Posted by Mr. B
In my compressed English IV class, students have recently read excerpts from the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer." Before reading it, we discussed the almost incomprehensible difference between their world (British Isles before 1000 C.E.) and our own. To read this poem is to look at a snapshot of these ancient people whose lives were so different from our own and whose language was also vastly different. To say that the roots of our language and the precursors of our culture are located among these folk is an all-too-easy generalization that has little strength of meaning if we do not comprehend their astonishing differences from ourselves.
But if we have a sense of our enormous distance from these primitive people, then the slightest connection with them becomes a matter of significance. So, reading lines from "The Seafarer," when we discover feelings of isolation and despair that we ourselves have felt and when we recognize in them the passionate calling to dangerous paths that we know well, something unexpected is happening. When the ancient writer asks, "Who could believe,/ ..., how wearily,/ I put myself back on the paths of the sea." we answer, "We could. We know." When we note that, like ourselves, they use numbers imprecisely for effect ("the sea...showed me suffering in a hundred ships,/In a thousand ports...", that they make metaphor like we do ("My feet were cast/ in icy bands, bound with frost,/With frozen chains,..."), that their lines and rhythms of speech ring with familiarity, we witness a sort of miracle - that language can bridge so much time and change.
To further explore the ancient connections that language alone reveals, Mr. B made an alphabetical list of all the 172 words used in the first 43 lines of "The Seafarer." Using only those words, we wrote poems of our own. Here are three of them read aloud in class today:
A Journey Through Life
No more a sheltered youth
I drifted around seeking
For comfort, in the coldest hearts.
Often smashing me into drowning waves
Of misfortune, tossing and towering
Over me, I was suffering from hardship.
I was left to feel as if torn into
salt and left in the sea. Icy and cold, freezing,
But eagerly I am bound to feel the passion and pleasure
Of laughter instead of pain and sorrow. So I tore
Through myself, anxious to begin a thousand
Journeys of more suffering sorrow and pain
Knowing I was no more a sheltered youth.
by Alicia J.
Smashing sorrow with passion I feel
an anxious beat in myself. I dashed
around misfortune with laughter instead
of pain. I willed myself to feel comfort as
bands of fear begin drifting over me.. In the
icy heart of Fate I taste sorrow on a
knowing horizon for night can blacken
a soul. A thousand waves of misfortune
swept through me. Fairness left. Sorrow
so wretched swept in. Wearily I tore
myself from freezing desolation.
Instead I perched proud towering over
suffering. The chains of pain cast back
to an icy grave.
by Natalie P.
And if that doesn't convince us all that diction - choice of words - is very important, what will?
In my compressed English IV class, students have recently read excerpts from the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer." Before reading it, we discussed the almost incomprehensible difference between their world (British Isles before 1000 C.E.) and our own. To read this poem is to look at a snapshot of these ancient people whose lives were so different from our own and whose language was also vastly different. To say that the roots of our language and the precursors of our culture are located among these folk is an all-too-easy generalization that has little strength of meaning if we do not comprehend their astonishing differences from ourselves.
But if we have a sense of our enormous distance from these primitive people, then the slightest connection with them becomes a matter of significance. So, reading lines from "The Seafarer," when we discover feelings of isolation and despair that we ourselves have felt and when we recognize in them the passionate calling to dangerous paths that we know well, something unexpected is happening. When the ancient writer asks, "Who could believe,/ ..., how wearily,/ I put myself back on the paths of the sea." we answer, "We could. We know." When we note that, like ourselves, they use numbers imprecisely for effect ("the sea...showed me suffering in a hundred ships,/In a thousand ports...", that they make metaphor like we do ("My feet were cast/ in icy bands, bound with frost,/With frozen chains,..."), that their lines and rhythms of speech ring with familiarity, we witness a sort of miracle - that language can bridge so much time and change.
To further explore the ancient connections that language alone reveals, Mr. B made an alphabetical list of all the 172 words used in the first 43 lines of "The Seafarer." Using only those words, we wrote poems of our own. Here are three of them read aloud in class today:
A Journey Through LifeNo more a sheltered youth
I drifted around seeking
For comfort, in the coldest hearts.
Often smashing me into drowning waves
Of misfortune, tossing and towering
Over me, I was suffering from hardship.
I was left to feel as if torn into
salt and left in the sea. Icy and cold, freezing,
But eagerly I am bound to feel the passion and pleasure
Of laughter instead of pain and sorrow. So I tore
Through myself, anxious to begin a thousand
Journeys of more suffering sorrow and pain
Knowing I was no more a sheltered youth.
by Alicia J.
time, the coldest comfort
I was under a weary hunger
frozen in a blackened grave
it was there I sweated wearily to night, sailing on
anxious, suffering, an icy hailstorm
where time was drifting, I left, knowing laughter
left me, the coldest, seeking a hardship
to cast chains around me to comfort me and put me in a quiet night
I, seeking passion from the icy night, was called for a thousand journeys,
sent with gulls perched with misfortune from pleasure, but I groan
on and taste the drifting snow, salt is the taste,
no more knowing of the wine who cast me in chains,
put ports around me, and called birds to put pain on me.
I, roaring with laughter, sail on and watch waves with time, the coldest comfort,
who will offer no passion, only laughter, cold, blackened laughter as time
sails on.
by Dante R.
I was under a weary hunger
frozen in a blackened grave
it was there I sweated wearily to night, sailing on
anxious, suffering, an icy hailstorm
where time was drifting, I left, knowing laughter
left me, the coldest, seeking a hardship
to cast chains around me to comfort me and put me in a quiet night
I, seeking passion from the icy night, was called for a thousand journeys,
sent with gulls perched with misfortune from pleasure, but I groan
on and taste the drifting snow, salt is the taste,
no more knowing of the wine who cast me in chains,
put ports around me, and called birds to put pain on me.
I, roaring with laughter, sail on and watch waves with time, the coldest comfort,
who will offer no passion, only laughter, cold, blackened laughter as time
sails on.
by Dante R.
Smashing sorrow with passion I feelan anxious beat in myself. I dashed
around misfortune with laughter instead
of pain. I willed myself to feel comfort as
bands of fear begin drifting over me.. In the
icy heart of Fate I taste sorrow on a
knowing horizon for night can blacken
a soul. A thousand waves of misfortune
swept through me. Fairness left. Sorrow
so wretched swept in. Wearily I tore
myself from freezing desolation.
Instead I perched proud towering over
suffering. The chains of pain cast back
to an icy grave.
by Natalie P.
And if that doesn't convince us all that diction - choice of words - is very important, what will?
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