Poetry and paintings

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Poetry and paintings

• Long-legged Fly
• Genesis
• The West Wind
• Ode to . . .

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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-3. /
William Blake

• What is now proved was once only imagin'd.

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Homework

• 1. John Donnes The Flee (cf. the long-legged
  fly) /Listen http//www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/
  donne/flea.htm
• 2. Write a couplet to describe a mosquito,
  cockroach, bee, or a small insect in daily life
  (e-mail to me next Wednesday ? )
• 3. Revise Sonnet and Ode? collect your works
• 4. Browse William Blakes Illuminated Book
  (gooling into the e-materials!)

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Long-legged fly

• Why?
• Genius fly

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A small fly ?

• The long-legged fly or Dolichopodids are small
  (4-9 mm), slender flies, which are usually
  brilliantly colored with metallic hues of green,
  blue, copper, gold, and silver.

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Biological description

• This is a large family of flies, and species vary
  in their appearance and biology. In general,
  adult flies are medium to small, slender flies
  with green, blue or copper metallic colored
  bodies and long legs. Their wings are clear or
  marked with darker areas towards the wing tips.
  Wing venation patterns are characteristic for
  identification to family.

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Is a fly very common in daily life?

• What makes a long-legged fly so different?

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the fly defying gravity?

• art, beauty, and perfection
• Stanza 1, politics stanza 2, mythology and
  stanza 3, the arts.
• Yeats believed that pure art and pure genius are
  inseparable. ? evidence
• The 3 characters are taken out of the physical
  world and achieve transcendence for a moment,
  like the fly defying gravity

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A long-legged fly, (Diptera Dolichopodidae).
Photo by Jackman
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Genesis

• Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

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• http//tw.fgmtv.org/fgm/artcontent.asp?artID11491
  

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Sistine Chapel

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Genesis

• the painting of the Sistine Chapel by
  Michelangelo.
• such perfect representation of the male form ?
  fertility
• Note the similarity to other stanzas Genius will
  only function in silence.

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Time

• Past-present-future
• The rise ? the fall ? the rebirth
• Caesar ? Helen ? Michael Angelo