Auden's Poems

 1) Which lines of 'September 1, 1939' you liked the most? Why?

“September 1, 1939,” one of Auden’s most famous and oft-quoted poems, gained new prominence after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Curiously, though, Auden came to dislike this work, finding it “dishonest” and a “forgery.” He had his publisher include a note that the work was “trash he was ashamed to have written”; he also tried to keep it out of later collections of his poems. It is unclear why he felt so embarrassed by the poem. It has remained a staple of Auden’s work as well as an inspiring call to speak out in hope for justice and brotherhood despite times of war or terror.The poem was written in 1939, just as German troops invaded Poland and began the Second World War. It was published in The New Republic that year and included in the collection Another Time the following year. Hitler’s invasion of Poland declared his military strength and flouted the agreement of the Munich Conference, shocking the entire world. The United States did not enter the war until 1941.

Auden begins his poem with the speaker sitting in a dive bar in New York City. Hitler’s actions have brought the “low dishonest decade” to a close, bringing “the unmentionable odour of death” to the September evening. He contemplates Hitler’s psychology using a Jungian concept a “huge imago,” a psychological concept of the idealized self and he imagines that historians will explain how German culture, perhaps starting with Martin Luther’s Protestant shakeup of Christianity hundreds of years earlier, led Germans to go along with Hitler’s psychopathic evil.

Yet, even the average person perceives the basic human patterns in the story: doing evil to someone leads that person to do evil in return. More than 2,000 years ago, Thucydides saw how dictators abuse an apathetic population to accomplish their ends, even in a democracy like Germany . The same pattern keeps occurring. Perhaps this is a reason why Auden’s nine stanzas all have the same pattern of eleven lines that, while they do not rhyme, tend to repeat vowel and consonant sounds at the ends of lines (for example, the last four lines of stanza 1: earth/lives/death/night; stanza 2: know/learn/done/return; stanza 3: away/pain/grief/again). The story told here is not new.

In the fourth stanza the poet focuses on New York City, a paragon of modern capitalism, which has yielded “blind skyscrapers” that “proclaim / the strength of Collective Man” via competition and diversity rather than coordinated socialistic efforts. Yet, one cost of this social blindness is isolationism. People cling to their average lives; they are content to pursue their happy dreams, and they keep the music playing and the lights on so that they never see how morally lost they are. They trust “Authority” , which fits their selfish and sensual desires to fulfill their goals regardless of what is happening in Europe.

What is missing is awareness of this basic human jealousy that privileges oneself over others, leading not only to evil but also complacency and apathy when evil is happening elsewhere, as in Europe. Meanwhile, politicians inevitably take advantage of these tendencies as the geopolitical “game” plays out.

In the last two stanzas the poetic voice tries to overcome the problems identified in the previous stanza: “Who can reach the deaf, / Who can speak for the dumb?” Auden scholar James Persoon notes that the speaker only has one voice with which to “undo the folded lie” that humans are too jealous to seek justice.

Yet, the speaker is one of many people who provide “points of light” like this poem. In contrast to the points of light that come from a firing gun, the poem’s rhetorical points “flash out” as a message exchanged with other members of “the Just,” those who seek justice. Although each person writes selfishly and separately, “dotted everywhere,” poems about solidarity and justice create a kind of solidarity. In this way, the network of poems “ironically” emerges spontaneously, mirroring the network of New York skyscrapers which emerge without coordination and make the city.

The poet knows he is just like everyone else, “composed like them / Of Eros [alluding to the god of love, representing the passions] and dust [alluding to Biblical passages about human mortality and returning to the natural dust of the earth upon death].” It is a time of “negation and despair” for anyone who is paying attention to Europe. Nonetheless, the speaker hopes his words can show “an affirming flame” of human connectedness and concern.

If Auden’s speaker is speaking against apathetic neutrality in the face of German aggression, is he calling for the United States to go to war? Or is the role of such a poet to affirm common humanity and justice along with the others who are “Just,” taking a prophetic route while hoping that people will turn from their selfish ways? When Auden changed the key line from the idealistic “We must love one another or die” to “We must love one another and die,” the meaning seems to have changed to express that going to war in the name of love was, in the case of the Second World War, perhaps in hindsight, justified.

2) What is so special about 'In Memory of W B Yeats'?

William Butler Yeats died in winter: the brooks were frozen, airports were all but empty, and statues were covered in snow. The thermometer and other instruments told us the day he died “was a dark cold day.”

While nature followed its course elsewhere, mourners kept his poems alive without letting the poet’s death interfere. Yet, for Yeats himself, mind and body failed, leaving no one to appreciate his life but his admirers. He lives through his poetry, scattered among cities and unfamiliar readers and critics, who modify his life and poetry through their own understandings. While the rest of civilization moves on, “a few thousand” will remember the day of his death as special.

In the second section of the poem, Yeats is called “silly like us.” It was “Mad Ireland” that caused Yeats the suffering he turned into poetry. Poetry survives and gives voice to survival in a space of isolation.

In the third, final section of the poem, the poet asks the Earth to receive Yeats as “an honoured guest.” The body, “emptied of its poetry,” lies there. Meanwhile, “the dogs of Europe bark” and humans continue their “intellectual disgrace.” But the poet is to “follow right / To the bottom of the night,” despite the dark side of humanity somehow persuading others to rejoice in existence. Despite “human unsuccess,” the poet can sing out through the “curse” and “distress.” Thus one’s poetry is a “healing fountain” that, although life is a “prison,” can “teach the free man how to praise” life anyway.

Along with his piece on the death of Sigmund Freud, Auden's tribute to the poet William Butler Yeats is a most memorable elegy on the death of a public figure. Written in 1940, it commemorates the death of the poet in 1939, a critical year for Auden personally as well as for the world at large. This was the year he moved to New York and the year the world catapulted itself into the Second World War.

Yeats was born in Ireland 1856 and embraced poetry very early in his life. He never abandoned the traditional verse format of English poetry but embraced some of the tenets of modernism, especially the modernism practiced by Ezra Pound. He was politically active, mystical, and often deeply pessimistic, but his work also evinces intense lyrical beauty and fervent exaltation in Nature. He is easily considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century, and Auden recognized it at the time.

The poem is organized into three sections and is a commentary on the nature of a great poet’s art and its role during a time of great calamity as well as the ordinary time of life’s struggles.

The first, mournful section describes the coldness of death, repeating that “The day of his death was a dark cold day.” The environment reflects the coldness of death: rivers are too frozen to run; hardly anyone travels by air; statues of public figures are desecrated by snow. These conditions symbolize the loss of activity and energy in Yeats’ death.

At the same time, far away, wolves run and “the peasant river” flows outside of the rest of civilization , keeping the poetry alive. The implication is that the poems live even though the man may be dead. The difficulty with this situation, however, is that the man can no longer speak for himself; “he became his admirers.” His poems, like ashes, are “scattered” everywhere and are misinterpreted . The ugly fact of bad digestion modifies the poems as “The words of a dead man / Are modified in the guts of the living.”

Furthermore, as in “Funeral Blues” and “Musée des Beaux Arts,” the events of the average day go on—a trader yells on the floor, the poor suffer for most people, the day goes unmarked. It takes a special soul to mark the importance of the day of the death of a great poet, and only “a few thousand” have such a soul. As scholar James Persoon writes, “These two elements the poet's death as national and natural crisis and the poet’s death as almost completely insignificant describe a tension within which Auden explores the life of the work after the death of the author.” Thus, in addition to the thermometer telling us so, the speaker of the poem tells us that it is a “dark cold day” with respect to the popular reception of Yeats’ poetry.

