Romanticism in Life and Death

Introduction

This essay looks at the analysis of eight short stories. The anthology is a unique collection of short fictional stories related to life, death and love in general. It examines representation of the death of loved and bereavement as well as exploring life and death with the material of eight particular works which are related to short romantics. The goal of my research is to analyse the material on these chosen pieces of American romantic prose and to trace exactly how the traditional life, death and romantic themes, stories and characters are put into practice through the prism of the author's vision, in order to create an anthology. The short stories I will be studying are the literary works of Poe - The oval portrait, Chopin, -the story of an hour, Gilman-the yellow wallpaper, Kafka- Metamorphosis, Faulkner-A rose for Emily,Cheever-The swimmer, Welsh,-Where the debris meets the sea, Lahiri- A temporary matter. I have read these short stories and I will be focusing on background knowledge that I already have based on literature on European and American life, death and love, identify and establishing a common foundation - the poetics and aesthetics of life, death and romanticism, read the biography of writers for the purpose of determining the place of the authors in American literature of the 18-19th century, investigate the specificity of the relationships between the characters and the authors or narrators, determine the criteria and levels of the text, which will compare the analysis of the works, carry out comparative analysis of the short stories, with "The Oval Portrait" being the main focus of the core of discussion. My research hypothesis is that the general provision of the poetics and aesthetics of life, death and love should be different from the individual principles for each of the represented authors.

In my work, I use the following methods of literary research: biographical, structural, cultural, historical, comparative-comparative method, motivic analysis and intertextual analysis. The structure of this essay is in the theoretical part I get acquainted with, regarding the basic provisions of European and American themes suggested in the biography of the authors, with specifics of relationships, and define their place in the literature and consider the history of their literal works. In the practical part of this work, I analyse the short stories presented at the following levels: time-space, system of images of the main characters, plot and compositional level and the level of motivation. In conclusion, I will present the conclusions and finding to which I came to, and try to show how it is understood through the traditional life, death and love themes in the stories and into practice through the prism of the author's vision. Death is indeed a mystery. Despite religion, philosophy and spiritual beliefs, it sure is a subject which leaves a cloud of inevitable mortality. Many of us find comfort in believing that loved are safe and have met with others who have deceased, whilst others believe that they have entered into the afterlife. A scientific study has proven that cells do not automatically self- destruct in preparation for death (Reece et al., 2011). Does this mean that death is un-natural? If so, why does everything and everyone eventually die? (Radford, 2008). For people who have suffered from great despair and lived their lives in hopelessness and misery, death could actually come as a relief. Some believe that god numbs our sensibilities after death and we are taken to paradise. If one has done bad things on earth, they are taken to hell. Is there really a pathway to god? Maybe there is no such thing as death, but instead, reincarnation? Perhaps death is nothing more than a bio-medical accident just in the same way as life is. It is only natural that authors of stories and poems write about death. To write about death, authors have to first write about life. Life and death is usually the plot in short stories and eight stories from the provided readings were identified, which use life and death and love as a plot as central themes.

So as to create wellness, every aspect of human life always has to have its needs met and must work harmoniously. The four aspects of human life are spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. The tangible structure of human life is in the physical aspect. That includes those five senses that allow the human to see, touch, taste, smell and hear the world around. The emotional aspect is the range of emotions within a person from anger and fear to joy and love. The emotional aspect always needs to give and receive compassion, love and forgiveness. The emotional human being always has an inherent need to experience happiness and laugh as well as being joyful with others. The mental aspect consists of the human knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, the human analytical self. The mental aspect requires attitudes that are self-supportive, thoughts and viewpoints that are positive and a self-image that is positive (Klein, 2014). The spiritual aspect is the relationship within oneself, one’s life purpose, creativity and one`s relationship with higher powers. All these are aspects that work in harmony to make wholesome people. What happens to one aspect certainly has an effect on all the other aspects and consequently to the general wellbeing of a human being. I personally feel that the eight stories revolve around ‘The death of love’. The reason for choosing this title for my anthology is because to die is to know what love is. Love has no continuity or has no tomorrow. As love is unknown, so is death.

Analysis

In "The Oval Portrait", and as it being the main story from which the discussions will follow from, I will analyse particular features of space and time, life, death and love. Turning to the oval portrait, I read the vague and quaint words. A Beautiful girl slowly dies while her husband puts one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye on her portrait. Using time, Poe wanted to show how life slowly flows into the death, and vice versa. At first glance, life and death seem to be mutually exclusive, but as I see, they are related to each other and complement each other. The love of painting leads to one’s death. Another reason to call it ‘The death of love’. The painter thinks of the portrait as a means to keep his love alive by imagining the woman in the portrait as his dead wife. In my work, I have considered the views of different scholars linked to life, death and love, in European and American literature. There were engaged researchers such as Kafka, Gilman, Faulkner, Cheever, and others. According to Kafka, I can say that a large and respected group of critics argue that romanticism cannot be squeezed into any frame. Individualism and instability as the main elements of life, death and love is not recognized by all. There are as many definitions as there are writers. “In any case, there are more differences than similarities. Indisputably, there are romantic authors, with whose romantic styles can also be part of the romantic period, but there is no single romanticism. It is clear that the critic of life, death and love, in its essence is one. It is much more difficult to give their own definition of these three elements than their opponents. In general, it appears that there are eight types of definitions and some intermediate position before them. The remake to life, death and love, something vague and unrealistic, that the juxtaposition of classicism of the 18th century, it contains a whole metaphysical system of ideas and that preaches political liberalism."

