Transcript Poetry of the Stars

POETRY OF THE STARS
A LITERARY INTERLUDE
John C. Mannone
SWEETWATER PUBLIC LIBRARY
MAY 3, 2003
Abstract: Our literary heritage and the science of
astronomy are both appreciated more by studying how the
Sun, moon, stars, and planets are used in poetry.
Examples of how both metaphor and physics blend will
be presented through the quill of Frost, Byron, and
Longfellow, as well as authors of some classic and ancient
texts.
INTRODUCTION
Poetry of the Stars
The stars sing a symphony of a mystery, alas!
Which the Astronomer tries to unlock,
With eyes on the magical looking glass;..And
Physicists do marvel their spectral frock
With equations of light and size and mass;..But
Poets see the stellar bright so awestruck;
With clever words, your lonely heart he’ll bless;..For
The stars ring a harmony of a beauty unsurpassed.
John C. Mannone
October 1, 2002
ASTRONOMY
AND
POETIC LITERATURE
SYNERGISM
ASTRONOMY IS GOOD FOR LITERATURE
LITERATURE IS GOOD FOR ASTRONOMY
LITERATURE IS REPLETE WITH
ASTRONOMICAL REFERENCES
LITERATURE IS ENHANCED
BY THE STELLAR METAPHORS
ASTRONOMY IS APPRECIATED
THROUGH SUBTLE EMBELLISHMENTS
POETRY AS THE LITERARY VEHICLE
CAPTURES EMOTION EFFECTIVELY
INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC
PHILOSOPHICAL AND ANALYTICAL
ALLITERATIVE ARRAY OF ASTRONOMICAL ALLUSIONS
ALL ASSORTED APPLICATIONS
METAPHORICAL
METAPHYSICAL
MATTER OF FACT
MATTER OF HISTORICAL DATES
MONTH TO MILLENIA
MATTER OF HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE
MONUMENTAL
MATTER OF VALIDATION
MATTER OF LAW
MAGISTRATIVE
MELADRAMATIC
MYSTICAL AND MAGICAL
MAJICAL
MAGNIFICENCE
LITERARY ASPECTS
OF
POETRY
POETRY
ANCIENT HEBREW POETRY
WORD PICTURE (PARALLELISM OF IDEAS)
CLASSIC GREEK POETRY
METER (PARALLELISM OF TIME)
TRADITIONAL ENGLISH POETRY
RHYME (PARALLELISM OF SOUND)
ANCIENT HEBREW POETRY
Symbolic parallelism through an analogy:
An artist gathers the canvas, the brushes, the paints.
He sketches an outline, then carefully fills in the details.
An aesthetically pleasing picture is created,
first with broad strokes, then with precise measure.
Torah (1500 BC)
As an example, recall the creation account in the Hebrew Scriptures:
Note the poetry in the general theme,
Darkness, formless, and void => Light, firmament, and life
In coarse details (the broad strokes of creation),
The sea, the sky, the land created =>
The fish, the fowl, the animals filled the earth
In fine details,
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
(Genesis 1: 27)
Note the repetition for emphasis, but more importantly the mirror
imaging of words for the visual effect. Note the coupled clauses.
Book of Psalms (1000 BC)
An Astronomy example,
He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down.
(Psalm 104: 19)
This is actually a profound statement about the “two great lights”.
Earth’s seasons are stabilized by the Moon holding the spin axis
rigidly (alternating prolonged ice ages and scorching desert ages)
Earth is in a very stable orbit around the Sun to ensure the extremely
narrow “Goldilocks” zone for habitation.
CLASSIC GREEK POETRY
short
da
The Long and the Short of it
Unlike the poetry of English and many other modern
European languages, which is based on patterns of stress
accent, Greek meter is based on patterns of long and short
syllables.
In Greek verse, the basic unit of time is the mora; A short
syllable is a single mora and a long two. Groups of syllables
of up to six or even seven morae divisions, are called feet.
These patterns are the fundamental building blocks of Greek
verse.
Lines can be defined by grouping a certain kind of foot; if
there are 3, it’s a trimeter; 4, a tetrameter; 5, a pentameter; etc
up to seven.
long
DUM
Iambic pentameter is the building block of about two- thirds
of medieval and Renaissance English poetic forms. Words like
divine, caress, bizarre, and delight sound sort of like a
heartbeat: daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM[da].
We hold these truths to be self-evident
Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence"
Homer (800 BC) and Hesiod (700 BC)
The dactylic, or heroic, hexameter is the meter of Epic. It is also the meter of a didactic poet like Hesiod.