In the second section the speaker briefly reflects on the generative power behind Yeats’ poetry. It was “Mad Ireland” that “hurt” him and inspired his poetry as a form of survival. For Yeats, “silly” like other poets or, more broadly, like other Irishmen or humans, poetry was a “gift” that survived everything other than itself even Yeats’ own physical degeneration, the misinterpretations of “rich women,” and Yeats’ own failings. Poetry itself, from this perspective, survives in the midst of everything, not causing anything, but flowing out from isolated safety and providing voice  to that deep level of raw and unassailable humanity.

The third and final part brings the reader back into more familiar territory, with six stanzas of AABB verse, every line in seven-syllable trochaic verse.

The body of Yeats  rests in the ground, the warring nations fight, people misinterpret his work (“intellectual disgraces”), yet somehow, his poetry retains a place somewhere. The true poet, like Yeats himself, will “follow right / To the bottom of the night”, to that fundamental human freedom where an “unconstraining voice” can “persuade us to rejoice” in our existence.

True enough, the human “curse” remains; death awaits. This is all too true in a time of war. But the poet can turn the curse into a “vineyard” where sweet poetic drink can form. On the one hand there are “deserts of the heart” and human distress, yet on the other hand, with this wine a “healing fountain” can release a man from “the prison of his [mortal] days.” A poet like Yeats, despite everything, can “teach the free man how to praise” that fundamental spark of existence that survives in one’s poetry.

3) Is there any contemporary relevance of 'Epitaph on a Tyrant'?

‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’ is one of Auden’s short masterpieces. In just six lines, W. H. Auden (1907-73) manages to say so much about the nature of tyranny. You can read ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’ here, before proceeding to our short analysis of this powerful poem that remains all too relevant today.

Wyston Hughes Auden, or WH Auden, was a British poet, often considered by critics to be one of the best England has ever produced. Auden’s work is known, not only for its remarkable poetic calibre and craftsmanship but also for his skilful portrayal of myriad themes- ranging from the political, social, ethical, to the moral and even the individual. One of Auden’s best known poems and written, interestingly when Adolf Hitler was at the peak of his power in Europe, is a short, six line piece entitled- “Epitaph on a Tyrant” The poem talks about a man- an anonymous “he”- a perfectionist whose poetry was understandable and who, himself, understood “human folly” and the human psyche like “the back of his hand”. He was most interested in “armies and fleets” and when he laughed “respectable senators” burst out in cackles of laughter. Then in a sudden drastic change of atmosphere, Auden says- “When he cried, little children died in the streets”.

One of the significant factors that lends Auden’s poetry a rare kind of brilliance is its ability to appeal to the reader in different sorts of ways. Therefore, there are various different interpretations of this one short poem- the most obvious one being that of an allusion to Adolf Hitler- the Fuhrer of Germany, which rings true on almost every count. Hitler was a man yearning to establish a Pan German empire- a perfect pure Aryan race, he was man whose “poetry”- whose thoughts, beliefs, charisma, all reflected in his oratory which was considered brilliant and inspired millions to support him.

W B Yeats - Poems

W B Yeats :- 

Born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865, William Butler Yeats was the son of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in County Sligo, where his parents were raised, and in London. He returned to Dublin at the age of fifteen to continue his education and study painting but quickly discovered he preferred poetry. Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class, Yeats became involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian period, which sought to promote the spirit of Ireland's native heritage. Though Yeats never learned Irish Gaelic himself, his writing at the turn of the century drew extensively from sources in Irish mythology and folklore. Also, a potent influence on his poetry was the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889, a woman equally famous for her passionate nationalist politics and her beauty. Though she married another man in 1903 and grew apart from Yeats , she remained a powerful figure in his poetry.

Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite Irish independence from England, his verse reflected a pessimism about the political situation in his country and the rest of Europe, paralleling the increasing conservativism of his American counterparts in London, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. His work after 1910 was strongly influenced by Pound, becoming more modern in its concision and imagery, but Yeats never abandoned his strict adherence to traditional verse forms. He had a life-long interest in mysticism and the occult, which was off-putting to some readers, but he remained uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy, and his poetry continued to grow stronger as he grew older. Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, he is remembered as an important cultural leader, as a major playwright, and as one of the very greatest poets in any language of the century. W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 and died in 1939 at the age of seventy-three.

Video recording of online class  :-

'The Second Coming as a Pandemic Poem' :-

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), written in 1915 and published the following year. It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a ‘war poem’ for publication. Before we analyze ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’, here’s a reminder of the text of the poem.

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem about refusing to write a war poem when asked to produce one. This odd act of refusal-as-assent writing a poem, but a poem which takes a stand against writing a certain kind of poem has the air of irony about it, and Yeats probably intended his poem to be taken as a brief ‘thanks, but no thanks.

In terms of its form, the poem is written in iambic pentameter, rhymed ABC ABC. The final two lines are the only ones which might cause some real head-scratching from readers enjoyed: young girls might enjoy his romantic verses about old Ireland, while an old man might enjoy the ballads.

It was the American novelists, Henry James, and Edith Wharton – who were good friends and who both came to live in Britain – who approached him: Wharton was editing an anthology, The Book of the Homeless, the profits from which would go towards helping refugees of the war. That anthology appeared in 1916, complete with Yeats’s contribution, which appeared under the alternative title ‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’.

Yeats had written to his friend Lady Gregory: ‘I suppose, like most wars it is at root a bagman’s war, a sacrifice of the best for the worst. I feel strangely enough most for the young Germans who are now being killed.’ Yeats goes on to say that the ‘bespectacled’ Germans he has seen remind him more of himself than the English soldiersor the French troops.

In a letter of the same year, sent to John Quinn, Yeats wrote that the First World War was ‘merely the most expensive outbreak of insolence and stupidity the world has ever seen and I give it as little thought as I can.’ These remarks leave us in little doubt about how Yeats viewed the conflict, and help to explain why he wrote ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’.

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ could be productively analysed alongside ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, for this reason. Yeats objected to the war, and could not imagine using poetry to wave the flag for the right ‘side’. His line ‘We have no gift to set a statesman right’ is a forerunner to Auden’s famous line that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, and the similarity is no coincidence: Auden makes that well-known statement in his elegy for W. B. Yeats, written in 1939.

'On Being Asked for a War Poem :-

Today’s post returns to the issue we touched on last month with “Acting.” What is an artist’s proper role regarding politics and social issues? And why do artists who engage in politics draw especial condemnation for doing so?

This may be the wrong question. Does anyone ask, what’s the proper role of a lawyer, real estate tycoon, school teacher, doctor or fry cook in politics? None that I’ve heard of lately. My working answer to this possibly disingenuous question is going to be long, so if you can, bear with me.

Probably the only other profession that has its participation in politics questioned in any way would be clergy, and I think there are a pair of oddly similar issues with artists and clergy speaking on politics.

Artists, at least good ones, by their nature tend to be “progressives.” Please, if you can, skip by any associated political stances you attach to that label, it’s honestly the best word I could come up with. By “progressives,” I mean that artists naturally seek change, novelty, and the advancement of new ideas even if they are built on older ones. Scientists and technologists have a similar bent, but artists like to think of themselves as ahead of even the sciences in this regard. Religious leaders, teachers, preachers, tend to be “conservative.” Please apply the same caution to that word as I asked for “progressives.” By conservative, I mean that they see the values in cultural traditions as possibly being given by supernatural forces that are of a higher order than mere human thought, or at the very least, that traditions are time-tested in such a way that they need to be honored, and to extent that seems reasonable to them, for those traditions to remain unchanged.

