The Story of the Stone (part one)

In EN 202, we've read a few scenes from The Story of the Stone, a classic Chinese novel from the 1700s, but I would like to give you a fuller picture of this novel.  After all, the English translation is in five volumes, and the Longman Anthology's excerpts are mainly from the first and the second volumes.

The Story of the Stone follows Bao-yu, a wealthy, spoiled, but idealized young man from before his birth (there is a frame story) through his childhood and adolescence to his decision to become a Daoist monk.  In his early years, his family flourishes, and admittedly, it is easy to lose track of the members of his extended family and their servants who people the novel.  However, Bao-yu will fall on hard times as we will see in the later volumes.  Translator David Hawkes mentions that Bao-yu's story may be a fictionalized version of his author, Cao Xuequin,'s life.  Like Bao-yu, Cao Xuequin came from a wealthy family that lost favor with the Emperor.

That was the short version of The Story of the Stone.   The pictures and text make up the long version of my summary of Volume 1.

Below is a picture of a jade pendant to evoke the pendant that Bao-yu wore around his neck.  (As we learn in the frame story, he had been a jade cornerstone in a previous life.  Curiously, he was the stone that a goddess rejected and a Daoist monk rescued.)


Rescued by the monk, the future Bao-yu meets a flower that will become Dai-yu, his childhood companion and first love.  Below is a picture of the couple.  This appears to be a scene from the end of Volume 1 or perhaps Volume 2.



In 1987, CCTV, China's major television network, broadcast a miniseries version of The Story of the Stone.  (The miniseries, though, is titled The Dream of the Red Chamber, an alternate title for the novel.)  Here is a scene from that series.  In this version, Bao-yu is played by a man, but this role has been performed by a woman in the Shaw Brothers' version  from 1977.
(The Shaw Brothers were based in Hong Kong, which was a British colony and *not* part of China in those days.)

For a little more information, here is a link to a page on the TV series:

http://www.china-guide.com/entertainment/dream.html

I will also post a link to the trailer of the recent TV series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHUGdUH-3fI



Or you may prefer Bukit Panjang Hokkien Konguay Opera Troupe's rendition of this scene:


If you would like to hear what an operatic version is like, see this video of Dai-yu burying the flowers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwBGFUiK0Bo


I also want to include some pictures that show you how opulent Bao-yu's lifestyle was as well as how beautiful his family's gardens were.  Below is a scene from the recent remake of The Story of the Stone!  In the first volume, Bao-yu's grandmother (Grandmother Jia) is often depicted holding court over her family's meals, so I imagine that this scene might be one of those occasions.


Bao-yu's life, though, is not all pleasure even though he is his grandmother's favorite.  His father, on the other hand, feels contempt for him because he prefers the company of women and dislikes studying.  (Jia Zheng, the father, is a Confucian scholar and civil servant, so he represents a more conventional adult masculinity.)  In one of the scenes that we may read for EN 202, Jia Zheng forces Bao-yu to come up with names and brief poems for the various highlights of the garden he has built for his daughter's visit.  The father appears to despise his son's contributions, but in the end he accepts them.  In another scene that we will not read, Baochai's brother Xue Pan tricks Bao-yu by claiming that his father is looking for him.  Bao-yu's fear of his father is that well-known. 


Below is another scene from this recent remake.  This depicts Dai-yu as a young girl who has just come to live with her relatives (Bao-yu's extended family).  We see Dai-yu's precociousness and pensiveness in this picture.  (She studies in secret and is an accomplished poet as well as a skilled needleworker who destroys her work out of spite.)  However, we do not see her prickliness, but this, too, is a strong element in her character.  As an adolescent, she is constantly bickering and battling with Bao-yu.  She is also jealous of Bao-chai, a more conventional young lady who has also come to live with the family and will marry Bao-yu. 



Here is a picture of Baochai from that same miniseries.  However, this picture depicts her as a teenager.  While Dai-yu is always bickering or brooding, Baochai has a much calmer, friendlier demeanor, and she is particularly noted for her kindness to servants.  As a poet and needleworker, she is talented but not as talented as Dai-yu is.   According to David Hawkes, Baochai and Dai-yu are two variants on the ideal woman. 



The picture below depicts Bao-yu and Dai-yu together in the garden near their houses.  (Yes, as adolescents, each of the young people in the family had his or her own house in the garden.  Previously they had lived with Grandmother Jia.)  This picture is quite fantastic, but it gives you an idea of how stunning the garden is.  (It was built as a venue for a one-day visit by Bao-yu's older sister, one of the Emperor's concubines.)


