An Essay on Man

Alexander Pope was considered a literary genius in 18th century England.  Although his early life was uneasy due to his Catholicism in a time of the Protestant regime of William and Mary (87), his essays and philosophical poetry brought him to the literary forefront.  Pope’s “An Essay on Man” attempts to reconcile the belief of a God designed universe with the existence of evil and confusion in the world to promote an acceptance of divine order.  He maintains that there is a divine plan for everything that occurs in life and nature and if humans knew too much of the reasoning of God behind those events, they would be robbed of the hope and happiness that faith provides and knowledge destroys.

In “An Essay on Man”, Pope asserts that there is so much more happening in the Universe than one eye can see. He states “Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, touches some wheel, or verges to some goal, ‘tis but a part we see, and not a whole”(lines 58-60).  Man cannot begin to understand a situation he only knows a small part of and should leave that understanding to God who is prepared to shoulder that burden.  Pope expands this thought further when he notes “Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, all but the pages prescribed, their present state” (Puchner, 77-78).  If man knew all that lied in store for him, positive or negative, where would the blessing of hope lie?  In order to have hope for the future, man must put his fate in the hands of God, “hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never Is, but always To be blest” (Puchner, 95-96).

The mystery of our universe’s perfect order also attests to a divine law in the midst of what could be misconstrued by man as disorder.  “Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: is Heaven unkind to Man, and Man alone” (lines 185-186) challenges that man’s pursuit of knowledge of everything that exists, will exist and has existed, has fleeced him of contentment, in turn creating chaos.  Instead of finding joy in life as it occurs, he wants to understand the rhyme and reason of everything that should be left to God.  When man is always searching for answers, Pope asserts “who finds not Providence all good and wise, alike in what it gives, and what denies” (lines 205-206). 

The ultimate argument of Pope’s assertion of a divine order is his description of the fine tandem of the universe.  “Let Earth unbalanced from her orbit fly, Planets and Suns run lawless through the sky; let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, Being on Being wrecked, and World on World” (lines 251-254).  How else can this delicate balance be explained if not for the existence of God?  The answer to this question was addressed in a conference I attended held by an apologetics group called “Come Reason”.  Apologetics ministries give Christians the tools to explain their religion and their faith with non-believers or skeptics.  The topic for the session I attended was how to explain the existence of God with all the chaos of today’s world, with chaos being primarily evil.  In much the same manner Pope used science and religion to affirm divine order in “An Essay on Man”, the apologetics minister asked us to consider the improbability that a universe such as ours could just occur out of nothing.  How could such a delicate balance of elements occur to support human life without the hand of a divine being, God or otherwise? Pope describes the “vast chain of Being, from which God began, Nature’s ethereal, human, angel, man...” (lines 237-238). The arguments provided both by the apologetics and minister and Pope are compelling and thought provoking in determining whether God exists. 

Works Cited

Pope, Alexander. "An Essay on Man." Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 90-97. Print.

Puchner, Martin. "Alexander Pope 1688-1744." The Norton Anthology of World
        Literature, 1650-Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 86-        89. Print.

 

 

 

Montaigne

In” Of Cannibals”, French writer Michel Eyquem de Montaigne argues that what appears to be barbaric to us may only appear so because the culture in question is not our own. Montaigne quotes Roman playwright Terence when he says “I am a man, I consider nothing human to be alien to me” (Puchner, 1649). Barbarism is defined by the writer as “whatever is not one’s own practice”. In his examination of tribal society, Montaigne demonstrates what may be considered barbaric is not at all when the reason for the actions are considered.

Montaigne describes the tribal society of cannibals as “alive and vigorous their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which we have debased in the latter in adapting them to gratify our corrupted case” (Montaigne, 1653). In the western world, society is so far removed from nature that logic is twisted to fit our own ideas of what is acceptable. The tribal society is still uncorrupted and living how God intended, with virtue, truth and logic. In discussing this concept, Montaigne makes the point “These nations, then, seem to me barbarous in this sense that they have been fashioned very little by the human mind, and are still very close to their original naturalness. The laws of nature still rule them.”(Montaigne, 1654). Although these tribal practices are distained in our western world, they make perfect sense in this natural environment of the tribes.

Montaigne’s definition of barbarity brings to mind a current issue in western news today, the Syrian “Cannibal”. The United States has agreed to arm resistance groups in Syria in their attempt to overthrow their oppressor, President Bashar al-Assad. A video has been posted and disseminated to the world press of a Syrian rebel commander biting into the lung of a previously deceased soldier loyal to President al-Assad. Westerners are in an uproar of this supposed act of cannibalism. On further examination, it appears possible that this Syrian rebel leader is behaving much the same as the tribal warriors as described in “Of Cannibals”. According to the rebels, this opposition soldier was convicted of war atrocities such as rape and murder of women and children. This is much the same logic the tribal society had with their prisoners that were killed quickly and eaten later for committing atrocities on their society. Montaigne declares “I think there is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead. So we may well call these people barbarians, in respect to the rules of reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity” (Montaigne, 1657).