Are there “conservative” artists. Yes, they are. It’s quite possible to be artistically progressive (important for good artistic work) and politically conservative. Shakespeare presents himself as conservative politically, but was a culture changing artist. And it’s easy for me to think of some 20th century artists who are not “conservative” but “reactionary,” Ezra Pound for one. Caution again, just a label, let me explain: I use reactionary as a label here to denote people who believe that some important elements have failed to have been conserved, and that change is necessary to return to that state or set of values that no longer effectively exist.

Are there religious “progressives.” Yes indeed. Remember that religious people overwhelmingly believe that certain values are given by superhuman forces, ones that exceed what humans themselves might honor. There has always been a large part of religious thought that says that mankind is “fallen” and so therefore is in constant need for change toward the good, a good that might never be properly illuminated by fallen human thought.

So for both our “conservative” label (clergy) and “progressive” label (artists) we’re talking associated tendencies, not absolute dictates. Humans are complicated after all; but I think that’s one thing that strangely joins concerns about artists and clergy in the political arena. Opponents to conservative clergy and progressive artists see these groups as respectively prejudiced, temperamentally oriented toward resistance to necessary change or moving toward too broad and untested change. In this outlook, their self-selected temperaments that lead to their professions blind them, and so they aren’t viewing things fairly or deeply enough because of who they are. One proof we can see in this is that it’s rare for conservatives to criticize conservative artists in politics, or for progressives to criticize religious leaders who champion progressive causes. The belief here would be that those who go against natural tendencies in their professions must be significantly immune to that issue of characteristic prejudice.

You might next think or ask: well doesn’t a fry cook or a real-estate tycoon have their own prejudices based on their livelihoods? What’s different about artists or clergy?

My answer to that moves to another thing those two professions have in common: they are both pretty much in the same business. When a religious leader gives a spell-binding sermon, or a writer moves us to tears, when a religious visionary tells us what the angels said to them, or the musician brings sounds together in a way that moves us, when the crowd rises as one, with one hosanna on their lips, does it matter here who is at the front of the house?

What is important to our question comes after these remarkably similar experiences. Are we in that crowd, and yet not moved to rise in praise like the others? Is there often a let-down, however vague and hard to explain afterward? A way in which we feel unworthy, a way in which we feel we thought we were changed and yet we are not changed? Do we ever feel tricked: fearing, or perhaps even knowing, that the artist or preacher has engineered this with the techniques of their craft, techniques that might work regardless of the content they convey

Now what if the person at the front of the room is not an artist or a preacher, but a political figure

So all this is a prelude to a very short, yet puzzling piece, with words by William Butler Yeats: “On Being Asked for a War Poem.”

Bob Dylan and Robert Frost

1.)  Which song of Bob Dylan has made an impact on you? Why? Can you find a song similar to the same theme in other language?

 Bob Dylan:-

Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in the city of Hibbing. As a teenager, he played in various bands and with time his interest in music deepened, with a particular passion for American folk music and blues. One of his idols was the folk singer Woody Guthrie. He was also influenced by the early authors of the Beat Generation, as well as by modernist poets.

Dylan moved to New York City in 1961 and began to perform in clubs and cafés in Greenwich Village. He met the record producer John Hammond, with whom he signed a contract for his debut album, Bob Dylan (1962). In the following years, he recorded a number of albums which have had a tremendous impact on popular music: Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited in 1965, Blonde On Blonde in 1966 and Blood On The Tracks in 1975. His productivity continued in the following decades, resulting in masterpieces like Oh Mercy (1989), Time Out of Mind (1997) and Modern Times (2006).

Dylan’s tours in 1965 and 1966 attracted a lot of attention. For a period, he was accompanied by film maker D. A. Pennebaker, who documented life around the stage in what would come to be the movie Dont Look Back (1967). Dylan has recorded a large number of albums revolving around topics such as: the social conditions of man, religion, politics and love. The lyrics have continuously been published in new editions starting in 1973, under the title WritingsandDrawings, subsequently changed to Lyrics. As an artist, he is strikingly versatile; he has been active as a painter, actor and scriptwriter.

Besides his large production of albums, Dylan has published experimental work like the prose poetry collection Tarantula (1971). He has written an autobiography, Chronicles (2004), which depicts memories from the early years in New York and which provides glimpses of his life at the center of popular culture. Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan has toured consistently, playing over 3000 concerts during the last 20 years. Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary culture is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of literary and musical analysis.

"Blowin' in the Wind" :-

Dylan claimed he wrote the lyrics of "Blowin' in the Wind" in 10 minutes in a NYC cafe, and they've gone on to inspire poets and activists for decades. Its lyrics are a series of questions with no answers. They allow for multiple interpretations, making the song, as Rolling Stone wrote in their "500 Greatest Songs of All Time," an "all-purpose progressive anthem suggesting that things must and will change." Because of this, it served as the center of several protest movements in the '60s.

Dylan released his version in 1963 on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan right as the civil rights movement was reaching its peak. He performed the song at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi. Peter, Paul and Mary, who recorded a popular version that same year, performed it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial just hours before Martin Luther King told the world, "I have a dream."

Later, due to the song's "cannonballs" and "doves," it lent itself to anti-Vietnam protests. According to activist and musician Peter Yarrow, the all-purpose applications of the song are a major part of its appeal. "You can hear in this a yearning and a hope and a possibility and a sadness and sometimes a triumphal proclamation of determination," he told NPR. "So it's a matter of interpretation and, frankly, I think Bobby was probably right and legitimate in not giving a specific interpretation."

 yes I find a song similar to the same theme in other languages " Tera Hone Laga Hoon"

2.)  Which poem of Robert Frost has made an impact on you? Why? 

Robert Frost was born on March 26th, 1874. One of the most celebrated poets in America, Robert Frost was an author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes and a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony. Robert Frost's work was highly associated with rural life in New England. The poet often uses the New England setting to explore complicated philosophical and social themes. As a well-known and often-quoted poet, Robert Frost was highly honored during his presence on earth, receiving 4 Pulitzer Prizes.

Robert Frost's father was a former teacher who later turned newspaperman. His father was also known to be a gambler, a hard drinker, and a harsh disciplinarian. For as long as he allowed, he had a passion for politics. Robert Frost resided in California until the age of eleven. Frost moved with his mother and sister to eastern Massachusetts, after the death of his father.

Frost's mother later joined the Swedenborgian church and had the poet baptized in it. As an adult, Frost left the faith of his mother. As a city boy, Frost grew up understanding so many things in life and had his first poem published in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1892, he attended Dartmouth College for just less than a semester. While at Dartmouth College, Frost joined the fraternity called Theta Delta Chi. Frost went back to his hometown to work and teach at various jobs including newspaper delivery and factory assignment. Robert Frost sold his first poem titled My Butterfly in 1894 to The Independent at the rate of 15 dollars.

Frost was proud of the success the poem brought to him and went on to ask Elinor Miriam White's hands in marriage. Both Elinor and Frost had graduated co-valedictorians from their high-school and remained in contact with one another. However, Elinor Miriam White refused the notion to marry Frost, mentioning that her education was important first. Robert Frost felt another man was occupying his position in White's heart and went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia. He came back in 1895 and asked Elinor White again to marry him. The same year, both of them became happily married.

