Love Story (Chap 1-7)

" Love means never having to say you're sorry"

Erich Segal

Erich Segal, an American author who was born on June 16, 1937 and died on January 17, 2010.  He finished Midwood High School in Brooklyn and traveled to Switzerland for summer school. In 1958 he graduated as a poet from Harvard College. Then, 1959 he finished his master's degree and 1965 he obtained a doctorate in literature from Harvard University. In 1975 Segal married to Karen James and they had two daughters, Miranda and Francesca Segal.  Segal suffered from Parkinson's disease and consequently on Janyary 17, 2010 dies from a heart attack. In a speech delivered at his funeral, his daughter Francesca said, "That he fought to breathe, fought to live, every second of the last 30 years of illness with such mind-blowing obduracy, is a testament to the core of who he was -- a blind obsessionality that saw him pursue his teaching, his writing, his running and my mother, with just the same tenacity. He was the most dogged man any of us will ever know." Segal was known for writing the novel Love Story (1970), a best-seller. A New York Times No. 1 bestseller, the book became the top selling work of fiction for 1970 in the United States, and was translated into 33 languages worldwide.

INTRODUCTION:

In the novel “Love Story” written by American author Erich Segal the life of two college students who fall in love with each other is described. The main characters of the narrative are Oliver Barret and IV and Jennifer Cavilleri. Oliver Barret a student of Harvard College, rich, smart and an outstanding hockey player falls in love with Jennifer Cavilleri who plays music and is poor. They come from two different worlds; Oliver is the son of the most important family in region, while Jennifer is the only child in the family whose mother died when she was young. They get married and cherish every single moment of their marriage but at the end one of the main characters dies. There would be no much time to enjoy the life together. 

Chap. 1-7:

The story begins with Oliver telling readers about the death of his wife, saying “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?” I wonder why the story starts in this way. I think the author wanted to inform us that one of the main protagonists of the novel dies without mentioning the reason why the girl dies. In this way the author grabbed our attention right at the beginning of the story. Finally we  read a love story in class. We were back then in 1970s where everything seems to be in a way complicated for two people to fall in love. Even though the protagonist of the story have different social classes, they still fall in love with each other. Everything happens in Radcliffle library when Oliver goes to borrow a book. There he meets the beautiful Italian-American girl called Jennifer and immediately falls in love with her. Even though she says to him "I would not go for coffee with you", she ends up having coffee with Preppie (Oliver). While they were having coffee they introduce their selves. Jennifer tells Oliver that she is a pianist, while Olivers tells her that he plays hockey. I think their love begins when Oliver asks Jennifer why she is staying with him even though he is a loser. She says to him "I like your body". Then, Oliver invites her in the Dartmouth hockey game because he will be playing. After the game, Oliver and Jenny go for a walk where he kisses her. He says to her that he will not call her because he want to see if Jenny cares about his call. Immediately, Jenny asks why, Oliver says that he will call her as soon as he gets home. 

This Be The Verse-By Philip Larkin

On Tuesday we read a collection of poems written by different authors. The one that I liked the most was “This Be The Verse” written by an English poet called Philip Larkin. The poem begins with “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” It is interesting how the author wrote these words right at the beginning of the poem. I think he did this because he wanted to grab our attention and makes you read it till the end. When I read the first line of the poem I started to laugh then I realized that this poem it is one of my favorite. The poem talks about parent-child relationship. At the beginning we see that the author tells us that there will be many cases when something goes wrong our parents will think that is our fault and they do not have to do anything with that. Even if it is not our fault, they still will say that it is ours and maybe sometimes they will add “extra” problems.

The no-reasons of Love by Carlos Drummond de Andrade

The poem:

I love you because I love you

You don't have to be a lover

and not always know how to be one.

I love you because I love you

Love is a status of grace

and it is not payable

Love is given freely

it is sowed in the wind

in the waterfall, in the eclipse

Love runs from dictionaries

and several regulations.

