was liturgical music: sacred music used for worship. And where has Berlioz put it? In his weird, secular symphony about murdering your girlfriend and dancing with her in hell. This was scandalous at the time of the premiere! Since then, the Dies Irae has been used many times in secular works, including in Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd, and Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame. Today, nobody cares. But when Berlioz first did it, it was an outrage! This is Romanticism: breaking the rules with passion and feeling to create situations of nightmares and doom!

Movement 5: "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath."

Individual Invention: Breaks down space One art historian in our day has written: "The greatest post-impressionist painter was Paul Cezanne. It would be difficult to overestimate the revolutionary quality of Cezanne's art, which has been compared to that of the proto-Renaissance . . . painter Giotto as an influence on Western art. Cezanne's influence brought to an end the six-hundred-year attempt since Giotto's time to reproduce nature in painting." Do you remember Giotto's Lamentation (near the end of Chapter 6; p. 218)? He was the transition figure that moved the art world into the Renaissance through his creation of depth on the canvas. Cézanne will now be the painter who moves the world into Modernism, completely abandoning the need to create 3-D space on a flat canvas.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

Individual Invention: Adds strange color Gaugin starts out with a wealthy life in Paris as a stockbroker. Then quits his job, leaves his wife and children, and moves to Tahiti to live la vie boheme: the bohemian life of enjoying sex and creating art.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Let us now quench our growing passions! And at once make ready every wonder Of unpenetrated sorcery! Let us cast ourselves into the torrent of time, Into the world of eventfulness, Where disappointment and success, Pleasure and pain may chop and change As chop and change they will and can; It is restless action makes the man. MEPHISTOPHELES: We just say go—and skip. But please get ready for this pleasure trip. [Exit Faust] Only look down on knowledge and reason, The highest gifts that men can prize, Only allow the spirit of lies To confirm you in magic and illusion, And then I have you body and soul. Fate has given this man a spirit Which is always pressing onwards, beyond control, And whose mad striving overleaps All joys of the earth between pole and pole. Him I shall drag through the wilds of life And through the flats of meaninglessness, I shall make him flounder and gape and stick And to tease his insatiableness Hang meat and drink in the air before his watering lips; In vain he will pray to slake his inner thirst, And even had he not sold himself to the devil He would be equally accursed. The legend of a man who sells his soul to the devil pops up about every generation. During the Renaissance in England, Christopher Marlowe wrote a play called Dr. Faustus, where our hero sells his soul to the devil for knowledge. That's what the Renaissance valued. Here in Romanticism, with Goethe's Faust, our protagonist sells his soul for the passion and feeling of experience. In our day, there was a Hollywood film called Bedazzled (Harold Ramis, 2000), where the protagonist sells his soul to the devil to win love. What does that say about what our time values?

Selection from Goethe's Faust

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life. . . . Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. Throreau writes, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." What does that mean? Can't you live deliberately in civilization? He wanted to "front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." What does this mean? Is it true that you can do this better in nature? Christopher McCandless was a recent college graduate who read works like Thoreau's Walden. Although he had been accepted to an Ivy League law school, he burned his money, abandoned his car, and began to walk from Atlanta to Alaska in order to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Do you think he is a hero for trying to live deeply, or a fool? His story is told in the book and movie Into the Wild (either of which you could write an extra-credit paper on, if you like.)

Selection from Henry David Thoreau's Walden

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the woods too a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. Emerson says that in nature "a man cast off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth." What does this mean? Is it true? Emerson writes that in nature "a decorum and a sanctity reign." In other words, there's a level of holiness in nature that is not found in civilization. Is this true? Can you think of a specific time when you were in nature that you felt something different than in civilization? Emerson explains that in nature "all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." What does this mean? Is it true?

Selection from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature

I was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge. [Elizabeth] busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home--the sublime shapes of the mountains; the changes of the seasons; tempest and calm; the silence of the winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers--she found ample scope for admiration and delight. While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirits the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember. After creating the creature, however, Victor will realize the dangers of Enlightenment thinking, and swings over into full-blown Romanticism: Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows. . . . The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side--the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke as a power mighty as Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear, or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. . . . A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognized, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the light-hearted gaity of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal nature bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly influence ceased to act--I found myself fettered again to grief, and indulging in all the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and, more than all, myself--or in a desperate fashion, I alighted, and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair.

Selections from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. . . . For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. Which lines show us Wordsworth's passion for nature? Can you write them down in your notes? Can you feel his love of the senses? What are some sense words (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching) that Wordsworth uses here? In the second paragraph, Wordsworth says that even when he's back in the city, even his memories of this place in nature bring him "tranquil restoration." What does that mean? In the third paragraph, Wordsworth mentions that he feels a power in nature that he doesn't feel in civilization. Can you think of a specific time when you have been in nature and felt something different than in civilization? At the end of this selection, Wordsworth calls nature his "anchor." What does an anchor do? He calls nature his "nurse." What does a nurse do? He calls nature his "guide." What does a guide do? He calls nature "the guardian of my heart." What does that mean? He calls nature "the soul of all my moral being." What does that mean? For the Romantics, nature was like a God that taught them a higher way to live, and we can see that in the last two lines of this selection.