The couple taught school together until the year 1897. Robert Frost later entered Harvard University for 2 years. His records were good, but he decided to go back home because Elinor is expecting her second child. Frost's grandfather bought a farmer in Derry, New Hampshire for the young couple. Frost remained there for a space of 9 years and wrote so many of the poems that will make up his first works. While attempting to pick up the poultry farming business, the whole thing went unsuccessful. Frost was forced to settle for another at Pinkerton Academy, a secondary school.

Roberts Frost went to Glasgow with his family in 1912 and later lived in Beaconsfield. In the next year, Frost published his first book titled A Boy's Will. In England, Robert Frost made important contacts including T. E. Hulme, Edward Thomas, and Ezra Pound. The mentioned names were the first Americans to write a favorable review of Robert Frost's work. Some of the first pieces of his poet work were written while living in England. In 1915, Robert Lee returned to America and purchased a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire. That same year, Frost launched a career of writing, lecturing and teaching.

Frost became an English professor at Amherst College from 1916-1938. While a professor at Amherst College, he advised his writing students to always bring the notion of the human voices to their craft. From 1921 and the next forty-two years of his life, he had three great expectations. During summers, Frost spent time teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont. Nevertheless, Middlebury College still owns and managed Frost's farm. Middlebury College as managed his farm as a National Historic Site located near the Bread Loaf campus. He also represented the United States of America on several official missions. On January 20th, 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, Frost recited a poem titled The Gift Outright.

Over the course of his career, he became popular for poems involving the interplay of voices such as Death of the Hired Man or dramas. To be factual and upfront here, Frost's work was highly well-known among so many people and it remained so. Among Frost's popular shorter poems are Mending Wall, Directive, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Fire and Ice, Birches, After Apple Picking. Robert Frost won the Pulitzer Prize at 4 different times. This is an achievement unequaled by any other American poet.

Robert Frost finally died in Boston on January 29th, 1963. He was happily buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery, Vermont. Harvard's 1965 alumni archive dictates that Frost had an honorary degree in the university. He also received honorary degrees from Oxford, Bates College, and Cambridge universities. History records that Robert Frost was the first person to receive 2 honorary degrees from Dartmouth College. During his lifetime, the main library of Amherst College and as well as the Robert Frost Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia were named after him.

Since the nineteenth century, American poetry has developed in two main streams; the first began with the free, pulsating, incantatory verse of Walt Whitman, while the second started with the experiment and innovation of Emily Dickinson. Frost owes a little to both traditions, though he has, on the whole, tended to work from and continue an earlier tradition and thus create a tradition of his own. Records have shown that Frost was a farmer, a poet, a rare combination. As a farmer, Frost only spent ten years in the occupation. Frost's works have been perfectly divided into 9 collections or books. There are several great poems found in the list such as Mountain Interval, North of Boston, and New Hampshire. Frost usually displays the life occurring in New England and showcased it via his poems. With the comprehensive explanation of this article, you are sure to discover Robert Frost's life and his achievement in poems. Frost is worth calling a legend after reading through the great work of his hand.

Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

Here is a blog post about giving an interpretation of a thirty-second play, 'Breath'. It is the shortest play written by Samuel Beckett. Martin Esslin first gave the term 'Theatre of the Absurd.' He was awarded Nobel Prize in 1969. A few of his notable works are Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, and other 

If we look at the script of the play, it is as follows:-

CURTAIN Up:-

1. Faint light on a stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.
2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum - together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds.
3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds.

CURTAIN Down:-

The title of the play Breath is very significant. It refers to life. The script of the play contains miscellaneous rubbish. This suggests boredom and anxiety. The brief cry also signifies life but it also suggests disgust, anguished, stressed, haphazard, pessimist, and gloomy thinking. The play is very short so, this also significantly suggests that life is very short. All we have to do is just breathe and cry. Crying for status, power, money, recognition, attachment, acceptance, and whatnot. The beginning part of the script suggests birth, as the light inspires and grows. The end part suggests death as the light and the sound gradually decrease. But the setup is very rubbish, so it suggests that life is nothing but rubbish stuff, spread hither and thither. No matter how human tries to decorate the life, it will remain rubbish and coarse.

Samuel Beckett's ‘Breath’ by Asari Bhavyang :-

The picturization revolves around the journey of Human beings from Birth to Death and in between these two polls the activities which are done.

The video begins with the clock which shows the importance of time and the clock is a symbol of human life, as when A birth of a person is seen as the arrival of happiness in other people's life while here it sounds like that Birth is so cheerful. Because now we are alone in this purposeless universe. According to Existentialism "We are thrown into the Meaningless Universe."

At the end of the video again there is a Bottle that falls down and again a faint cry which symbolizes the death of a person. So, It is a journey of human life from birth to death and in between what is the purpose of human life.

In between and end the collection of rubbish things are the different phases of development of life. 

The clock symbolizes Time. Between birth and death, we have some allocated time within which we have to live our life. And there is a time that binds every human action. 

Another significant symbol used in the rubbish stuff is Gift and spray. Now the Gift and spray symbolize the materialistic nature of a Human. Humans invest their whole life to earn a good salary and get money to live life. Within that one cannot survive. But in the end, if we count then it seems like we have wasted our whole life doing nothing except running behind money. There are many things which used in video like color bottles symbolize our childhood where we used to play, there is another phase of learning life lessons and getting knowledge which is reflected through the shattered pens in the video. Then one most important thing which highlighted staple through use sheets of paper to fasten them together. In the same way through life, we spend our days and nights in making our relationship stronger with people. And also time and again we motivate ourselves by doing something new creative in life. So, these are some of the things which are used in the video which denotes various phases in Human Life.

Dada poem

Dada poem:-

Before:-

Amid the surging Covid-19 cases, the West Bengal government on Saturday announced a complete lockdown across the state from 6 am on May 16 to 6 pm on May 30. It also imposed a night curfew, which will be observed every night from 9 pm to 5 am, beginning Sunday night.
Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay said that strict conditions on the movement of transport and other sectors are imposed for two weeks to control the situation in the state.

 Dada poem :-

 Night government across.
May on be;
Strict cases.
Beginning 16 night;
In from sunday the;
Imposed will the sectors;
For curfew am 30 a from 9 pm which.
To the two secretary saturday;
Night on to;
Observed movement;
The on.
Bengal are bandyopadhyay may also;
West other chief complete state situation;
6 state imposed.
6 am to a 5 on.
Every conditions that it surging;
Lockdown said covid-19 control pm weeks the and of transport announced.
The alapan amid 

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway's Writing Style:-

A great deal has been written about Hemingway's distinctive style. In fact, the two great stylists of twentieth-century American literature are William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and the styles of the two writers are so vastly different that there can be no comparison. For example, their styles have become so famous and so individually unique that yearly contests award prizes to people who write the best parodies of their styles. The parodies of Hemingway's writing style are perhaps the more fun to read because of Hemingway's ultimate simplicity and because he so often used the same style and the same themes in much of his work.

From the beginning of his writing career in the 1920s, Hemingway's writing style occasioned a great deal of comment and controversy. Basically, a typical Hemingway novel or short story is written in simple, direct, unadorned prose. Possibly, the style developed because of his early journalistic training. The reality, however, is this: Before Hemingway began publishing his short stories and sketches, American writers affected British mannerisms. Adjectives piled on top of one another; adverbs tripped over each other. Colons clogged the flow of even short paragraphs, and the plethora of semicolons often caused readers to throw up their hands in exasperation. And then came Hemingway.

