For Comparative Analysis

Read the poem by E.E. Cummings.

in Just –

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old baloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s

spring

and

the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

Discussion Questions

1. Comment on the external structure and rhythm of the poem.

2. Cummings handles words creatively. Why are the two compounds mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful so effective? What is Just-spring?

3. What is the effect of Cummings’ running together the words eddieandbill and bettyandisbel?

4. Why is wee more meaningful in this poem than small or little?

5. Find the allusion to the god Pan in the poem. How does it add to the scope and meaning of the poem?

6. How would you imagine the character of the poet from this text?

7. Compare the two poems: their sentence structure, word layout, rhythmic organization, rhyme, and punctuation.

Read the poem by E. Dickenson.

Heart! We will forget him!

You and I – tonight!

You may forget the Warmth he gave –

I will forget the Light!

When you have done, pray tell me

That I may straight begin!

Haste! lest while you’re lagging

I remember him!

Discussion Questions

1. Which stanza sets the theme?

2. What is the function of the exclamatory sentences in the poem?

3. Analyze the sentence structure paying special attention to short sentences.

4. Identify keywords in the poem. What message do they convey? What stylistic device do they create?

5. Can the words Warmth and Light be considered as contextual synonyms? Why or why not?

6. Pick out the antonymous verbs and identify their function.

7. Why is the word forget used three times and what is its function?

8. What state of mind of the heroine does the modal verb may indicate?

Read the following translations and say which variant is closer to the original taking into consideration imagery and vocabulary.

Сердце! Мы забыть должны!

Не нужно ждать рассвет!

Тепло его забудешь ты,

А я забуду свет!

Скажи, когда закончишь,

Молю, чтоб мне начать!

Спеши! Пока ты тянешь,

На мне его печать!

(Translated by S. Boichenko)

Под вечер, мое сердце,

В могиле забытья

Схорони его тепло,

А свет задую я.

Как хоронить закончишь,

Дай знать: Тебя молю,

Скорей! Пока ты медлишь,

Я всё еще люблю!

(Translated by B. Leivi)

For Composition

Experiment with the text of “Going, Going”: put the poem into prose using various language means and stylistic devices.

UNIT 7. CRITICAL REVIEW

Light & ‘Dark’

by David Ansen

Bjork’s acting debut is in one of the

fall’s controversial movies

In Lars von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark,” the Icelandic singer and composer Bjork gives what may be the most wrenching performance ever given by someone who has no interest in being an actor. It is fitting that when we first glimpse her character, a factory worker named Selma, she is rehearsing an amateur theatrical production of “The Sound of Music” in a working-class town in Washington state in 1963. Fitting because “Dancer in the Dark” unexpectedly turns into a musical itself – one that is the very antithesis of “The Sound of Music” – and because Bjork is herself an amateur in the best sense of the word.

The movie won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May. But the film aroused violently conflicting passions in Cannes. It’s a love it or hate it movie. For some of us, however, it’s possible to love it and hate it.

There is little argument about Bjork. She deservedly won the best-actress award at Cannes, but a Purple Heart might have been more appropriate. “It was scary,” said the 34-year-old about making the movie. The only way she knew how to play the part was to become Selma, and there hasn’t been a heroine who has undergone such misery and humiliation since… well, since Emily Watson prostituted herself for God in von Trier’s epic of female mortification, “Breaking the Waves.”

The naive and selfless Selma, who is gradually going blind, works overtime in a backbreaking factory to save money for an operation that will spare her 12-year-old son from suffering the same fate. In a series of plot twists that might have made D.W. Griffith blush, she is robbed of her savings, put on trial for murder and sent to death row. The only glimmer of hope she finds are the extravagant musical numbers she stages in her mind – which transform her bleak prospects into Hollywood fantasy.

Bjork hurls herself into this role with the ferocity of a wounded animal and the tender puzzlement of a child who cannot fathom the world’s dangers. She’s performing without a net, working on raw, unfiltered feeling. You watch her with a mixture of awe and concern, almost wanting to avert your eyes from a performance so nakedly emotional.

In New York, Bjork Gudmundsdottir talks about making von Trier’s movie with the pride and relief of someone who’s survived hand-to-hand combat. “I think, when I look back on it, I slowly started to become her. My friends who came to visit when we were shooting were seriously concerned. They’ve never seen me like that. Because I’m the most energetic, happy, optimistic sort of person… I just became her. As far as I’m concerned, I killed a man that summer.”

This petite woman in the red and white gingham dress is a far cry from Selma, though both talk with the same lilting, wonderfully odd Icelandic-British accent. A child of ‘60s parents, raised communally in Reykjavik, the intense, single-minded Bjork released her first album at age 11, achieved international success as the lead singer of the Sugarcubes, and even greater acclaim for her techno-inspired solo albums. Bjork has maintained a waifish, childlike aura that’s overlaid with a finishing school formality. She is certainly the only celebrity I’ve ever met who curtsies when she is introduced. And curtsies again when she says goodbye.

Her relationship with her equally intense Danish director was a kind of folie à deux. “We both jumped off a cliff and we didn’t even think if we were going to survive,” Bjork explains. “It was very hard-core.” Rumors flew that they had fought like cats and dogs, that she walked off the set because he was brutalizing her emotionally. Bjork denies this. “I think the surrender to him was not a problem at all... I only walked off the set once, for two days, and that was for musical reasons.” A perfectionist about her music, she was appalled when “they would take my songs and chop them up and f–k ‘em up.” Bjork didn’t speak to von Trier for nine months, avoiding him even in Cannes until the moment they found themselves side by side on stage, trophies in hand. “When we met in Cannes I was Bjork again.” And was convinced she never wanted to act again.

“Dancer” is like no other movie around. Shot in bleached-out video colors in rough, hand-held style, the film is at once aggressively modern and deliberately, melodramatically, old-fashioned. Bjork’s music – soaring, oceanic, discordant – casts a lush spell.

The power of “Dancer in the Dark” is undeniable. So is von Trier’s talent. It’s the way he uses his talent that makes me uneasy: there’s an emotional sadism in von Trier – toward his martyred, mortified heroines as well as toward the audience – that leaves a queasy aftertaste. We are appalled and moved by the cruel fate that befalls Selma – but it’s a fate, let us not forget, of von Trier’s devising. To those who find the film a masterpiece, “Dancer in the Dark” plucks deep chords of humanity. To those of us who find it a kind of magnificent sham, it’s the audience that’s getting shamelessly plucked.