Here is a more realistic picture of what the garden may have looked like.  In fact, after the filming of the 1987 miniseries, the Chinese government recreated the novel's Grand View Garden.


For more information about this site, see the links below:

http://english.sina.com/p/2008/0806/176446.html

http://www.beijingguide2008.com/grand_view_garden_beijing/grand_view_garden_beijing.html

Finally, the picture below from www.culturalchina.com shows just how crowded with family members and servants The Story of the Stone is!  For example, when Jia Zheng quizzes his son in the new garden, a number of male family members and other "literary gentlemen" accompany them.  Moreover, quite a bit of the latter part of Volume 1 is devoted to the rivalries between the family's servants as well as those between members of the family.  At one point a concubine has a spell cast on both Bao-yu and Wang Xi-Feng because she feels that the family bullies her son.  Bao-yu is the first wife's son, but the bustling Wang Xi-Feng happens to be the young family member who manages the household.  Bao-yu's jade, by the way, breaks the spell once a Daoist monk repurifies the stone.

Study Guide for Drama & Theater (Spring 2008)

The picture above is from Oregon State University's 2005 version of A Doll's House.  Yes, yes, it is set in the 1950s...in Dallas, TX.  For more about this production, see the two links below:

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2005/May05/dollshouse.htm

http://media.barometer.orst.edu/media/storage/paper854/news/2005/05/13/Diversions/a.Dolls.House.To.Close.Osu.Theatre.Season-2293784.shtml

Drama – playscript, text, includes stage directions, playwright’s conception, playwright's intentions

Is it still worth studying a play that is no longer performed?

Theater – performance, central idea, director, actors, audience, set, costumes, sound;

elements of play: action or plot, character, setting, spectacle, mise-en-scene, thought/language, song and dance, (at times) translation

In the pictures above, Avery Brooks performs the roles of Willy Loman (stage--Oberlin College) and Othello (stage -- DC's Shakespeare Theater).

Avery Brooks – films tell stories; theater is a place to explore ideas

Aristotle – unities of time, place, action

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll’s House (1879) -- problem play; well-made play; realism; original version is in Norwegian; first version performed in US was in German; in German version, Helmer makes Nora look at the children she would be abandoning; Nora is the central figure; altering her character would change the whole purpose; Nora's relationship with Helmer; Nora's relationship with her children; we saw most of Patrick Garland's film of A Doll's House (1973 -- Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Richardson) as well as several scenes from Joseph Losey's film from the same year (1973 -- Jane Fonda, theater actor David Warner, Trevor Howard), Mabou Mines' production (tall women, very short men), and the Hunger Artists' version (set in the 1950s).

See this link for scenes from the 1973 version of A Doll's House starring Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwnBukRiRJI

See this link for the scenes of the other 1973 version starring Jane Fonda and David Warner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWM3PB0OI4s

See this link for the Mabou Mines version of A Doll's House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHn2FxLJOoI

The picture above is of Nora and Doctor Rank.

See this link for the Hunger Artists' 1950s version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb3CIsynKa4

Mother Courage – set during Thirty Years’ war, written at the beginning of WWII, Brecht already in exile, relationship of songs & plot,epic theater, alienation effect, how to portray Mother Courage, Mother Courage's children (Eilif, Swiss Cheese, Kattrin), Chaplain & Cook,

See this link for the Antaeus Theater Company's trailer.  However, the picture above is from Live Arts' recent production in Charlottesville, VA.

Anteus Company's MC -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0

See this link for more images of Mother Courage in performance.  Several are of Helene Weigel, Brecht's wife (the woman above).

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYcpY7P0qcc

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2009) -- Poetry

The picture above is William Blake's original published version of "Holy Thursday" in The Songs of Experience.  Blake is also known as an artist and printmaker.

We began our poetry unit by reading both versions of William Blake's "Holy Thursday."  One was from The Songs of Experience (1794).  The other was from The Songs of Innocence (1789).  Consider the difference between the way that William Blake portrays these children and that earlier writers like Voltaire and Behn portrayed the poor, servants, and slaves.   Romantic writers were more sympathetic to the poor and children.  (Rousseau--we are born good but are corrupted by society.)


We also looked at William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" and "Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman."  Interestingly, neither were in our anthology.  Both poems are from Lyrical Ballads, the 1798 collection of poems by Wordsworth & S.T. Coleridge.  Our editors seem to prefer Wordsworth's self-scrutiny to his poems of observation.  Note how "Simon Lee" resists narrative yet sounds like a ballad.  (Its rhyme scheme is ababcdce.)
Unfortunately, we did not get to Wordsworth's sonnets, but here is a link to John Green's reading of "Westminster Bridge."  Note that the sonnet was another form that he helped to revive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz4v9x3PIZc

Below is an 1897 painting of Westminster Bridge by Frederick Marlett Bell-Smith:



Here are some remarks by William Wordsworth on poetry.  They are from his preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800, 1802):

"All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."