An excellent example of Hemingway's style is found in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." In this story, there is no maudlin sentimentality; the plot is simple, yet highly complex and difficult. Focusing on an old man and two waiters, Hemingway says as little as possible. He lets the characters speak, and, from them, we discover the inner loneliness of two of the men and the callous prejudices of the other. When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, his writing style was singled out as one of his foremost achievements. The committee recognized his "forceful and style-making mastery of the art of modern narration."

Hemingway has often been described as a master of dialogue; in story after story, novel after novel, readers and critics have remarked, "This is the way that these characters would really talk." Yet, a close examination of his dialogue reveals that this is rarely the way people really speak. The effect is accomplished, rather, by calculated emphasis and repetition that makes us remember what has been said.

Perhaps some of the best of Hemingway's much-celebrated use of dialogue occurs in "Hills Like White Elephants." When the story opens, two characters  a man and a woman are sitting at a table. We finally learn that the girl's nickname is "Jig." Eventually, we learn that they are in the cafe of a train station in Spain. But Hemingway tells us nothing about them or about their past or about their future. There is no description of them. We don't know their ages. We know virtually nothing about them. The only information that we have about them is what we learn from their dialogue; thus this story must be read very carefully.

This spare, carefully honed and polished writing style of Hemingway was by no means spontaneous. When he worked as a journalist, he learned to report facts crisply and succinctly. He was also an obsessive revisionist. It is reported that he wrote and rewrote all, or portions, of The Old Man and the Sea more than two hundred times before he was ready to release it for publication.

Hemingway took great pains with his work; he revised tirelessly. "A writer's style," he said, "should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous." Hemingway more than fulfilled his own requirements for good writing. His words are simple and vigorous, burnished and uniquely brilliant.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS :-

For Whom The Bell Tolls is the novel that was supposed to win Ernest Hemingway his first Pulitzer Prize in 1941. However, like Sinclair Lewis before him, Hemingway was denied the prize by the President of Columbia University. As the story goes, the 1941 Novel Jury recommended several books for the Pulitzer Prize including, but not primarily, For Whom The Bell Tolls, but the Pulitzer Advisory Board overrode their other recommendations in favor of the critic’s choice, For Whom The Bell Tolls. Before the Board could complete the vote they were blocked by one man: the President of Columbia University, Nicholas Butler Murray. He was ex-officio Chairman of the Pulitzer also Advisory Board and he objected to the ‘lascivious’ content in the novel (Sound familiar? Nicholas Butler Murray also blocked the Pulitzer Prize from being bestowed upon Sinclair Lewis in 1921 for his novel Main Street. Instead the 1921 prize was awarded to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence).

Why did no one on the Pulitzer Advisory Board stand up to Nicholas Butler Murray? His story is worth mentioning as he was a fascinating American figure. Nicholas Butler Murray was viewed as something of an autocratic ruler at Columbia University, often wantonly dismissing staff and faculty, prohibiting entry for Jewish students, in a word – he ruled Columbia with an iron first, and yet he was also a respected American statesman. He was the former running mate of William Howard Taft in 1912. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 along with Jane Addams, for his efforts as President of the Carnegie Endowment For International for Peace. He helped to negotiate peace in Europe using his elite relationships with leaders like Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nicholas Butler Murray was also a popular cultural figure. Each year The New York Times printed his annual Christmas Greeting to the nation. He is recognized today as the longest serving President of Columbia University (43 years), a tenure which first began in the role of Interim President in 1901 before he was officially elected to the position of President, serving from 1902-1945. So when Nicholas Butler Murray stood in the doorway of the Pulitzer proceedings, refusing to move while shouting “I hope you will reconsider before you ask the university to be associated with an award for a work of this nature!” -no one dared to stand against him. The full details of the confrontation were later brought to light in 1962 by Arthur Krock, a Pulitzer Board member and New York Times journalist. As a consequence of the fight, no novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1941.

That year, the Novel Jury welcomed a newcomer: Dorothy Canfield Fisher, an impressive woman who replaced Robert M. Lovett from the previous year. Dorothy Canfield Fisher is perhaps best known for bringing the Montessori School system to the United States, but she also achieved other important milestones. She was praised by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the most influential women in America. Alongside Fisher, two veteran Novel Jurists also reprised their roles in 1941: Jefferson B. Fletcher (Literature Professor at Columbia University), and Joseph W. Krutch (Literature Professor at Columbia University and naturalist writer). They considered several other novels aside from For Whom The Bell Tolls including The Trees by Joseph Conrad, The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Native Son by Richard Wright, and Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts. The Jury apparently reluctantly favored The Trees by Joseph Conrad before the Pulitzer Board unilaterally selected For Whom The Bell Tolls and Nicholas Butler Murray blocked its nomination.

Of course, despite being robbed the first time, Hemingway later won the coveted Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for The Old Man And The Sea (feel free to read my reflections on The Old Man and the Sea here).

For Whom The Bell Tolls is as tense a novel as it is tender. It is the story of love and war -a soldier’s duty contrasted with a lover’s embrace. The book takes us covertly behind enemy lines during the destructive Spanish Civil War of the 1930s (a war which lasted from 1936-1939). The book spans approximately four days, and within that narrow timeframe a lifetime occurs: we gain a profound and complex glimpse into the nature of heroism and cowardice among ordinary people. Amidst the chaos of war and the looming specter of death, For Whom The Bell Tolls also pulls back the curtain on a budding romance between an American soldier and an innocent Spanish girl.

Lionel Trilling's 1937 statement sounds a ring of truth today: “More than any writer of our time he has been under glass, watched, checked up on, predicted, suspected, warned” (62). By the time The Sun Also Rises (TSAR) was published in 1926, the seeds of the Hemingway legend were firmly planted, and the accompanying stream of criticism with its penchant for entanglement in E. H.'s life had begun. Edmund Wilson described the situation in 1927: “The reputation of Ernest Hemingway has, in a very short time, assumed such proportions that it has already become fashionable to disparage him” (Shores 339).

From that time and into the present, a great deal of criticism on E. H.'s works has focused on linking his personal life to his fiction and his characters to living people. Nadine DeVost says that “by 1952, when the film version of ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ appeared, Hemingway's life and the plots of his stories and novels had become thoroughly interchangeable in the public's mind …” (39). Of course, E. H. added fuel to these fires. Yet, we want to remember that although some incidents in Hemingway's life and individuals that he knew may have served as a basis for his fiction, such insights are not necessary for an enjoyment or understanding of his fiction.1 Michael Reynolds says, “After he wrote The Sun Also Rises, most of his readers and more than one biographer assumed that all of his fiction was thinly veiled biography, which it almost never was” (Paris Years 61). Also, as Peter Hays, Robert Lewis (Hemingway in Italy), Reynolds (Hemingway's First War), and others have discovered, most of the time E. H. conducted research before he wrote. It is unfortunate when guesses detract from an objective reading or analysis of his works. To Have and Have Not (THHN) particularly has suffered from conjectures and to such an extent that until recently the novel's text and its clues have not received the attention that they deserve.

