Epilogue

Now that I have finished my learning journal, I would really like to thank our teacher, Filomena Osório, for everything that she had taught us and for doing it in such an interesting and catchy manner.

North American Literature classes were one of my favourite classes.

I ended the semester knowing a lot of new things and, more importantly, I will leave with the desire to learn and know much more. I will continue my learning process and probably this journal. J

Thank You!

Dive by Andrea Gibson

To end this journal, I would like to leave here this poem, by Andrea Gibson.
We heard it in one of our North American Literature classes.
I will never forget how much it touched me, and how much it touches me every time I read it. It has become one of my favourite poems of all time. So, thank you very much Professora Prof.Filomena Osório. :)

Entry 8

Modern-Day Nature Lovers

(Living Outside the System)

          More challenging than ever before, is the choice to live in nature nowadays: to choose the wilderness over the system, nature instead of technology and freedom instead of society’s social conventions. This choice of life intrigues me a lot because if we have so much nowadays, why should we choose to have almost nothing? But then again, what is having so much? What is having almost nothing? Everything is questioned. Most of all, it intrigues me how the modern-day nature lovers are able to prefer one world over the other.

      These people are living the life which Emerson and Thoreau wrote about – to become one with nature. Probably they don’t even need any specific spiritual reason but maybe they decided that they don’t want to be part of the system. They might not have many material possessions or a daily job like we have, but they are free in ways we are not.

     A community known as the Rainbow Gathering was photographed by the photographer Benoite Paillé.
   
       Rainbow Gatherings are temporary communities, held annually all around the world. The first Rainbow Gathering happened in 1972, a four-day event in Colorado in the United States. It has been believed that at least 2,600 people from throughout that region attended and provided support for the 1972 Rainbow Gathering. Since that date onwards, gatherings are held till today expanding the original four-day span in number as in frequency.
   They support and practice ideals of peace, love, non-violence, environmentalism, respect, harmony, non-consumerism, non-commercialism, volunteerism, multicultural diversity, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to “Babylon" - mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism, and mass media. The majority of the members believe that modern lifestyles and systems of government are unhealthy, unsustainable, and exploitative and out of harmony with Nature.

       Among the Rainbow Family there are no leaders, hierarchy, official documents and no membership. The values held are love, peace, non-violence, environmentalism, non-consumerism and non-commercialism, volunteerism, respect for others, consensus process, and multicultural diversity.

      However, these gatherings and communities have their problems. Relations with the police or local communities are frequently a problem, plus the media often portrays them unfavorably focusing in depecting drug use, nudity, beliefs,etc.


      Another photographer, Eric Valli, also took photographs of people who have chosen to leave technology behind and live in Nature. Eric Valli spent some years around different groups of people who live in the wilderness and has recently published a book called “Rencontres hors du temps”, where we can read about his experience in more detail. Although some of the groups have some kind of contact with technology, it is not comparable to the amount of contact we have with it every day.


I have selected some of my favourite pictures that were taken by these two photographers:

Benoite Paillé - "Rainbow Gathering"

Eric Valli - "Off the Grid"

Note: For a more complete and better view of their collection of photos, you can consult these links:

http://www.behance.net/gallery/1193675/Rainbow-Gathering-(2010-2011); https://www.flickr.com/photos/benoitpaille/sets/72157624733821565/
http://www.visualnews.com/2012/04/11/off-the-grid-people-who-have-left-technology-behind/
http://www.ericvalli.org/

Entry 7

“Civil Disobedience” – Rage against the Machine

Civil Disobedience is an excerpt of a long essay written by one of the best known American transcendentalist – Henry David Thoreau.  

As a transcendentalist and as Emerson, Thoreau was also a naturalist. It is in “Walden”, one of his best known essays, where he expresses his opinion about living a simple life in contact with Nature and where we can become acquainted with his experience.

       I shall focus on his other well-known essay and a highly influential one - “Civil Disobedience”. Here he focuses more on the government while still immerged in his belief in the individual and urges people to react towards an unjust government by means of civil disobedience, not violence. Although Emerson expressed himself against the government, Thoreau was a bit more direct in the way he criticised it. Basically, we can say that while Emerson’s “Self Reliance” encourages people to think and act independently, Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” puts Emerson’s theory into practice.

      Thoreau’s motto is “That government is best which governs least”. This does not mean he defends anarchy as a solution. He believes that people need a government but one that respects the individual and one that does not interfere so much in one’s life. Thoreau promotes the refusal to obey laws that are against our principles as Emerson also believed that “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Thoreau also believed that voting was useless.

