Paige Lollie: Thalaba

I found Thalaba the Destroyer strangely similar to the epic story/poem (I believe the very first known) of Gilgamesh. Since it was said that Southey studied the religions and was making the connections between them and finding how very similar some can be, I wonder if he used Gilgamesh as a reference as well.

I find it similar in the epic tale of it and a bit of the writing. I'm not sure if I am just imagining it or not. But it is a curious idea to see if he used it within his work. I also wonder how many other different texts he has used within his work.

And for some weird reason, when I first read the title of the work on the syllabus H.P. Lovecraft popped into my mind.

Does anyone else seem similarities between Thalaba and other specific epic texts?

Also (this is a bit different topic then above) when we brought up the discussion on how he seemed to take things from others and how it made at least one critic upset. Then there was also the poem he created and I wonder if he is serious or not. I'm also curious if he has done this before and just how trustworthy Southey is within his work.

Southey's Ridiculously Long Footnotes

Like many of my classmates, I too disliked the footnotes in Thalaba.  Unlike the footnotes from Darwin's The Loves of the Plants, which actually gave new insight to what the poem was about, Southey's use of footnotes only seemed to restate what he wrote in the poem and clutter the pages. I found myself becoming frustrated by the repetition which took away from my overall experience of reading the poem.

criticism of Southey's footnotes

Here's Francis Jeffrey's take on Southey's footnotes from his Review of Thalaba:

"Though the tissue of adventures through which Thalaba is conducted in the course of this production, be sufficiently various and extraordinary, we must not set down any part of the incidents to the credit of the author's invention. He has taken great pains, indeed, to guard against such a supposition; and has been as scrupulously correct in the citation of his authorities, as if he were the compiler of a true history, and thought his reputation would be ruined by the imputation of a single fiction. There is not a prodigy, accordingly, or a description, for which he does not fairly produce his vouchers, and generally lays before his readers the whole original passage from which his imitation has been taken. In this way, it turns out, that the book is entirely composed of scraps, borrowed from the oriental tale-books, and travels into the Mahometan countries, seasoned up for the English reader with some fragments of our own ballads, and shreds of our elder sermons. The composition and harmony of the work, accordingly, is much like the pattern of that patch-work drapery hat is sometimes to be met with in the mansions of the industrious, where a blue tree overshadows a shell-fish, and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up Palemon and Lavinia. The author has the merit merely of cutting out each of his figures from the piece where its inventor had placed it, and stitching them down together in these judicious combinations.

It is impossible to peruse this poem, with the notes, without feeling that it is the fruit of much reading, undertaken for the express purpose of fabricating some such performance. The author has set out with a resolution to make an oriental story, and a determination to find the materials of it in the books to which he had access. Every incident, therefore, and description, — every superstitious usage, or singular tradition, that appeared to him susceptible of poetical embellishment, or capable of picturesque representation, he has set down for this purpose, and adopted such a fable and plan of composition, as might enable him to work up all his materials, and interweave every one of his quotations, without any extraordinary violation of unity or order. When he had filled his common-place book, he began to write; and his poem is little else than his common-place book versified."

Summary of the plot of Thalaba

In his review of Thalaba the Destroyer, Francis Jeffrey summarizes the poem's plot:

A 'corporation of magicians, that inhabit "the Domdaniel caverns, under the roots of the ocean," had discovered, that a terrible destroyer was likely to rise up against them from the seed of Hodeirah, a worthy Arab, with eight fine children. Immediately the murder of all those innocents is resolved on; and a sturdy assassin sent with instructions to destroy the whole family (as Mr. Southey has it) "root and branch." The good man, accordingly, and seven of his children, are dispatched; but a cloud comes over the mother and the remaining child; and the poem opens with the picture of the widow and her orphan wandering, by night, over the desarts of Arabia. The old lady, indeed, might is well have fallen under the dagger of the Domdanielite; for she dies, without doing any thing for her child, in the end of the first book; and little Thalaba is left crying in the wilderness. Here he is picked up by a good old Arab, who takes him home, and educates him like a pious Musselman; and he and the old man's daughter fall in love with each other, according to the invariable custom in all such cafes. The magicians, in the mean time, are hunting him over the face of the hole earth; and one of them gets near enough to draw his dagger to stab him, when a providential simoom lays him dead on the sand. From the dead sorcerer's finger, Thalaba takes a ring, inscribed with some unintelligible characters, which he is enabled interpret by the help of some other unintelligible characters that he finds on the forehead of a locust; and soon after takes advantage of an eclipse of the sun, to set out on his expedition against his father's murderers, whom he understands (we do not very well know how) he has been commissioned to exterminate. Though they are thus seeking him, and he seeking them, it is amazing what difficulty they find in meeting: they do meet, however, every now and then, and many sore evils does the Destroyer suffer at their hands. By faith and fortitude, however, and the occasional assistance of the magic implements he strips them of, he is enabled to baffle and elude their malice, till he is conducted, at last, to the Domdaniel cavern, where he finds them asembled, and pulls down the roof of it upon their heads and his own; perishing, like Samson, in the final destruction of his enemies.'

What Will Thalaba Destroy?

It took me a few pages to get into Thalaba or understand what was more or less going on, but at some parts it really sped up and easier to at least understand on the surface what was happening. I'm not sure if Southey was directing writing about Islam or just a made up religion similar to it since there was the Prophet but his name was Houd? I also wanted to know what the other clouds would have done had the messenger picked the red or white one. All of this may have been in the apparently extensive footnotes, but I lost my course pack so I read it on Google Books. One thing that kind of bothered me was the extremely long speech by Aswad. Even if I was trapped in solitude for a thousand years or something, I don't feel like I'd have to energy to explain my whole life story in one breath. It was just too long-winded for me, I needed some breaks or pauses in there. But back to the Islam thing, I'd like to know more about how much Southey really knew about the religion, and how accurate it would've been if this is a commentary on it.

Southey The Confusing

I was surprised by how much I liked Thalaba.  I found the footnotes to be distracting, as previously mentioned, but the story started to really flow for me.  There were some passages or lines that really stuck out to me.  One of the first parts that I had to stop and reread was at the beginning and Thalaba is cursing god, asking what wrongs they did to deserve such a punishment (4).  The raw exclamations are believeable.  They are the questions every person asks at some point in their life. I also really enjoyed on page 5 when he says "The Day of the Trial will come, When I shall understand how profitable/ It is to suffer now".  Maybe this stuck out because I'm in college and have a to do list three pages long, maybe it's simply human nature.  When they discuss the camel and how "She knew me as I past, She stared me in the face" I had chills run down my spine.  I can understand the practice, but to think that another living creature is aware of what's going on and has no way to save itself is beyond depressing. My absolute favorite line is the closing to the poem: He stood amid the Wilderness, alone.  I had to simply sit back in my seat and give myself a moment to process before reading it through again with footnotes.  I still feel like I didn't understand what was happening every moment, and I couldn't find a good online summary, so I'm excited to talk about it in class.

Southey

A little bit like Lord of the Rings, a little bit like Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel, and similar to Scott’s work, I think Southey is using prevalent supernatural qualities to make a comment on religion's underlying superstition. From researching, I think Southey was an idealist who had grand ideas for society and religion. He very much thought religion played a unique role in the human experience. 

Kindred Souls

I loved reading "Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting".  It was nice to read something so conversational, especially after reading Southey.  Benjamin writes with a kind of fervor and passion that swept me up into his excitement.  I love finding a good book, but the kind of skill and drive he talks about blows me out of the water.  I never realized it was such an intense and involved process.  My kind of book collecting is similar to what he talks about on page 63 when he says that "I have made my most memorable purchases on trips".  I think my favorite purchase was a ragged, dog-eared copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" from a resale corner shop in Seattle.  This building was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, wrapped in ivy with heavy wooden doors.  I fully agree that the story of acquisition is key, but I don't think it necesarily has to be a one of a kind book for it to have meaning. I'm attached to every copy of a book that I have, and I experience the same kind of emotions that Benjamin does, just at a lower cost.   Also, after writing this entry I decided to try and find a photo of the bookshop, and although I don't have any photos of the shop I do have one from my trip (I was 16 and thought big sunglasses and silly faces were cool-leave me alone) after I spent the day on the beach reading the book.