As if biographical confusion were not enough, Trilling believed that derogatory criticism had a negative effect on E. H. and blamed it “for the illegitimate emergence of Hemingway the ‘man’”—meaning that E. H. attempted to respond in his works to demands put upon him by critics (62). Trilling is not the only one who believed this; as a matter of fact, this tendency—also prevalent in THHN criticism—serves as a good example of how in some respects Hemingway criticism has changed little over the years. Thirty-three years after Trilling wrote the above, Arthur Waldhorn wrote that “the confusion of sounds from within and without damaged Hemingway's artistic inner ear and contributed to the intellectual imbalance of To Have and Have Not” (153). Jeffrey Meyers wrote thirteen years later than THHN “was a half-hearted attempt to meet the contemporary demand for political awareness …” (Biography 292, emphasis added). Seven years later, Michael M. Boardman stated, “The effect of such continuous scrutiny, especially on a man of such strong aesthetic convictions, was a defensive stance toward his reader” (165, emphasis added). Again, while opinions regarding critical influence on Hemingway's writings may hold interest for some, such speculations offer no insight into his works. Instead—like biographical guesses—they obscure his artistic skill, or relegate it to second in importance. Also, while E. H. was irritated by misguided criticism, it is difficult to prove that much of it ever went so far as to influence his published work. It may, however, have influenced his first drafts, which seem to have served as release valves; it was not uncommon for him to use his own name and those of acquaintances in early drafts. Yet, I have difficulty imagining that he would have allowed anyone or anything to interrupt his search for truth in writing.

Transcendentalists

1.)  Transcendentalists talks about Individual’s relation with Nature. What is Nature for you? Share your views. ?

It’s all about spirituality. Transcendentalism is a philosophy that began in the mid-19th century and whose founding members included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It centers around the belief that spirituality cannot be achieved through reason and rationalism, but instead through self-reflection and intuition. In other words, transcendentalists believe spirituality isn’t something you can explain; it’s something you feel. A transcendentalist would argue that going for a walk in a beautiful place would be a much more spiritual experience than reading a religious text.

The transcendentalism movement arose as a result of a reaction to Unitarianism as well as the Age of Reason. Both centered on reason as the main source of knowledge, but transcendentalists rejected that notion. 
Transcendentalism is a literary and philosophical motion of the early 1800’s. Transcendentalists operated with a sense that a new epoch was coming. they were critics of their modern society for its thoughtless traditionality. and they advised people to happen “an original relation to the universe”. “The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connexion of religious philosophy. He believes in miracle. in the ageless openness of the human head to new inflow of visible radiation and power ; he believes in inspiration. and in ecstasy” .

To make this people must populate merely and do the best of their life state of affairss while non go throughing judgements on others. Nature’s function in assisting adult male happen peace and felicity is the key to populating a fulfilled life in harmoniousness with the existence. Transcendentalist such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau steadfastly province that man’s relationship with nature are mutualist. and that in order for adult male to populate a fulfilled life he must esteem nature.
Although it is difficult to find precisely when transcendental philosophy began. a likely day of the month is September 19. 1836  . when George Ripley. a Unitarian curate from Boston called a meeting with his friends: Bronson Alcott. Orestes Brownson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Frederic Hedge. Convers Francis. and James Freeman Clarke. The intent of the meeting was to discourse the defects of Unitarianism  . Members called their group “symposium” and met four to five times a twelvemonth for the following several.

Nature is at the bosom of transcendental philosophy and therefore must be represented and respected in a mode that is worthy in the eyes of God. As a consequence. adult male strives to happen peace and harmoniousness with the existence as he attempts to truly embrace nature and his ideals of God transcend creative activity itself. As God created all that is good. life itself in all it forms: workss. animate beings. and worlds. adult male must therefore regard all these signifiers in order to accomplish life’s highest award. unity with it all.

2.)  Transcendentalism is an American Philosophy that influenced American Literature at length. Can you find any Indian/Regional literature or Philosophy came up with such similar thought?

Transcendentalism was a religious, literary, and political movement that evolved from New England Unitarianism in the 1820s and 1830s. An important expression of Romanticism in the United States, it is principally associated with the work of essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson; journalist and feminist theorist Margaret Fuller; Unitarian minister and antislavery advocate Theodore Parker; and essayist, naturalist, and political theorist Henry David Thoreau. In their initial phase, the transcendentalists extended the Unitarian theological rebellion against Puritan Calvinism, moving toward a post-Christian spirituality that held each man and woman capable of spiritual development and fulfillment. They developed literary as well as theological forms of expression, making perhaps a stronger impact on American literary and artistic culture than they did on American religion. When Emerson delivered two controversial addresses at Harvard, “The American Scholar” (1837) and the Divinity School Address (1838), he emerged as the central figure of a loose coalition of ministers and aspiring authors who questioned religious doctrines, such as the New Testament miracles and the supernatural nature of Jesus, and embraced German Romantic writers and the British Romantics. Sharpened by the controversy that erupted after Emerson’s Divinity School Address, theological and literary thinking among the transcendentalists developed in three interrelated directions in the late 1830s and 1840s. Parker and Emerson continued to extend their theological explorations, with Parker calling in 1841 for a religion based on “permanent” rather than “transient” principles. Emerson and Thoreau began to absorb the spiritual sensibility of Asian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which were becoming available more widely in translation. Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau gave the movement a literary character, based on Emerson’s innovative prose, Fuller’s translations and critical studies of Goethe, and Thoreau’s autobiographical narrative Walden (1854). The transcendentalists also responded to the politically turbulent 1840s and 1850s, devoting themselves to issues of social reform. Fuller published her groundbreaking women’s rights treatise Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1845, and Thoreau published his influential essay “Civil Disobedience” in 1849, describing his night in the Concord jail as a protesting tax resister. With national tensions rising over slavery in the 1840s and 1850s, Parker became Boston’s great antislavery preacher, and both Emerson and Thoreau wrote ringing antislavery addresses. By the early 1860s, following the outbreak of the Civil War, the transcendentalists had helped formulate the principles that would reshape American culture well into the 20th century.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway :- 

Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film The Old Man and the Sea (1958).

He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second of six children of Dr. Clarence Hemingway and Grace Hemingway (the daughter of English immigrants). His father's interests in history and literature, as well as his outdoorsy hobbies (fishing and hunting), became a lifestyle for Ernest. His mother was a domineering type who wanted a daughter, not a son, and dressed Ernest as a girl and called him Ernestine. She also had a habit of abusing his quiet father, who suffered from diabetes, and Dr. Hemingway eventually committed suicide. Ernest later described the community in his hometown as one having "wide lawns and narrow minds".

In 1916 Hemingway graduated from high school and began his writing career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. There he adopted his minimalist style by following the Star's style guide: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." Six months later he joined the Ambulance Corps in WWI and worked as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, picking up human remains. In July 1918 he was seriously wounded by a mortar shell, which left shrapnel in both of his legs causing him much pain and requiring several surgeries. He was awarded the Silver Medal. Back in America, he continued his writing career working for Toronto Star . At that time he met Hadley Richardson and the two married in 1921. In 1921, he became a Toronto Star reporter in Paris. There he published his first books, called "Three Stories and Ten Poems" (1923), and "In Our Time" (1924). In Paris he met Gertrude Stein, who introduced him to the circle that she called the "Lost Generation". F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson and Ezra Pound were stimulating Hemingway's talent. At that time he wrote "The Sun Also Rises" (1926), "A Farewell to Arms" (1929), and a dazzling collection of Forty-Nine stories. Hemingway also regarded the Russian writers Lev Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov as important influences, and met Pablo Picasso and other artists through Gertrude Stein. "A Moveable Feast" (1964) is his classic memoir of Paris after WWI.