I love you because I don't love

Enough or too much me

Because love is not swapped

nor conjugated nor beloved.

Because love is love for nothing,

happy and strong in itself.

Love is Death's cousin,

and of the death, winner

Even if they kill it (and they kill)

in every moment of love.

Don't kill yourself...

On Thursday we read three poems from Brazilian writer  Carlos Drummond de Andreade. The poems that we read were: Ballad of Love Through the Ages, Dont kill yourself and Seven-Sided Poem. We also read another one called "One Art" written by Elizabeth Bishop. The poem that I mostly liked was "Don't kill yourself" by Carlos Drummon de Andrade.

AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY: 

Carlos Drummond de Andreade was born on 1902 in Itabira in Brazil. He was one of the most important poets of the 20th century. 

His place of birth ITABIRA

He went to a school of pharmacy in Belo Horizonte but never worked s a pharmacist.  

Analysis of the poem:

The main protagonist of the poem is the author itself Carlos. It is like the author is talking to himself and is in a bad situation. The reason why he finds himself in a bad situation is because of love. I guess he is totally destroyed because he broke up with his girlfriend and the only cure for him is suicide. The title of the poem it is like a message “Don’t kill yourself.” Well even if someone finds himself in a bad situation, he/she never should think of suicide. During the process of growing up the people encounter many problems that come as a consequence of something they have done and doubtfully lead them to drastic changes in their lives.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines...

Here is the list of poems that we read yesterday in class:

1. Question- May Swenson

2. Tonight I can write the saddest lines- Pablo Neruda

3. Black Stone on Top of a White Stone- Cesar Vallejo

4. Susie Asado- Gertrude Stein

5. Filling Station -Elizabeth Bishop 

I chose to write about the poem “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” written by a world famous writer Pablo Neruda.

THE AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

Pablo Neruda was born on 12 July 1904 in Chile. Her mother Rosa Basoalto was a teacher and his father José del Carmen Reyes Morales a railway employee. Consequently, his mother dies when he was only a baby and his father married to another woman with whom he had a child. Neruda spent his childhood and youth in Temuco. At the age of thirteenth he published his first work, an essay titled “Entusiasmo y perseverancia” (Enthusiasm and Perseverance) in the newspaper, La Mañana. In 1919 he wins the third place for his poem Comunión ideal or Nocturno ideal. His father did not want to have a poet son so he opposed Neruda’s interest in writing and literature. In 1921 he moved to Santiago to study French at the Universidad de Chile in order to be a teacher, but soon Neruda was devoting himself full time to poetry. In 1923, he publishesh his first volume of verse, Crepusculario ("Book of Twilights") together with Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada ("Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair"), a collection of love poems. Both works were translated into many languages. 

THE POEM:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her void. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

This is the most beautiful love poem that I have ever read. I just love it. The poem is related to the love between two people. I think the reason why Neruda wrote this poem is that he was terribly and deeply in love with a girl. And I guess they broke up therefore he started to write about his feelings. In the poem we see that author tries to convince himself that he did not love her (his girlfriend) we can notice that between them was a powerful love relationship. We also see that through this piece of writing Neruda feels loss, sadness, anger and pain. Moreover, to lose the one you wanted it is hard and really hurts.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. (that is true :p)

"Yoko" "Dover Beach" "My Lover the Sea"

"Poetry is the silent voice that is heard everywhere inside of us..." - Unknow
The doorway to the soul...