Poetry "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

"Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply."

A poet "is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind."

"a large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good Prose."



Above is a picture of William Wordsworth's home, Dove Cottage, in the Lake District of England.  If you scroll to the links below, you may listen to actor Jeremy Irons reading Wordsworth's "Daffodils."

Emphasizing the supernatural rather than ordinary individuals who lived in the country, Wordsworth's friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge took a different approach to poetry in his fragment, "Kubla Khan" and his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."  (Coleridge, by the way, lived for a time in Germany.)  If you scroll to the links at the bottom, you may listen to Sean Barrett reading from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Blake (1757-1827), Wordsworth (1770-1850), and Coleridge (1772-1834) belong to the first generation of Romantics.  These men lived through the French Revolution as adults.  With John Keats (1795-1821) and his narrative poem, "The Eve of St. Agnes," we move on to the second generation of the Romantics.  Note how Keats handles the supernatural in his narrative.  Note how Porphyro takes advantage of Madeleine's belief that she will dream of her husband-to-be on the Eve of St. Agnes. 

Below is an image of Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt's painting "The Eve of St. Agnes."  By the time Hunt created this painting (1847-1857), Keats' reputation had risen.  During his lifetime, critics attacked his work, in part because of his social standing and perhaps their assumptions about his politics.  (Keats was an apprentice to a surgeon at a time when doctors' social standing was not as high as it is today.  Early nineteenth-century England was conservative politically and culturally, perhaps in response to the upheaval of the French Revolution.)

We then moved on from the British Romantics to some other 19th century poets from Vol. E.  We began with Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), a controversial poet and the author of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil).   The poem of his that we read (in French and its English translation) was "The Albatross."

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

Below is a photo of an albatross.

We also read the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario (1867-1916) 's "Walt Whitman" and "In Autumn,"
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)'s "I heard a Fly buzz," and
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)'s "I Hear America Singing" and "O Captain! My Captain."  With these poets (including Baudelaire), modern poetry begins.  Latin American critics, in fact, call Dario the father of Modernismo.  Emily Dickinson, by the way, published very few poems during her lifetime, and Walt Whitman self published his book, Leaves of Grass.  This was not too hard as he was a printer by trade.

Below is a picture of Emily Dickinson's room at home.  Can you imagine the fly buzzing?  The house where she lived and wrote her poetry is now part of a museum run by Amherst College.


We moved into the 20th century with Ezra Pound (1885-1972) ("A Pact," "In a Station of the Metro," and "The River Merchant's Wife," his translation of a translation of Li Bo's poem).  Although Pound knew many other languages and was an instructor of modern languages at Indiana's Wabash College, he did not know Chinese.  Although he did not know Chinese, he brought much attention to that culture's poetry and used it to change English-language poetry, making it more stripped-down and focused, exchanging the metronome for the phrase, making it new, to cite his famous command. 

With T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), we were able to listen to his recording of the first part of "The Waste Land," an immensely influential and erudite poem in five parts and many languages from Italian and German to the closing Sanskrit.  This poem, however, takes place in London, the city where Eliot, an American, had chosen to live.  (By the way, Ezra Pound helped edit "The Waste Land.")  We also read Eliot's earlier poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which he wrote when he was 22.  Does Prufrock ever leave his room?

Here is a link to the recording of Eliot's reading that we listened to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ

How does Eliot's London compare to Blake's or Wordsworth's?

Below is a picture dating from World War One.  It is from the British Postal Museum and Archive's website.


We also looked at two poems by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939):  "The Second Coming" (the poem where Chinua Achebe derived the title, Things Fall Apart) and "Easter 1916" (a poem about the aftermath of the Irish declaration of a republic -- Ireland was then a British colony).  Both poems were published by 1921, after World War One had ended but before Ireland became independent.  Here you may listen to Yeats' reading his poems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I

Below is a picture of the General Post Office that served as the Irish rebels' fort in 1916:

Here you may listen to an Irish-American rock band Black 47 play its song "James Connolly."  Connolly was one of the leaders of the rebellion.  Yeats did not mention him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEv2YCrSoY

We finished our unit on poetry with the work of Australian aborigine political activist and poet Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal (1920-1993) 's "We Are Going," Laguna/Sioux poet and scholar Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008)'s "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins," Laguna Pueblo poet and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko (1948-)'s "Toe'osh" and "Franz Boas' Visit."  Paula Gunn Allen's visitor, by the way, was Abenaki poet Joseph Bruchac.  Ironically, the Franz Boas that Leslie Marmon Silko refers to was a pioneering, progressive anthropologist who not only developed scientific method in anthropology but also encouraged his students to be more tolerant to the groups they studied.