Hemingway participated in the Spanish Civil War and took part in the D-Day landings during the invasion of France during World War II, in which he not only reported the action but took part in it. In one instance he threw three hand grenades into a bunker, killing several SS officers. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for his action. His military experiences were emulated in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940) and in several other stories. He settled near Havana, Cuba, where he wrote his best known work, "The Old Man and the Sea" (1953), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. This was adapted as the film The Old Man and the Sea (1958), for which Spencer Tracy was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, and Dimitri Tiomkin received an Oscar for Best Musical Score.

War wounds, two plane crashes, four marriages and several affairs took their toll on Hemingway's hereditary predispositions and contributed to his declining health. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and insomnia in his later years. His mental condition was exacerbated by chronic alcoholism, diabetes and liver failure. After an unsuccessful treatment with electro-convulsive therapy, he suffered severe amnesia and his physical condition worsened. The memory loss obstructed his writing and everyday life. He committed suicide in 1961. Posthumous publications revealed a considerable body of his hidden writings, that was edited by his fourth wife, Mary, and also by his son Patrick Hemingway.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is based on Spanish Civil War :-

Set in 1944 Spain, the events of the film take place towards the end of the Second World War, where after the endless struggles of the Resistance and allied forces, the Nazi occupation has finally been withdrawn from France. A Spanish guerilla group gets hyped up by this victory and decides to reclaim Spanish territory by overthrowing General Franco with a bang.

When they set out to destroy the regime’s infrastructure, not everything goes as planned and the Spanish army ends up interrupting their process. With this, almost every member of the group of rebels ends up dying. Vicente Roig, one of the two survivors, ends up getting arrested, whereas, on the other hand, Anselmo Rojas somehow manages to escape, but is left deaf with the impact of the explosions.

Captain Bosch becomes obsessed with Rojas’ escape and to capture him, he hires Darya Sergéevich, who is a young merciless sniper from Bolshevik Russia. Soon Rojas finds himself in a tough spot where he is forced to take the help of his ex-girlfriend, Rosa, who now happens to be the wife of his arrested comrade Vicente. Although this does reignite their old flame for a few brief moments, Rojas is forced to face his new reality where he is nothing but a wanted man, who’ll have to tread a path of utter loneliness.

The Film Based on “For Whom the Bell Tolls”? 

The (Silent) War’ is alluded from one of the best works of Ernest Hemingway”For Whom the Bell Tolls”. Just like the movie, the novel is also set up in the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War where the Loyalists rebel against the barbaric rule of the fascist government. Even the novel is written from a perspective that sympathizes more with the loyalists and highlights their struggles against the Nationalists.
Moreover, even the protagonists of both the movie and novel are pretty much the same. Both the characters Anselmo Rojas (in the movie) and Robert Jordan (in the novel), fight on the side of the loyalists against General Franco’s “fascist” forces and later decides to blow up a bridge with his men.
Apart from that, both the movie and novel share the common theme of mortality, love, warfare, and politics. The themes of morality set in when all the characters, in one way or the other, are forced to either accept their own death or the death of their loved ones. A small part of both stories also deals with love.

In the novel, Robert Jordan, after an unexpected encounter with a Spanish girl, ends up falling in love with her and it gives him a new reason to live in a world where nothing seems right. Similarly in the movie, Anselmo Rojas is able the light at the end of the tunnel when he rekindles with his old love interest. Almost all the characters of both take more of a cynical perspective on human nature and bogged down by the war. But the hope for love still remains.
Both the mediums portray the cruel reality of warfare with grave details and show how it drastically impacts the lives of all the characters. While the physical losses are pretty evident, even the psychological losses completely destroy the lives of innocents who are caught up in its core. And finally, the conflict between the leftists and the fascist Nationalists, which forms the core of the premise of both the mediums, highlights the political themes in both.

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett :-

Samuel Beckett was born near Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1906 into a Protestant, middle class home. His father was a quantity surveyor and his mother worked as a nurse. At the age of 14 he was sent to the same school that Oscar Wilde attended. Beckett is known to have commented, "I had little talent for happiness." This was evidenced by his frequent bouts of depression, even as a young man. He often stayed in bed until late in the afternoon and hated long conversations. As a young poet he apparently rejected the advances of James Joyce's daughter and then commented that he did not have feelings that were human.  This sense of depression would show up in much of his writing, especially in Waiting for Godot where it is a struggle to get through life.

Samuel Beckett moved to Paris in 1926 and met James Joyce. He soon respected the older writer so much that at the age of 23 he wrote an essay defending Joyce's magnum opus to the public. In 1927, one year later, he won his first literary prize for his poem entitled "Whoroscope." The essay was about the philosopher Descartes meditating on the subject of time and about the transiency of life. Beckett then completed a study of Proust which eventually led him to believe that habit was the "cancer of time." At this point Beckett left his post at Trinity College and traveled.

All of Beckett's major works were written in French. He believed that French forced him to be more disciplined and to use the language more wisely. However, Waiting for Godot was eventually translated into the English by Beckett himself. Samuel Beckett also became one of the first absurdist playwrites to win international fame. His works have been translated into over twenty languages. In 1969 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the few times this century that almost everyone agreed the recipient deserved it. He continued to write until his death in 1989, but towards the end he remarked that each word seemed to him "an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."

 Works by Samuel Beckett :-

1.  Act Without Words
2. Happy Days
3. Malone Dies
4. “Waiting for Godot”
5. “The Unnamable”
6. “Molloy”
7. “Watt”
8. “Endgame”
9. “Murphy”
10. “Whoroscope

 Waiting for Godot :-

Waiting for Godot is generally considered as a masterpiece example of what has come to be known as the theater of the absurd. The play is written by an Irish novelist, Samuel Beckett, a prominent literary figure well known for this work, and remembered as the founder of the theatre of absurd. The play was performed in 1949, having the theme of existentialist philosophy. The play Waiting for Godot is famous for purposeless characters, meaningless actions, and lacking a basic plot.

Setting of the play :-

one such play of an Irish playwright Beckett presents this image of a tree differently in the setting of his play. The setting of the play 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett is inspired by two paintings by Caspar David Friedrich - a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter. The title of this painting is 'longing'.

Themes of Waiting for Godot :-

1. ABSURDITY :-

The play has the repetition of many words and phrases, nonsensical lines, purposeless characters, meaningless dialogues, and wordplay. Characters both Vladimir and Estragon have forgotten everything even about their own identities. The text is full of humor but mixed up with tragedy . Vladimir and Estragon's nonsensical actions, suicide attempts, and rude behavior with Lucky on the Pozo's side create a discomforting effect on the audience. The play confuses readers as well as the audience whether to laugh or cry at the events presented on the stage. The useless conversations and extreme utterance of characters showed the emptiness and aimless world after World War II.

2. PURPOSELESSNESS OF LIFE :-

  Vladimir and Estragon have some purpose, but Godot's not arriving make their waiting vain. The visiting of Pozo and Lucky in the first act likely seems that Pozo wants to sell him but failed to do so as the play progress and ultimately shown to be equally purposeless. They are simply wandering from place to place, while on the other hand, Estragon and Lucky doing different acts even an empty suicide attempt. . The theater of absurd has a special message that life is purposeless vividly shows in the play Waiting for Godot. The boy's message is also equally vain, that Godot is never coming. Both Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for a long time without any purpose completely conform to the characteristics of the theater of absurd.