Here it comes again another interesting class with Shawn. Today we read three poems and I really enjoyed them. The first one was called “Yoko” written by Thom Gunn, while the second one was called “Dover Beach” written by Matthew Arnold; whereas the last one was called “My Lover the Sea” written by Reinaldo Arenas. I never thought that I am going to like the pomes as much as I do now since I always was interested in short fictions and rarely in reading poems. When I was in primary school my teacher used to read to us short poems and she wanted us to memorize. I had difficulties in memorizing every single word of the poem so that was the most difficult part of it.  On the other hand, when she asked me to recite the poem I started to say it by my own words and all my classmates were laughing. I guess that was the reason why I did not like them. Anyhow, the poems that we read today in class were from different authors and they provided me with lots of emotions. Now I am going to write about each of them separately by expressing my thoughts and feelings…

" Yoko"-Thom Gunn

THE AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

     Thom Gunn was born on August, 1929 in England. His father Herbert Smith and his mother Ann Charlotte were both journalists. When he was only ten years old, they divorced. Later on, his mother commits suicide and that was the reason why he started to love reading. He became interested in the work of Christopher Marlowe, John Keats, John Milton, and Alfred Tennyson, and as well as other prose writers. As a child together with his father he travelled all around the world and served in the British Army for two years. In addition, he attended University College School in Hampstead, in London. He studied English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge and graduated in 1953. As soon as he graduated from the college, he published his first collection of poems called “Fighting terms”.  In 1954, Gunn decided to move to the United States where he begun graduate study at Stanford University. In 1957 he published his second collection called “The Sense of Movement”. Most of his life he spent in America. Gunn said, "Being English is very important to me since I spent my first twenty-five years in England. On the other hand … living in America is very important to me too, since I have spent more than half my life in this country.  On the other hand, he was interested in different issues such as homosexuality and exploration of drugs. Many of his friends died from AIDS, therefore in “The Man with Night Sweats" and "In Time of Plague” he wrote about AIDS and how people face death. His final book of poetry was “Boss Cupid” published on 2000. He received many literature awards such as the Levinson Prize, an Arts Council of Great Britain Award, a Rockefeller Award, the W. H. Smith Award, the PEN (Los Angeles) Prize for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Prize etc. Consequently, because of acute polysubstance (he was a user of methamphetamine) he dies in 2004. 

ANALYSIS OF THE POEM “YOKO”

What grabbed my attention right at the beginning of the poem is the title of it “Yoko”. I don’t know why! Maybe it is because I have never heard it before and somehow immediately made me think of Japanese and Chinese world.  Actually, I made some research because I wanted to know what does the name “Yoko” means. I found out that it is a Japanese girl name and means “good girl” and “sun child”. It seems to be unique and it is used only in Japan. Now going back to the poem as we discussed in class the speaker of it is a dog. It is the first time that I read a poem in a way written by a dog. It is the dog, the one who is narrating about his life and his owner. Here in this poem I noticed the dog a little bit scared because of the firecrackers mentioned in the poem. In the real life in many events we hear firecrackers and we too as humans sometimes are scared of them. But here the dog is extremely afraid and it is mystified by them. He cannot even find a tranquil place where to hide. Even though the dog tried to avoid them, he cannot stop thinking of them. On the other hand, there it comes the part when the dog tells the readers about its owner and how much he loves him/her. I never get to understand if the owner of the dog is male or female. Anyhow, the relationship between the pets and humans is untouchable. They consider each other as a part of their daily lives and cannot live without each other. In today’s society dogs are so much part of humans. The relationship they create between each other no one can interfere. It is like a child who cannot live without its mom because he/she is used to have her around. People who own pets they treat them as their own children, they even speak to them. For instance, when they are feeling lonely they start to talk to them and suddenly they become close friends.

It is him, my leader, my love
Now I can smell him, what a good man he is
As he enters I yodel with happiness
I care about him more than anything

 

The lines which I highlighted in red color are the best ones for me. From these lines we can see that Yoko cares and loves its owner. Moreover, “he can smell what good man he is”. I can see here that that dog knows every single step of human so Yoko in this case he can even the smell the goodness of its owner. For Yoko its owner is everything and cannot even see itself without him. Finally, I just want to share some quotes related to dogs: 

Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?  I think that is how dogs spend their lives.  ~Sue Murphy~

If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.  ~Karel Čapek~

Happiness is a warm puppy.  ~Charles M. Schulz~

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.  ~Christopher Morley~