But its all Greek to me,
so here is a translation…
“Moreover, she made the wind fair and warm for him, and gladly did Ulysses
spread his sail before it, while he sat and guided the raft skillfully by means of
the rudder. He never closed his eyes, but kept them fixed on the Pleiads, on
late-setting Bootes, and on the Bear- which men also call the wain, and which
turns round and round where it is, facing Orion, and alone never dipping into
the stream of Oceanus- for Calypso had told him to keep this to his left. Days
seven and ten did he sail over the sea, and on the eighteenth the dim outlines
of the mountains on the nearest part of the Phaeacian coast appeared, rising
like a shield on the horizon.” (Homer, The Odyssey, Book V, translated
Samuel Butler)
Athens, Greece
October 1, 800 BC
8 PM Local Time
Arcturus
Polaris
Pleiades
Ursa Major
Sky Chart III
TRADITIONAL ENGLISH POETRY
Rhyme the most prominent of the literary artifices used in
versification.
Used in ancient East Asian poetry
Rarely in ancient Greek and Roman poetry.
When classical quantitative meters were replaced by accentual
meters, rhyme began to develop, especially in the sacred Latin
poetry of the early Christian church.
Rhyme Scheme and Structure
ASTRONOMICAL ASPECTS
IN
POETRY
PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY TIME LINE
APPLICABLE TO THE POET AND THE POEM
1667 A.D.
1718 A.D.
1802 A.D.
1826 A.D.
1862 A.D.
1862 A.D.
1872 A.D.
1877 A.D.
1879 A.D.
1900 A.D.
1905 A.D.
1905 A.D.
1908 A.D.
1908 A.D.
Newton discovers law of universal gravitation.
Edmund Halley discovers stars move through space.
William Herschel shows many double stars are binaries.
Olbers paradox
William Huggins identifies chemical elements in stars.
Edmund Haley discovers first white dwarf (Sirius B).
Henry Draper photographs of the stellar spectrum of Vega.
Giovanni Schiaparelli discovers "canals" of Mars.
Stefan-Boltzmann Law
Planck Radiation Law
Mount Wilson Observatory was established for study of the Sun.
Albert Einstein introduces Special Theory of Relativity
Hertzsprung describes giant and dwarf stars.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovers Cepheid variables.
PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY TIME LINE
APPLICABLE TO THE POET AND THE POEM
1914 A.D.
1914 A.D.
1916 A.D.
1917 A.D.
1923 A.D.
1926 A.D.
1927 A.D.
1929 A.D.
1930 A.D.
1931 A.D.
1932 A.D.
1937 A.D.
1938 A.D.
1948 A.D.
Hertzsprung-Russel diagram
Robert Goddard begins practical rocketry.
Albert Einstein introduces his General Theory of Relativity.
100” Mt. Wilson Telescope
Hubble shows that galaxies exist outside the Milky Way galaxy.
Robert Goddard uses first liquid rocket fuel.
Oort shows the center of the Milky Way galaxy is in Sagittarius.
Edwin Hubble discover’s Hubble’s Law
Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
Karl Jansky discovers cosmic radio waves.
Chadwick discovers the neutron in atom splitting experiments.
First radio telescope built by Grote Reber.
Hans Bethe proposes the proton-proton fusion process in the Sun.
200” Mt. Polamar Telescope
MYTHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
IN
POETRY
Bulfinch's Mythology
By
Thomas Bulfinch
To
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Poet Alike Of The Many And Of The Few,
This Attempt To Popularize
Mythology,
And Extend The Enjoyment Of Elegant Literature,
Is Respectfully Inscribed
LITERARY INTERLUDE
THE POETRY OF ROBERT LEE FROST
1874-1963
Frost's poetry is structured within traditional metrical and rhythmical schemes;
he disliked free verse (not constrained by rhyme or rhythm).
Frost's emotional range is wide and deep.
Much of his poetry is concerned with the interaction between humans and
nature. Frost regarded nature as a beautiful but dangerous force.
His work shows his strong sympathy for the values of early American society.
*
A Star in a Stone Boat
The Star-Splitter
Fire and Ice
The Freedom of the Moon
Fireflies in the Garden
Acquainted with the Night
Canis Major
On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
Lost in Heaven
Moon Compasses
The Lesson for Today
The Literate Farmer and the Planet Venus
Were I in Trouble
Bravado
On Making Certain Anything Has Happened
In the Long Night
Astrometaphysical
The Milky Way is a Cow Path
Some Science Fiction
Two Leading Lights
Etherealizing
Why Wait for Science
Take Something Like a Star
Choose Something Like a Star
Robert Frost 1947
O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud -It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says ``I burn.''
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise of blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
Choose Something Like a Star
Robert Frost 1947
Frost refers to Keat’s poem, “Bright Star” (1819); an Eremite is a
hermit detached and watching, much like a muse. The star is detached
from the Earth as if lofty and watchful. The star cannot tell him about
the meaning of life, only what the “heavens declare”.
Blackbody radiation was understood turn of the 20th century. Star
light peak wavelength gives star’s surface temperature [lambda,
meters = 0.0029/T (K)].
Elemental analysis from star light was understood (Huggins 1862).
Stellar spectroscopy was well established by the middle of 20th
century. It was taught in basic college science courses and amateur
astronomers would have been privy at that time.