Southey's footnotes

Seriously. There are pages in this poem that have a single line of actual content, and the footnotes take up the rest of the page in small print. As someone who loves putting things in context, I enjoy and hate this. It reminded me of Darwin's Loves of the Plants, the footnotes in some cases taking up more than the actual poem. A simple reference could have sufficed, or at least added these additions to the end. Instead, the reader is drawn back and forth in a weird pulling motion between Southey's actual poem and his footnotes. I suppose one could read the poem first, then revisit the footnotes later, but I feel like this method is not effective for reading poetry. Poetry and footnotes should complement each other, not fight for page space.

Thalaba The Destroyer/ religious

At the beginning of the piece, all I could think about was how it was a lot like Aladdin the disney movie, because the palace was in a desert and it vanished at the end. The poem had many lessons to learn involving religion and that it was mostly about pleading to God for rain. It made me feel really depressed when the mother asked to be taken away by the Angel of Death, leaving the child alone to fend for himself to avenge his father and spread to word to others. The poem was interesting to read and the preface introduced what was to read and how to take the new style of writing like Wordsworth did, but it was a lot less boring! This poem was very interesting and I liked that it wasn't that hard to follow except for the names of the characters...that was crazy, but I did like that it taught a moral lesson, even though it was long because of the footnotes. Overall, it was great.

Thalaba the Destroyer

Wow. My brain hasn't been this scattered since I read House of Leaves for the first time. The footnotes were so expansive! I think there may be more footnotes than lines... Not only that, but there was another poem in the footnotes to give homage to one line Southey found beautiful enough to reproduce in his own. I do like some of the back history of the things that he discusses in the poem, but I feel he has almost taken some of the magic of his own storytelling away by telling the story again in the footnote. Maybe it is just me being neurotic, but I really dislike being told things twice within moments of each other.
Other thoughts: I enjoyed the details much more than the spoken portions.
I will also say, that after such a journey wading through footnotes and endless tale, I would read the rest of the poem to see how it ends.

Arabesque interesting fact:
Before his untimely death, Muhammad also left behind few indications about how to build proper houses of worship. With little to go on, his successors modeled Moslem holy edifices on Muhammad's house in Medina, the only construction project he'd been associated with in life. Eventually these evolved into Islamic "temples," known today as mosques ("places for prostration"), buildings designed for prayer and meditation, not for any presentation of formal services or ceremonies as in Western churches.
Among the few avenues available to artists in this context, rugs for kneeling on during prayers became a focus of creative activity, and from that was born the Persian rug. Also permitted were decorative prayer niches built into walls directing the faithful to bow toward Mecca as they prayed. But since all realistic images were forbidden in early Islam, none of these could contain images with depictions of anything in the visible world, on the reasoning that making images of animals or humans is to challenge Allah who created all things. The result was a system of ornate but non-realistic designs which Westerners eventually came to call "arabesques" (from the French for "Arabic"), which to this day characterize Arabic art throughout the world.
found here

Experimenting with the Blog

The syllabus encourages novel use of the blog. So here's a post-apocalyptic poem I wrote while readying Alas Babylon and listening to one of my favorite bands.

Out of the Darkness, I held a Record

Capital C, Capital C, Capital R

Concussed by Hope run the course of Decay

The others looked on with Twilight Eyes

The Greatest Music of an Era Past

Was sure to strike a change in their Lives

So let the midnight Special Shine a light on me

And forgot good and well

The torment of the fire’s spell

Also, don't ask what twilight eyes are. I don't know.