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ornamental line

The Cost of Art

"Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man . . ." (ll.37-39).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Musical Instrument" (1860)

 

Points for Reflection

E. B. Browning’s “A Musical Instrument” (1860; 1860)

  1. of all the Greek gods, why choose Pan when setting up this poem about the artistic process?
  2. why employ a recurring sestet so reliant on repetition of "Pan" and "river"?
  3. why might lines 1-4 open, not w/ pleasant iambic feet (unaccented, accented), but with more aggressive dactyls (accented, unaccented, unaccented) and trochees (accented, unaccented)? Isn't this, after all, a poem about sweet music?
  4. is the Greek god depicted here malevolent or altruistic? Does Pan's arrival alter the environment permanently?
  5. why might EBB describe the water from which Pan pulls the reed as "limpid" (l.9)?
  6. in what way is this deity "great"?
  7. does the reed retain any of its native qualities after it has been fashioned into an instrument (ll.13-24)?
  8. why might Pan laugh (ll.25-26) while justifying his actions (ll.25-27)?
  9. does Pan's music compensate for the destruction involved in creating his instrument (ll.31-36)?
  10. what does this poem suggest about the cost of Art?
  11. how does Pan's reaction to humankind's suffering differ from that of "the true gods" (ll.37-40)?


C. Rossetti's "In an Artist's Studio" (1856; 1896)

  1. what type of sonnet is Rossetti’s poem?
  2. why might Christina Rossetti have waited so long to publish this poem?
  3. how does the poem's tone shift as one moves from opening octave to closing sestet?
  4. what characteristics of his beloved has the painter memorialized in his portraits of her?


E. Dickinson's "448" [449]

  1. what Romantic-era work quickly comes to mind upon reading this poem?
  2. what does it mean to "die" for beauty, or for truth, and why might the narrator equate dying (l.1) with failure (l.5)?
  3. do the last two words of this poem demand that the reader re-read the poem with a new idea in mind? Why might Dickinson use the word "names" instead of the expected "tomb"? Does this final line prompt recollection of yet another poem by the writer of the poem alluded to in question one?


E. Dickinson's "519" [441]

  1. what does ED mean by “the world” here?
  2. what is this tone of the opening lines—is the narrator bitter, resigned, angry, or apathetic?
  3. what does the absence of concluding punctuation at the end of l.4 do to the line’s meaning?
  4. does the word “hands” refer to God, to her reading audience, or to Nature?


P. L. Dunbar's "Sympathy" (1899)

  1. why does a bird serve Dunbar's purposes better in "Sympathy" than would any other imprisoned animal?
  2. why does the bird not learn its lesson an cease to beat its wing on the bars--why does the old pain throb "again with a keener sting" (l.13, emphasis added)?
  3. how and why does the listener habitually misinterpret the bird's song?
  4. which of Dunbar's poems more closely approximates the form of a song?
  5. do Dunbar's poems cast the "two-ness" of which Du Bois speaks as an empowering or constraining duality?

 

a painting of a woman on bended knees and her eyes closed. She has her hands laid on top of one another, palms up. She has a green cloack and long hair. There is a figure in red over her shoulder to the left of the frame, and a dark figure over her other shoulder to the right of the frame. There is a sundial in the background, and a red bird placing a small branch in the woman's open hands.
Beata Beatrix (1864-70)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu