Thursday, September 13, 2012
The Love of Plants.
I personally really enjoyed reading this poem. I thought it was awesome how Darwin personified the plants. At times, I even forgot he was talking about plants. I found the poem to be very beautiful and magically. However, when reading the poem again with the footnotes the magical element is lost and the poem is less enchanting. The footnotes constantly brought me out of the poem and were frankly just taxing to read. It also loses some of the interpretive meaning with the footnotes. However, as a whole I thought the poem was beautifully written and that Darwin did an amazing job making plants interesting and relatable.
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I completely agree. I too found the footnotes cumbersome while reading. I was more interested in Darwin's creative side rather than the scientific side he seemed to be forcing on the reader. Before class, I saw Darwin and his footnotes as the Alice in the Wonderland that was the poem. But, especially after our discussion on Thursday, I can see how the footnotes add a bit to the interpretation of the poem. They kind of seem like intentional distractions from Darwin's social criticism.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is definitely possible that Darwin crafted the poem to be "scientific" in order to convey his radical ideas about sexuality and the social order. But he also speculated that some plants had feelings: the mimosa, for example, shrinks from the touch, which he compares to animals fainting from pain or fatigue (p. 25). Here, Darwin makes a comparison that suggests a link between the animal and plant worlds, and the verse links both of these to the very human feeling of fear.
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