STARS APPEAR AS COLORED JEWELS
CLASSIFIED TO BY COLOR AND TEMPERATURE
The Star-Splitter
Robert Frost 1923
You know Orien always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains…
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities…
…not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.
He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand…
Orion Constellation Clear New England Sky December 1947
Starry Night Backyard
6” Clark Refractor
Diffraction Limited Angular Resolution
q = 2.5 x 105 l/D
(arcsecond)
Star Splitter
1802 A.D.
Robert Frost 1923
William Herschel shows many double stars are binaries.
January 31, 1862, while testing the lens of the Dearborn Telescope,
Alvan Graham discovered the faint companion (a white dwarf) to
Sirius. The German astronomer Bessel, years before had predicted this
companion from the wobbling motion of that brightest star in the sky.
THE POETRY OF ANN AND JANE TAYLOR
1782-1866
1783-1824
These sisters were well known poem and hymn writers who lived in Stockwell
Street, Colchester
The Star
Ann and Jane Taylor 1806
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are !
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When she nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the trav'ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro' my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
'Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav'ller in the dark :
Tho' I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
The Star
Ann and Jane Taylor 1806
Starlight is actually too faint to light your path; however, celestial
navigation has been very useful to explorers.
Possibly, there seems to be a subtle reference to the Star of Bethlehem
guiding the weary travelers.
The atmosphere bends the light of stars, distant points of light; the
turbulence in the upper atmosphere causes a constant shimmering
(scintillation)- stars twinkle.
Planets are much closer; their reflected light is randomized. This
smoothes-out any twinkle.
THE POETRY OF LORD BYRON (George Gordon)
1788-1824
A poetic chronicle of travels and thoughts of a wayward, wild, immoral youth
who grows weary of his ways and seeks to gain a surer foothold on life by
traveling to Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Baltics.
Reflects on the fierce culture of the Albanians and the past glory of Greece, on
Waterloo and Napoleon in Belgium, on the Alps, the Rhine and the battles fought
there.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,
If in your bright leaves we could read the fate
Of men and empires-'tis to be forgiven
That, in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state
And claim a kindred with you: for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life have named
Themselves a star. (Canto III, part lxxxviii)
THE POETRY OF JOHN KEATS
1795-1821
John Keats was born in 1795 in Moorfields, England, the son of a stableman.
His father died when John was eight, his mother died of tuberculosis when
He was fourteen. At fifteen, apprenticed as an apothecary-surgeon. Soon after,
John left the medical field to focus primarily on poetry, inspired by
Shakespeare.
Few poets ascend to the level of John Keats. He was 26 when he died of
tuberculosis,
He was considered, along with Wordsworth, to be the Romantic poet of the
19th century.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" is an expression of Keats's
melancholy. When he wrote this poem, he was still quite sick and it was
obvious that his ill-health was not improving. As a consequence, he developed
a negative outlook on life. He expressed himself with the following poem, one
I consider to be among his finest.
BRIGHT STAR
John Keats 1819
Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art-Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moorsNo-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.
THE POETRY OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
1807-1882
First great American poet.
A master of metrical verse- he favored hexameters.
“It is a curious of fact of looking through the telescope to make one
feel warm in a cold night; that is, to forget the body wholly. The souls
seems to exert its supremacy and to walk among the stars.” (January
5, 1848 Journal entry concerning the Great Telescope at Harvard)
THE LIGHT OF STARS
Longfellow 1838
The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.
There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.
Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
O no! from that blue tent above,
A hero's armor gleams.
And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.
O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.
Within my breast there is no light
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.
The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.
O fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
"This poem was written on a beautiful summer night. The moon, a
little strip of silver, was just setting behind the groves of Mount
Auburn, and the planet Mars blazing in the southeast. There was a
singular light in the sky; and the air was cool and still” (written ex
post facto to his wife Fanny Longfellow Oct 6, 1846)
AN ASTRONOMICAL ANALYSIS of THE LIGHT OF STARS:
LONGFELLOW’S MARS IN PERIHELION OPPOSITION
By John C. Mannone
Has been submitted for publication in Sky and Telescope
THE POETRY OF JOYCE KILMER
1886-1918
Killed in the service of his country.
Like his famous poem, “Trees,”
“Stars” is simplistic but profound.
STARS
Kilmer 1914
Bright stars, yellow stars, flashing through the air,
Are you errant strands of Lady Mary's hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends down through,
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?
Gay stars, little stars, you are little eyes,
Eyes of baby angels playing in the skies.
Now and then a winged child turns his merry face
Down toward the spinning world -- what a funny place!
Jesus Christ came from the Cross (Christ receive my soul!)
In each perfect hand and foot there was a bloody hole.
Four great iron spikes there were, red and never dry,
Michael plucked them from the Cross and set them in the sky.
Christ's Troop, Mary's Guard, God's own men,
Draw your swords and strike at Hell and strike again.
Every steel-born spark that flies where God's battles are,
Flashes past the face of God, and is a star.