3. UNCERTAINTY OF TIME :-

Time is uncertain in this play, but in the opening scene, it passes normally. Morning, daytime, and evening pass systematically, but the characters are sometimes showing confusion about it again and again. Many scenes show that they wait a long time. In the second act, the growth of leaves also suggests the same, and on the other hand, Estragon and Vladimir have no firm idea of how long they have been together or how long ago they did .the scenes and event repeating the same way every day, but Estragon and Vladimir never remember to bring the rope they would need to hang themselves.It shows the meaningless life and cheap use of time.

4. THEME OF RELATIONSHIP :-Relationship and Friendship is one of the major themes of the play Waiting for Godot. The writer explores and portrays different types of relationships ranging from friendship to slave and ownership. Of course, they are different entities with different physical as well as mental problems but on combining they play a big role in the play.

1. Relationship between Estragon and Vladimir

2. Association of Pozzo and Lucky

3. Relationship of Estragon and Vladimir with Godot.

5. THEME OF EXISTENTIALISM :-

Both the characters Vladimir and Estragon put themselves into an absurd situation just like humans have been put in the world without any motivation.Samuel Beckett's play 'Waiting for Godot' exposes that it is up to the individual to change the meaning of life through personal experience in the world and make it better.

In very simple words the philosophy of existentialism means that every person is responsible for his actions and no second person is pulling his strings or controlling his fate.

Characters of Waiting for Godot :-

Vladimir (Didi) :- An old derelict dressed like a tramp; along with his companion of many years, he comes to a bleak, desolate place to wait for Godot.

Estragon (Gogo) :- Vladimir's companion of many years who is overly concerned with his physical needs, but is repeatedly told by Vladimir that, above all, they must wait for Godot.

Pozzo :-  A traveling man dressed rather elaborately; he arrives driving another man (Lucky) forward by means of a rope around the latter's neck.

Lucky :- The "slave" who obeys Pozzo absolutely.

Boy Messenger :- I and Boy Messenger II Each is a young boy who works for "Mr. Godot" and brings Vladimir and Estragon news about "Mr. Godot"; apparently he takes messages back to "Mr. Godot."

Godot :-  He never appears in the drama, but he is an entity that Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for.

Waiting for Godot :-

Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, meet near a tree. They converse on various topics and reveal that they are waiting there for a man named Godot. While they wait, two other men enter. Pozzo is on his way to the market to sell his slave, Lucky. He pauses for a while to converse with Vladimir and Estragon. Lucky entertains them by dancing and thinking, and Pozzo and Lucky leave.

After Pozzo and Lucky leave, a boy enters and tells Vladimir that he is a messenger from Godot. He tells Vladimir that Godot will not be coming tonight, but that he will surely come tomorrow. Vladimir asks him some questions about Godot and the boy departs. After his departure, Vladimir and Estragon decide to leave, but they do not move as the curtain falls.

The next night, Vladimir and Estragon again meet near the tree to wait for Godot. Lucky and Pozzo enter again, but this time Pozzo is blind and Lucky is dumb. Pozzo does not remember meeting the two men the night before. They leave and Vladimir and Estragon continue to wait.

Shortly after, the boy enters and once again tells Vladimir that Godot will not be coming. He insists that he did not speak to Vladimir yesterday. After he leaves, Estragon and Vladimir decide to leave, but again they do not move as the curtain falls, ending the play.

Existentialism

 Hello, readers

                       This blog is a part of Flipped Learning activity in which our task is to watch videos about Existentialism and write down whatever we understand.

  1.What is Existentialism?

Though existentialists differs in their views on Existentialism but in one or another way they share a basic belief of this term. From this video, I like that triangle idea of freedom, individuality, and passion which are the three sides of Existentialism. Along with it, the idea of philosophical suicide is quite interesting.

2.The Myth of Sisyphus : The Absurd Reasoning

Second video about the myth of Sisyphus; the Absurd Reasoning. taking about an absurd reasoning Comus starts this essay.
Absurd Reasoning there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. he focuses on the matter of suicide. he shot himself on the Brooklyn bridge. he said it was the best artwork of the 19th century. life is filled with despair and absurdity and life is meaningless. life is the most urgent of questions." the silence of the heart ad is a great work of art. this video comparison with the movie "stay".

  3.  The notion of philosophical suicide

It’s worth watching the video to understand the concept of Philosophical suicide. . When we start to kill our own self as philosophers at that time it becomes Philosophical suicide. Why the absurdity takes place? It takes place because of the conflict between humans and the world. If there are no human beings, there would not be any desire. Without human beings, there should not be the question of absurdity. It can be said that absurdity is an ultimate reality of human life but at the same time for an absurd mind reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reasons. In this situation may our reliance be the ultimate solution of absurdity.

4.  Dadaism, Nihilism, and Existentialism :-

This video these are Dadaism, Nihilism, and Existentialism movement values and it deals with the movement. Dadaism is a quest for change new value and new path. Dadaism contents and value itself but it is against the value of Existentialism hence it essence with Nihilism. it was in 1916 that the Dada movement, and it is associated with Nihilism. The absurdity of life connected with Dadaism.
Dada + Art Movement = Nihilism
                           Dadaism a a way of becoming free of everything.

5.   Existentialism – a gloomy philosophy

Existentialism came after the second world war when the people tried to find the meaning in life among the gloominess of despair. Though life is full of anxiety, despair, and absurdity, we are free to give our own values to ourselves. But after following whatever we have chosen it’s become one’s own responsibility. The result should be either in favor or in against but escapism in a bad situation should not be there. Being an individual is also considered narcissistic but in actual it’s not true.

  6.Existentialism and Nihilism: Is it one and the same?

Existentialism is not said like nihilism say there is no meaning or purpose to life, but existentialism dealing with finding exist behind anything.
NIHILISM = THE LOSS OF INDIVIDUALITY (LEVELING)
             That the highest values devaluate themselves. nihilism is not a necessary characteristic of Existentialism. Existentialism dealing with one can create their own personal subjective meaning. nihilism dealing with this idea with no personal subjective meaning.
    7.Existentialist again!
Existentialists reject systems that propose to have to define answers to the questions of meaning and purpose in life. Generally, it questions human existence.

    8.Existentialism and Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche, who gave the idea of "Ubermensche". is the philosophy for freedom. freedom of doing whatever human wants. as it says that no universal morality can make us individual or give us the meaning to life.

    9.Why I like Existentialism? Eric Dodson

Existentialism is a way of life and understands life deeply. Existentialism says about what I am Eric Dodson said that it is honest and shows the reality of life and accept your fault and your abilities.
 

10.From Essentialism to Existentialism:-

In this video, there is an example of an army man who wants to serve his mother and nation at the same time but it’s not possible to serve them at the same time. No one gives an answer to him as it’s a matter of individual choice. Because it is an individual choice to make their decision or follow the path suggested by others. There is no answer until we choose for ourselves. Individual meaning to our life is given by only us as well as a truly authentic decision can only be made by one's own moral code.

I like the video-8 "Explain Like I'm Five: Existentialism and Nietzsche that human beings have the power of everything it means human being can make their own rules and be a superman and he/she can do whatever they want.
Flipped learning is best to learn from anywhere, I like it most because it provides us content with appropriate pictures and signs so it would easy to understand the content.  through this learning, we can improve our listening skill from a native speaker and also we can improve our memory to remember the speaker's words and note down. And also we can learn how to pronounce spells. At last, I can say that we can learn from anywhere in our time through flipped learning.