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Literatura Norteamericana., Apuntes de Literatura

Asignatura: Literatura Nort, Profesor: Manuel Brito, Carrera: Estudios Ingleses, Universidad: ULL

Tipo: Apuntes

2014/2015

Subido el 08/01/2015

amandajanina
amandajanina 🇪🇸

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(47)

4 documentos

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¡Descarga Literatura Norteamericana. y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura solo en Docsity! Mythology and the Canaries in Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems In this essay I am going to comment briefly on Charles Olson’s life and it’s relation to this collection of poems, which he called to be a single poem, The Maximus Poems. Olson was a postmodernist poet born in 1910 in Worcester, Massachusetts. But Olson spent whole summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts. This place takes a very important role in his poems, especially in The Maximus Poems. The first thing I am going to comment on, regarding mythology, is the title of the collection: The Maximus Poems. Maximus may be interpreted as Olson himself, he was impressively tall , but it can also be interpreted as named after Maximus of Tyre, or after a Phoenician mystic. But there are discussions about whether Olson and Maximus are the same. I think they are not, because even if Olson is the poet, and Maximus the poetic voice, they are still two different persons, they just cohabit. Now regarding to the beginning of poem number 163 in part III of The Maximus Poems, we get, in first place, the mentioning of the Guanches who were the true inhabitants of the Canaries before they were invaded in the XV century. In the next line, Olson mentions Gloucester, the town where he lived for many years. This town is his called “topos” his place which he know so well. He says Gloucester comes from the Canaries, due to the fact that it was known that all North America was once joined to the African coast where the Canaries lie so near to. “The Muses told Hesiod there was 4 things got genet” the Muses are the goddess of poetry and Hesiod was a Greek poet and historian. He believed his ability to write poetry was result of the Muses having breathed into him a divine voice. And not only this ability, but also special knowledge. The four things mentioned are the four elements: fire (line 16 “muspilli”) earth (164, line 16) , water (164, line 5) and air (164, line 1 “Niflesheim”). This four element are needed for the reconstruction of the world. Olson adds love to this four elements, later mentioned in III 164, line 18 . And genet means something like “was born” or “emerge into life” and it is a contrast to Chaos, the most primitive state of life. First chaos came but then the four elements came and created the world. See in line 22 the word “Muspelsheim” Olson uses this Germanic term which means the fire of the world. And also the Old Norse word “Niflesheim”, in III 164 line 1, which means cloud, is known as the home of the dead (the heaven). Later on in III 164, line 2, he mentions names like “Red Cloud”, “Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses”, “High Backbone”, “Little Wolf”, “Red Dog” and “American Horse”. This are names of chiefs and warriors of the Oglala Sioux in the late XIX century. In line 6 of 164, “acyanas” which probably means ocean or is related to it. Then, in line 11 we see “xaw”, Greek word which meant chaos. And this was mentioned by the Muses to as the hunger of the world. Then, in the next line “Ginunga Gap” something Olson once mentioned in a letter to Joyce Benson stating: “Ginnunga Gap – Norse for condition of [un]creation before even Earth-were genet: simply a organic condition, a gaping mouth standing for hunger.” In my opinion this could be referring to the black holes. Then he says he saw Guanche’s eyes yesterday, and today Sicilians, and mentions Gloucester again, referring to the fact that we were all one single continent long ago, we are all the same. Then the mention of the “topos”, name of the places of the Earth, and the Tartarus, in the last lines of 164, the poetic Greek name of hell according to Greek mythology. He explains to us that Tartarus is beyond averything, even beyond the Ocean, it is the place where Gods and men are judged and punished. In III 165, line 3 and 4, he mentions the age of the Canaries, 150 million years old. He mentions Terceira, an island of the central Azores; Cape Juby, which is probably Cape Jolly, on the coast of Morocco, about 75 miles away from Fuerteventura. The Atlas Mountains, mountains situated in Northwest Africa. Then there is a mention to the June of Fish and Aquarius Time, this marks the end of the Christian era. Aquarius is the water carrier, and the fish represents Christ. II.81 Now we move on to II.81. It starts with “view”, this means picture, it makes us imagine what he is going to detail us. The first references are Orontes and Typhon. Orontes is a river that finishes on the Northern coast of Syria and this point was a very frequented one by traders, and the first piece of land, following the weather and the sailing possibilities, was the island of Cyprus. At the mouth of the river Orontes, on Mount Casius, a battle took place, the final battle between Zeus and Typhon. Typhon was a Greek mythological monster, the child of the Earth and Tartarus. He is mentioned in some other parts of the Maximus Poems, in one of them he is described as “the blue monster” (Maximus II.94), he is the Gloucester sea-serpent. Typhon is another form of the Hydra. In line 7, he mentions Helen of Troy, at the same time, she was mentioned by Herodotus. In the fourth paragraph, line 17 he mentions Manes, who, according to Waddell, was the same person as Minos. Minos is the traditional founder of the First Dynasty of Egypt, also king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. In line 19 Gades appears, Gades was the Latin name for the Spanish city of Cadiz, which was found to be a Phoenician trading colony, and that is why he says, in lines 23 and 24: “Portuguese are part Phoenician”. And a few lines above, back to line 19, we see the name Pytheas. He was an explorer and the first Greek to visit the Atlantic coast of Europe. Down in line 25, Olson wrote “Canary Islanders Cro-Magnon” , the Canaries were invaded in the XV century by the Spanish, and their former inhabitants were the Guanches, and the Cro- Magnons were those people who lived in caves, so the Guanches were Cro-Magnons, it is also referring to the Homo Sapiens of the Palaeolithic era. Finally, the mentions of Sable and Saint Augustine. Sable island is about one hundred and eighty miles southeast of Nova Scotia. It was once one hundred miles long, but nowadays it is only twenty miles long and a mile wide. It is said that many ships wrecked on Sable Island. Saint Augustine was the first archbishop of Canterbury, he led the Christianization of England. In conclusion, Olson was very fascinated by mythology and the Canary Islands, besides he didn’t knew much about them. He also mentions Gloucester a lot, this makes me think he really loved this city, he even made up an ideal society in it.
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