Works Cited:

Montaigne. “Of Cannibals”. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Beginnings to 1650.

    Ed. Martin Puchner. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 1650-1665. Print.

Sunjata

In Sunjata: a West African Epic of the Mandes People, a tale is told of tradition and heritage. The main character of the epic, Sunjata, leads a life of hardships to reach his prophesized glory. This story has been told for generations, assisting the “principle Mande clans frame their identities in terms of descent from the ancestors describes in epic tradition” (Norton 1514),

West Africans have taken heed of the story of Sunjata and have adopted wedding rituals from the epic as their own tradition. The bride-escorting song (lines 750-798) describes the rituals and their origin from the wedding day antics of Sunjata’s father Simbon, and his mother Sogolon Conde’. The carrying of the bride originated from the carrying of Sogolon by the co-wives to their home. “The women picked up the bride and run with her, That was done because of the condition of Sogolon Conde’s feet” (769-771). The act of the Mande bride popping her head in and out of her husband’s door three times symbolizes Sogolon’s three lashes from her soon to be husband to her head because due to her escapades. Her first act of defiance was trying to pierce her husband’s eye (802). The second was when she was lashed by her husband following her trying to burn his face with her “scalding breast milk”. In the third entrance, Sogolon tried to “spear Simbon in the chest” (831) with his ebony walking stick. After all of these attempts at injuring her husband were thwarted by him, she finally consented to marrying him to fulfill her destiny as the mother of Sunjata. She accepted the marital gift of the ten kola nuts and prepared a brew for Simbon to drink. She sat on his bed as the final gesture of acceptance. “That is why when a new bride is brought, If you do not see her sitting in a chair, If she does not sit on her husband’s bed she has something on her mind. She does not want to marry this man; She has another man’s name to confess” (870-874).

 

A tradition that exists in Indian Weddings today similar to Sogolon Conde’s preparation of the kola nuts for her husband to drink is the Var Mala ceremony. In this tradition, the Indian bride and groom put flower garlands around each other’s necks as their final act of acceptance of each other as life partners. Both the tradition of the kola nut brew and the Indian tradition of the garlands are similar in that they signal acceptance of the marriage however the origin of the garland is quite different. While Sogolon Conde was originally forced into her marriage and was broken down after the three attempts to harm her husband to be into complacency, the garland was a symbol of a bride’s proposal to her husband and his claiming of the garland was his acceptance of her.

 

Works Cited:

“Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mandes People”.  The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. 3rd ed. Vol 1. New York: Norton 2013. 1514-1578.

 

Basho

Mattsuo Basho (1644-1694) was one of the most prolific haiku writers of his time in Japan. He chronicled his travels and the haiku inspired by them in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Poets such as Basho “pioneered a new style in writing prose essays(haibun) such as travelogues, and they produced striking oil paintings (haiga), which are sparsely and poignantly sketched in ink as haikus are sketched in words”(321). In the following video Matsuo Basho, created by Raul Santiago Sebazco, Basho’s poetry is explored and set to music and haiga, beautiful and delicate paintings that render the spirit of the haiku.

http://youtu.be/zXvzgR3A9_I  

The first illustration in the video shows the trail Basho followed on his journey. He was inspired by “famous poetic sites” (324) to write haiku that summed up his experience in nature. Following is the painting of an older man evoking Basho, an old man worried that he may not make it through this trip alive. Further in, we see the image of a woman combing her hair with the line “wrapping rice dumplings in bamboo leaves with one hand she fingers the hair over her forehead”. The creator of this video chose the simple sketch to share Basho and other poets of his era’s interest in the beauty of everyday life.

The pictures take a turn towards the autumn season signaling the close of the year as well as the life cycles of trees, insects and wildlife. The passage “with the air of a century past, the fallen leaves on the garden” is accompanied alongside a snow covered landscape. Haiku such as “that they will son die is unknown to the chirping cicadas” is paired with picture of a woman clipping the last water lilies of the season to show acknowledgement of the seasons impending close.

We are signaled by Sebazco that winter is upon the landscape when he pairs Basho’s stanza “In the fish shop the gums of the sea bream are cold” with sketches depicting fishermen on their boats in the bitter cold, still making a living on the bream that are caught on their lines from the freezing water. Opposite the line “watching the comorant fishing boats in time I was full of sorrow” shows a woman writing much as Basho did, contemplating landscape as writing inspiration

Basho felt his age on his journey. Sebazco balances the stanza “This autumn- old age I feel, in the birds, the clouds” with ducks on the water and an old man contemplating how they swim on in spite of the challenge of the impending cold. They must live their life despite harsher circumstances of nature. “Ill on my journey my dream wanders over a withered moor” is harmonized with a bridge and a full moon at night, ending of a day, a bridge to the other side of death from life.

Works Cited:

Puchner, Martin, ed. "Matsuo Basho."The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Vol. I. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013. 324-325. Print.

Basho, Matsuo, "The Narrow Road to the Deep North." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed.  Martin Puchner. Vol. I. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013. 325-336. Print.