     Being more eccentric and strong willed than his mentor, Thoreau took a step further and decided to live the transcendentalist experience and put into practice civil disobedience - he lived in a hut in Walden Pot because he wanted to “live deliberately” and did not pay taxes during a year, which eventually led him to spend one night in prison.

     He encouraged people to act rather than just talk. Talking would not solve anything, neither would obeying the laws nor voting. He believed that for true change to happen, we should not participate in the machine of government, because “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” As Mahatma Gandhi said, “To believe in something and not to live it, is dishonest.”

Entry 6

The Awful Truth: The Aesthetic of the Sublime

       In the mid-19^th century, the Hudson River School, immerged as the art movement which illustrated transcendentalism, our connection with nature, which influenced American art in general. The Hudson River School had literary and moral associations and had a romantic approach depicting the Hudson River Valley.

      What distinguishes this movement is the concept of the Sublime. The concept of the Sublime was formulated upon Edmund Burke’s distinction of sublimity and beauty. The aesthetic of the Sublime was about seeing Nature as something overbearing, that crushes us with its majestic features – the idea was for it to be overwhelming rather than just beautiful – the “delightful terror”.

     Thomas Cole was the founder of the movement and one of the first American landscape artists.
Other distinguished artists such as Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt were claimed to be the schools most successful painters until its decline. With the death of Church and Bierstadt, the Hudson River School eventually feel into oblivion.

I have selected some of my favourite paintings of the artists I have mentioned above.

Thomas Cole:

Frederic Edwin Church

Albert Bierstadt

     To conclude this entry, I would like to share some photographs I took of Gerês, one of my favourite places. They might not be as sublime as the Niagara Falls and they might lack photography skills, but for me it’s a place where I am immersed in Nature, where I can relax. It is a place where technology is not present and mundane trends and influences are not peeking out from behind every corner.

Entry 5

“Over Soul”

       In “Over Soul” we can understand Emerson’s beliefs. First of all, Emerson believes that each one of us has a soul, which would already by itself be able to create a great debate, since the existence of the soul is

not regarded as being a fact. But that does not really matter here, since Emerson 
does not attribute personal knowledge to what is learnt through institutions or only through reason -  the knowledge we need is already inside us. He believes that we are one with God and Nature, meaning that God is inside us, therefore, he also does not give much value to any church because church is also an institution that might format our mind and therefore block our personal point of view. It is not a priest of an institution, called church, who has the power to judge. The Supreme Critic and prophet is Nature. Moreover, he believes that we are one with the Universe, which is basically the definition of Over Soul – the unity between Humanity, Nature and God. These ideas are summarised, for example, in this quote of his: “The Supreme Critic on the errors of past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is the great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man´s particular being is contained and made one with all other. Nikola Tesla also believed in this unity: “Our entire biological system, the brain and the earth itself, work on the same frequencies.”.

      Emerson’s spirituality seems to be more profound then we might think, especially after reading Over Soul. Not only he believes in the soul and tries to define it in some way, he also seems to believe that we are mere passengers in this world and that we go somewhere else, which brings us to the concept of Karma and Reincarnation. His belief in the existence of an immortal soul is already quite enough for us to perceive that he might have believed in Reincarnation.

      “Over Soul” captivated me because of the spiritual essence which I felt to be present in it. I’ve always been quite interested in spirituality and my father had great influence on me regarding this topic. He believes in all sorts of things, namely karma, reincarnation, the soul, meditation, angels, soul mates, twin flames, the power of the violet flame, chakras, aliens, fairies, ghosts/spirits, mind power, the existence of Atlantis etc. So I’ve always kept an open mind…

      To conclude this entry, I would like to show some art work done by Alex Grey. I’ve selected my favourite paintings and I believe his work illustrates our relationship with the Universe - – an art which illustrates the complex integration of body, mind, and spirit.

Alex Grey painting

Alex Grey - Tree of Life

Alex Grey - Mystic Eye

Alex Grey - Kissing

Alex Grey - Union of human and Divine Consciousness

Entry 4

Transcendentalism

       Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that was developed during the late 1820s and 1830s. Emerson was the founder of the movement. As many movements around the world, transcendentalists had a club, (where Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman were present literary figures) and a magazine called “The Dial”.

      In class we have focused particularly on two transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Both believed in the mystical power of Nature, which led Emerson to write about it and defend our unity with Nature; while Thoreau tried to prove the transcendentalists theory by having the experience of living in the wild. They expressed American ideals such as individualism, self-reliance and non-conformity. They believed in the individual’s unlimited capacity, which we can relate to Benjamin Franklin’s great influence on the concept of “self-made-man”. They criticized government, organized religion, laws, and social institutions since it deformed independent thinking. Although they did not make any practical changes, they were supporters of women’s rights, abolition, reform and education.

     The core belief of this movement was the concept of Over-Soul, meaning the unity between God, Nature and Humanity.  The concept of Over-Soul gave attention to our faculty of Intuition.  Individualism is another concept of the movement in the sense that the individual is the spiritual centre of the universe and by focusing on the premise that all knowledge begins with self-knowledge. Emerson, therefore, points out how important it is for one to know oneself, to trust oneself and one’s intuitions rather than trusting other peoples beliefs and only receiving knowledge through tuition. Emerson believes that truth lies within ourselves. Taking this in consideration, he sees imitation and consistency as something which would only limit ourselves more, stating that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”.

It is somewhat relevant to emphasise that by being against conformity, Emerson is not saying people should be against everything that is perceived as the norm, but rather to question it before adopting and believing in it.

      Opposing Benjamin Franklin’s pure rationalism, Emerson believed that in Nature people could achieve spiritual power, along with his belief in human intuition.

Personal point of view:

       First of all, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes about a great majority of topics that I have been interested in for a long time: Nature, self-reliance, individualism, the human soul/spirituality, solitude, the questioning of society and the awareness through our own personal power. For a couple of years now, I’ve been questioning myself, others, society and my own beliefs. It is a huge struggle. More than ever, I want to live a life which I believe in and in which I experience the most I can. These are some of the reasons why I liked Emerson so much. Before Emerson, I was lingering more on the pessimist side of being alone and independent. I often searched for provocative and dark texts/authors like Nietzsche, Charles Bukowski and Raul Brandão. But Emerson has another way of criticizing - he has a completely different tone which is equally amazing to me, although I’ve always had a weak spot for darker aspects of life and portraying it.

       What intrigued me about “Self Reliance” is the fact that it is so contemporary.  If back than it was already important to trust yourself, nowadays I find it even more important and even more of a challenge. As Danielle LaPorte said: “Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?”.  When I read this quote I had a big struggle in my mind. 

      Nowadays we have the media who fills our mind with concepts of how we should be, act, dress, eat and understand the world and people around us. The media can be an even more dangerous tool than any religious group because it is so soft in its ways and often not taken serious enough by those who do not find the media so influential. But it is, at least in my opinion. Never before had the world so many problems regarding eating disorders, which start earlier and earlier in one’s life. Never before has beauty been given such importance and the most frightening about it, is what is considered to be beautiful or not. But more intriguing than this is the way that people are more and more absorbed by technological gadgets and not by nature’s wonders. These are topics that I have been thinking about for a long time and I am glad to be so aware of these problems and sad to see so many people falling into the social trap of what happiness is or not. This brings me to Emerson’s optimistic view of people which I find pretty much debatable. It is not explicitly stated but I think one can say that Emerson was not a misanthropist. Thoreau too, believed in the individual. I used to link myself with those who rather despised people and pointed out their faults as if they have lost their hope in people. But whether Emerson and Thoreau were too optimistic or not, their point is still nowadays valuable. Although in a different manner to that of Nietzsche, for example, they also express the importance of believing in what we think is right and not following the “flock”. To be aware and to question ourselves will always be important, even if we have to stand alone, go to prison or “take the road not taken”.

Entry 3

“Bartleby, The Scrivener”

   “Bartleby, The Scrivener” is a short story written by Herman Melville.

     Bartleby is one of Melville’s most debated short stories. It has been discussed by many critics throughout the years but there is not one correct answer or interpretation. We can only point out the possible interpretations there can be and understand Bartleby through our own reading. Much of this is due to the fact that we know so little about the character. At the same time we know how much “he prefers not to”, which is perhaps, the key to try to understand him.

     The only thing we know about Bartleby is that he had worked in a “dead letter office”. Perhaps he thought that job was meaningful or perhaps he read some letters. Reading letters, which he knew would never be delivered, might have made an impact on him – the fragile and mortal side of life and people.

    This short story is marked by the power of saying “no”, the power of choice, the idea of resistence but also about how deeply can someone be affected by life and society. Bartleby is depicted as “forlorn”, “pale” and reserved. Melville’s description of the surrounding walls is a clue to understand Bartleby’s mind. In my opinion, he was tired of life. He saw the walls growing around him as if we was being “boxed in”. This can be interpreted along with the subtitle “A Wall Street Story” – the rise of a commercial society and of dehumanizing labour which Bartleby did not want be part of. He died to prove the strength of his will and died alone, immersed in is individuality, his willingness but at the same time with the weight of the world crushing him down.

I will try to answer three of the questions that are in the study guide in this site: http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/

·         What do you think of the lawyer’s treatment of Bartleby? Is it commendable? Deplorable? Understandable? Or something else? Is there anything else the lawyer should have done? How would you act if you were in the lawyer’s place?

The first thing I thought was that no boss would tolerate such an attitude, especially nowadays. But the narrator also had a funny personality, in the sense that he wanted to be supportive and understanding, more to feel good about himself, than anything else. Due to Bartleby’s emotionless manner, I find it difficult to see how the narrator could help him or react in a different way.

The narrator points out frequently how disarmed he felt towards B. behavior. I think this is interesting. I often think about people who are so direct and confident that we do not know how to react towards them. For example, if a person, who does nothing wrong, who does his job perfectly well, but at the same times looks fragile and lonely and yet has the “courage” to say “he prefers not to” with such calmness and willfulness we are then surprised by their courage. Or we explode with that person or we just don’t know what to say and how to react because often that person is doing so because he has a reason, we just don’t know what reason is it. This is the reason why the narrator felt disarmed and did not react towards Bartleby.what disarmed the narrator and that is why he took so long to react towards B.

·         Why does Bartleby “prefer not to” perform more and more actions throughout the story? Does this say more about the nature of the work or more about the state of his soul?

I believe that Bartleby is not only making a social statement. I believe that he is in a very fragile state of mind but he has the strength to hold on to his individuality, which is probably all that he has. We should keep in mind that he always said “no” as a preference - he did not just answer the narrator with a straight “no”, which would have changed the entire meaning of the story, but rather that he “preferred” not to. This might state the power of having a choice and he prefers not to. I think this is a clear evidence about our freedom of choice and our willfulness in refusing something. The difficulty here is to find out what moves Bartleby.

     The fact that he works nonstop in the beginning and that the narrator points out how much he admires his good service (although his manner is rather strange), gives me the idea that he wants to say that he can do the job very well, without any difficulty and with the utmost efficiency but because the work is so automatic and non-creative he starts doing less and less in the office. Here we can see the social message (which has, of course, an implicit personal side to it). Nobody forced B. to be a scrivener and perhaps we can assume that he knew what the job would be like. So I am really starting to think that he wanted to prove something but in a rather odd way. It seemed odd that he kept saying “no” but did not actually do anything, meaning he did not rebel against something in a practical matter and in the end he just dies. Maybe just saying “no” was rebellious enough. On the other hand, I can understand why there are critics who say that he might have been a troubled person. Maybe he took individuality to the extreme.

What do you make of his “profound conviction” that the easiest life is the best? Do

you share this conviction?

Like many, the layer prefers security above all. He prefers to have “prudence” and “method”. Personally, I do think that prudence can be a good quality and a bad one. Perhaps that is way Melville presented us such opposed personalities (lawyer and Bartleby). Bartleby proved not to be so prudent or even “a safe men”, but he had something that his boss did not have: courage and the will “to take the road not taken”, the road only few take. Personally, the easiest way of life often doesn’t fill my soul. I discovered that fighting for something tastes much better than when things are too easy accomplished. I understood that accepting is not always something to be proud about and throughout my life I understood how difficult saying “No” is and at the same time how necessary it is.

To conclude, the lawyer is touched by Bartleby’s death. I think that he understood that it takes a lot to be a Bartleby but at the same time, due to his personality, he does not feel bad for leading the life he did and by thinking that life should be easy. 

Entry 2

Nathaniel Hawthorne

       I had already heard about Nathaniel’s Hawthorne book “The Scarlett Letter”. I actually bought it because I intend to read it quite soon. But I knew very little about the author and after the class I went to look up on him a bit further. What caught my attention and made me do some research as soon as I got home was a small detail mentioned by our teacher: that he had changed is name (added the “w”) because of his ancestry, probably to distance himself from it. It is said that it might have been because of his uncle, John Hathorne, who was one of the judges in the Salem trials, the only one who never repented of his actions.

      I never thought that I would finally hear about the Salem witch trials at University, even if we aren’t going to study it in detail. But I did my personal research and of course everything connects to everything else – the Calvinist and puritan religious context of the time. I actually learnt that in Salem village things were pretty harsh because of these religious fanatics of the time. Villagers could not celebrate Easter and Christmas because they said it had roots in paganism (which is also something that interests me since I heard about Wicca), they had to attend to the meeting house for a three hour sermon twice a week, and toys were almost forbidden, specially dolls because they were regarded as a pure waste of one’s time.