Selections from William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey" (1798)

Berlioz wrote this symphony at the age of 27, at the height of his infatuation with Harriet. This is also program music: music that tells a story. He took elements of the story from his own life! We know what the story is because Berlioz printed it in the program notes at the world premiere. "A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination in a paroxysm of lovesick despair has poisoned himself with opium. The drug, too weak to kill, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by strange visions. . . . The beloved one becomes for him a melody, a recurrent theme [idée fixe] that haunts him everywhere." The term idée fixe means "a recurring musical theme." Think, for instance, of Darth Vader in Star Wars. He has a recurring musical theme that plays when his has a scene. In Symphony Fantastique, the idée fixe is a tune that represents the musician's girlfriend. But it changes radically in harmony, rhythm, meter, tempo, dynamics, and instrumental color, depending on what is happening in the story. Let's listen to a couple of short moments from Movement 4: "March to the Scaffold." In his program notes, Berlioz explained: "He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he has been condemned to die and is being led to the scaffold. . . . At the very end the fixed idea reappears for an instant, like the last thought of love interrupted by the fall of the axe." Listen to the first minute and a half to hear the musician's forced march to the place of execution. Do you hear surprise shifts in tempo, meter, and dynamics? That's Romanticism. Then start it again at 6:15, to hear his head get chopped off and the crowd cheer as his head falls into a bucket:

Symphonie Fantastique

"Eroica" means "hero." Beethoven originally wrote this in honor of Napoleon, the middle-class hero who triumphed over his humble origins to rise to power as the champion of liberty and democracy. But what did Napoleon do in 1804, while Beethoven was in the middle of writing it? He crowned himself Emperor and began conquering the world. Beethoven was so disgusted that he crossed out Napoleon's name on the title page. By the time it was printed in 1806, it bore only the dedication: "to celebrate the memory of a great man." Listen to the first two minutes for a good sense of the heroic nature of this symphony:

Symphony #3 in E Flat. "Eroica."

Listen carefully to the motif that Beethoven plays around with here: short, short, short, long. Do you hear that over and over? What does it sound like? Fate, knocking at the door. Can you hear the angst in this song? It's as if Fate, bringing deafness to Beethoven, is knocking at the door. How would you feel if you were a composer, and you were losing the one sense that was the most important to you? Listen to the first 30 seconds of this to hear all of that:

Symphony #5. "Fate Knocking at the Door."

This may be one of the greatest works of music ever written. It's Beethoven's final symphony, written when he was completely deaf. He never heard a note of this through his ears. Beethoven breaks the rules by adding a chorus and solo singers. After a life of so much suffering, how come Beethoven left the world with an "Ode to Joy"? Was he finally able to let go of the pain this world showed him, and leave the universe with a magnificent gift of forgiveness? This is from the film Immortal Beloved, depicting the world premiere of Symphony #9. (If you want to learn more about Beethoven, you can watch the whole film Immortal Beloved and write an extra-credit journal about it.) In this clip, the film wonders, what was in Beethoven's head when he wrote Symphony #9? Was he remembering back to a time when his father would come home to beat him and instead Beethoven escaped out into nature to find a moment of joy?

Symphony #9 "Ode to Joy."

A flourishing of African-American art and culture in the 1920s What was life like for African-Americans in the south in the 1920s? Horrible. Jim Crow was a set of laws and practices that gave power and privilege to whites and denied power and privilege to blacks. For instance, some people could eat at restaurants where they wanted, because of their race, and some people couldn't. Some people could register to vote, because of their race, and some couldn't. Some people could get employment, or get a mortgage on a house, or have educational opportunities, and some couldn't, because of their race. In the 1920s, many African-Americans were fleeing the racist South and coming to northern cities, including Harlem, a neighborhood in New York, just north of Central Park. While life wasn't perfect here, there was a lot more freedom than in the South. In these better conditions, where there was room to breathe, art flourished.

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

1) Melodic Reform: Romantic music was diachronic, meaning it surged horizontally through time. (Remember, for instance, Schubert's Erlkonig.) Now Debussy creates music that is synchronic, meaning it is more vertical. The notes hang in the air without the need to constantly push forward. It's like Debussy is capturing a brief moment in time in the music. 2) Harmonic Reform: In the Baroque, the system of majors and minors was developed. A major scale is 1-3-5-8. But Debussy experimented with 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths. This was very new to the ears of the people in his day. 3) Texture Reform: In Romanticism, what happened to the orchestra? It got huge. Now Debussy downsizes, sometimes to only one instrument.

Three Musical Reforms of Debussy:

1) Artists give up trying to convey 3-D space on a 2-D canvas. How long have artists been trying to show depth on the canvas? Since the Renaissance Style in the 1400s. But now we have a camera that can capture how things look. Artists begin to wonder why they've been trying to construct 3-D space on a 2-D canvas for hundreds of years. 2) Instead, each artist prizes individual invention. In other words, each artist creates their own style. Instead of trying to capture the world objectively, they will share their own subjective version of the world. For each Post-Impressionist, I will give you one individual invention to remember.

Two characteristics of Post-Impressionism:

Walt Whitman was a gay American writer who loved boldness and change. He said: "For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them." He invented American free verse: unrhymed and unmeasured. Whitman spent most of his early life in Long Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, New York, where he saw many different kinds of people. Between 1850-1855, he writes a long poem called "Song of Myself" that was published in his collection called Leaves of Grass. It's been called "the greatest American poem ever written."

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Let's start with William Wordsworth, an English poet. Tintern Abbey was a monastery for monks built on the banks of the River Wye in Wales. Construction originally began in the 1100s, but it was mostly rebuilt in the 1200s and Christened in 1301. In 1536, during the Protestant Reformation, King Henry VIII took back all monasteries from the Catholics. The building was abandoned and fell into disrepair. By Wordsworth's time, it was in ruins and nature had begun to take it back. In this poem, Wordsworth writes about returning to one of his favorite spots in nature, just above the ruins of the abbey, after having been away for five years. Doing so brings him a kind of natural ecstasy. He writes sublimely about the power that nature has to transform us.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)