Below is a picture of Laguna Pueblo (NM) from 1902:



These are links to the videos that we watched on review day (Monday):

Sean Barrett reads from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E9crjEp0_A

The words to "Bonnie St. Johnstone" are here:
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586

Here is a link to Richard Thompson's performance of this song:
http://www.last.fm/music/Richard+Thompson/_/Bonnie+St.+Johnstone

Jeremy Irons reads "Daffodills" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL7ysgRNAT0

William Blake's "London" is transformed into a song and music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkGi_XAhtPc

Here "London" is read: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIDUf6V8OLM

To see the poem itself, go to this link: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15818

T.S. Eliot reads "The Waste Land" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ

Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" is read here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KblU3g32l5g

For more information about the ballad, see these links:

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/ballad.html

http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladSearch.html

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/early_child/#what

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/ballads.html

Study Guide for the Final (Folktales, Tales, Short Stories)

Above is a still from a 1970 version of "Donkey Skin."  The actress Catherine Deneuve played both Donkey Skin and her mother. 

Orality – proverbs/repetition/cliches, performance/responsiveness to an audience/improvisation or change, flat characters/focus on action, communal/external, conservative, Fr. Walter J. Ong, Milman Parry

“Donkey Skin” – 17^th c. – Perrault partipated in conflict of Ancients (held on to the past, classics stayed classics, not to be changed, Greece/Rome were cultural models) vs. Moderns (improve & revise literature – sonnets, ballads, folktales, local was the model, women writers like Behn)—like Cinderella—princess who had to escape her father (who wanted to marry her)—transgression—she runs away & with help of fairy godmother disguises herself as servant—but she brings along trunk w/ toiletries—on Sunday she catches the prince’s eye & wins him—reunites with purged father—irony & social criticism-- see the morals of this story!

“All Kinds of Fur”—very much 19^th c.—no moral stated – Brothers Grimm’s revision of “DS”—they revised to take out foreign influences and later sexual & other adult references

Von Tieck’s “Fair Haired Eckbert” – not oral but published, product of print culture – witch who follows Bertha around to punish her for running off – Bertha & Eckbert are half-siblings; witch disguises herself as Walther & Hugo—bird & dog—supernatural—darker, protagonist is not a common protagonist -- this story was recently made into an opera by Judith Weir and Kenneth Hesketh:

http://www.theoperagroup.co.uk/productions/more/blond_eckbert_other_stories/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jun/16/classicalmusicandopera1

Balzac’s “Sarrasine”—supernatural in 19^th c. high society (after Napoleon’s fall), narrator & his audience, the de Lanty family, the “ghost,”La Zambinella, Sarrasine, Cardinal, in some ways this story is very grounded  This story as well has been transformed into an opera.  Its composer is Matthew Suttor.

http://www.music.columbia.edu/fest99/festreport/mvmt_sound/Sarrasine/description.html

Below is a 19th c. illustration of Sarrasine with La Zambinella.

Coyote Tales – “Coyote and Bull,” “Coyote as Medicine Man,” and “The Origin of Eternal Death” – also folktales, similarities & differences—Coyote as trickster, Coyote tricked (compare Leslie Marmon Silko’s poem about Coyote)

Tolstoy’s “After the Ball”—tale/short story, frame narrative, the narrator sees his future father-in-law in a new, darker light as he whips a Tartar who has tried to desert the army.  I wasn't able to find an illustration of this story, but the still below is from the 1956 version of War and Peace that starred Audrey Hepburn.

Joyce’s “Araby” – 20^th c. story – Dubliners – epiphany/everyday – particular/local  The picture below is from Dublin around 1900.

Vizenor’s “Ice Tricksters”—Native American literature/short story

Vizenor’s “Shadows”—Native American literature/tale – supernatural, Bagese also became a bear, orality vs. print, game of wanaki, narrator was a professor

The picture below is from National Geographic.

Noa Baum’s performance – good experience to hear the tale being told, a real folk tale to me, 1^st part of story – 1948, still an ongoing conflict, still inflammatory—connection to the land, not what I expected, really important to see/hear her tell the story, this was a true story, her life

The picture below is from Ms. Baum's performance in El Paso, TX.