      Reading this made me think that no society or community is perfect. All of them have their faults and what keeps surprising me every time through this learning process is the power of the church and the power of faith – how it helped people and how it devastated them.

      But know I want to focus on the Maypole of Merry-Mount which was highly interesting.

      We read it in class with our teacher, who was an important guide because otherwise I wouldn’t have understood it as well as I did. 
     While coming acquainted with the merry mounters I soon became aware of the concept of hedonism that was present in their community, which strikes a huge difference between them and the Puritans.

Merry Mounters and Hedonism vs. Puritans and Austerity

      The Merry Mounters take the concept of hedonism and carpe diem to an extreme that makes it an unsustainable kind of life, plus they produce flowers which goes accordingly to their philosophy of life. This way of living is utopic and clearly unsustainable, yet it can offer interesting symbolism and contrast with the Puritan way of life. Producing flowers could have been an extreme example used by Hawthorne to better expose the contrast between them and the Puritans.

     The characters Edith and Edgar prove that it is no sustainable – it was not the Puritans who took them out of Merry Mount but the very fact with their marriage, they were brought to reality. Reality and suffering exist side by side with real life and happiness, so looking back they understood that the merry mounters lived on false happiness or an illusion. In my opinion, the couple represents the natural course of life. They knew about mirth but not about love (or at least monogamous love). They learnt that with love and happiness there is also pain because they grow in love, they grow a higher level of conscience which makes them more vulnerable, which is normal.

      However, if I had to choose, I will choose to live among the merry mounters. In contrast to the Puritans that were there at the time, it is easier to find sense in their choice of life. They might have wanted a sort of dream world, completely different from the rigid puritan one. They did not want to worship God but Nature instead. They did not find sense in the whipping post and in punishing people, they rather preferred to be merry and dance around a maypole, celebrating freedom.

     We can strike their difference, for instance, by analysing their symbols. The Merry Mounters have the Maypole as a symbol. It is the object that bounds them together, representing the idea of a “permanent spring”, a permanent festival. The Maypole was a permanent one, meaning that the celebration and being merry was throughout the whole year. On the other hand, the Puritans have the Whipping Post, which can symbolise their austere way of life and, in my opinion, a sadistic one. Puritans claimed that whatever they did, they did it in the name of God but didn’t they find pleasure in punishment? The human being is and always have been vicious.

Merry Mounters of today

      In addition to what we have studied about the story of Merry Mount, we acknowledged that their way of living and their beliefs are concepts that we still find today. Some people, nowadays, hang on to those beliefs - what we nowadays call “hippies” or “free thinkers”.  Still today, we can find communities or people that dance around a maypole for several different reasons that are now seen as something different rather than something to be reprimanded or punished about.

      We can become acquainted with that if we read through the article by Rich Beattie: “Maypole Festivals: Dancing to celebrate spring”. In this article we see that dancing around the Maypole is something quite ancient, practiced for different reasons. In the Medieval times, for example, they did it to ensure a “fruitful planting season”. Obviously the church disapproved of it because of its pagan roots. Fortunately the world as changed so much, due to its relief from religious tensions and power, that we often see some rituals or dancing happening only to celebrate May Day as being the International Workers’ Day.

     However, Beltane often is celebrated by dancing around a maypole, which brings us back to the pagan roots. Neo-pagans and wiccans still celebrate Beltane as the Gaelic May Day festival held on the first of May, along with other seasonal festivals like Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh.

Often we can see people celebrating Beltane by dancing around a maypole or with bonfires, which is the case of wiccans.

     From what I have read in a book called “Ritos e Mistérios Secretos do Wicca” by Gilberto de Lascariz, Wiccans have two types of celebrations: Esbat and Sabat. Both celebrations have more to do with the attainment of a higher consciousness and spiritual growth, along with pagan rituals and by celebrating the cycles of nature. It is, therefore, important to point out that for Wiccans, celebrating Sabats is more than agricultural festivities where they just celebrate the cycle of the earth’s fertility.

     Nowadays, in Scotland, the Beltane Fire Festival holds high success among those who celebrate Beltane. This revival started in 1988.  Although the festival holds the traditional Gaelic background and reasons (which can be many accordingly to what one believes in) it includes cultural and modern art events, which incorporates myth and drama from a variety of world cultures and diverse literary sources.

( Photos taken by Jasper Schwartz - Beltane Festival Fire, 2014)