For readers of the 20 century, Poe (January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849), a writer and poet, his contemporaries knew him primarily as a journalist and critic and by one of the most tragic figures in the history of American literature, who left his parents (Elizabeth Arnold and David On – actors and talented people). He grew up as an orphan and was brought up in someone else's home (couple Allan - childless, the rich). As a child, Poe was not a happy child. He always felt like an adopted child, and it was then that he had experienced a feeling of loneliness, which shadowed him all his entire life. Since childhood, Edgar Allan Poe was gifted with an increased susceptibility and painful imagination (he lived in his own fantasy reality). In adolescence, Poe was an active and capable boy, but the other guys from the Richmond tried to suppress his personality. When Poe was 17 years old, he enrolled in the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. During this period he wrote his first collection of poems, 1827 ( "Tamerlane and Other Poems of Bostonians"). Soon Allan took his stepson home for non-payment of the University, leaving Poe with a psychological strain. He left Richmond for Boston hoping to publish his poems. In the summer of 1827 his first collection of poetry, "Tamerlane and Other Poems of Bostonians" were released. Poe was the son of his time and in his state (Virginia), a spirit of aristocracy surrounded him as a child in his high school and college years. It is associated with the early reflections on a human and exclusiveness. There was another medium that has played a significant role in the life of Poe - among the poor Americans who do not know anything, and staying at different poverty levels. When he started to search for relatives on his father's side in the hope of help, he found the same poor and working people, like himself. Poe thought of himself as a poet, felt a creative force, sufficient to fulfil his high destiny. He shared a romantic conception of the poet-prophet, opening new truths to mankind. A year after the service and before entering the military academy, Poe read the English and German Romantics, worked and wrote poetry published a second collection of "Al Aaraaf" in 1829.

The motifs of life and death are introduced by Edgar Allan Poe in the Oval Portrait when he says that the narrator failed to be seen in the life of the girl who was alive. He further speaks of the narrator’s impression to the story itself, so for example, he it takes looking at the situation through the eyes of a man whose interests are in painting and who is tired and sick. The oval portraits central idea resides in the existing relationship between art and life that is rather confusing. Art and the addiction to it are in “The Oval Portrait,” considered as killers that take the young wife’s life (Poe, 2019). In such a context, art can synonymously be equated with life, death and love, and the relationship between life and art is viewed as a rivalry. It takes the theory, advanced by Poe, that poetry as an art is a beautifully rhythmical creation and that the death of a woman is the most poetical topic in the world. According to “The Oval Portrait,” the woman is condemned to her death by her beauty. In this tale, Poe makes a suggestion that art has the potential of revealing the guilt and evil that an artist feeds on and could even destroy the life that he has modelled into art. The book is a description of a young wife`s tragic story. The beauty of the young wife is referred to as being rare. She falls in love and weds an eccentric painter who happens to care more about his work than any other thing in the world, including his wife (p. 3). Eventually, the painter requested his wife to sit for him, something she consented to obediently, and humbly, sat for many weeks in his turret chamber (p. 3). The painter became so indulged in his work to the extent that he did not even recognise that his wife`s health was failing.

Comparative analysis

The writers "Poe, Chopin, Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner, Cheever, welsh, Lahiri “were all writers in the latter part of the last century, or you can say the second half of the 18th century. They pointed out exactly what was known in the history of this period, its global significance: it was the discovery of electricity. The authors describe the society of the time and its values. The people of that era believed in the degree of faith in man's ultimate control over nature and antithesis. The "Nature of Man" which can be seen from the beginning of the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Canadian journalist and a writer of fiction short stories, and whose work is considered as part of a Romantic Movement and dark romanticism, was an important character to describe the art of time to explain the follow-up characters and their motives. Thus, I have defined common historical time, and will now move to the internal time of the novels. In the short story “The Birth-Mark”, Georgiana, Aylmer's wife, as a child has an unusual birthmark on her left cheek, and to describe the "fantasy" the possibility of its occurrence, the author takes us right back to the birth, life, death and love of this story. Aylmer sees that unfortunate birthmark disappears before his eyes when Georgiana is slowly dying. The same motifs can be found in the eight short stories. The human mind is always looking for perfection at any cost. In “A Rose for Emily”, the theme of love and death of her and her lover is so important to Faulkner, that he begins and ends the story with death. People find it hard to accept death because of two realities basically; the process itself and the unknown. While no one really has an idea of what happens after death, every one eventually dies. When the person you love passes on it definitely hurts. What makes us sad is that the person we so much loved will not be able to walk around, talk to and have fun with any more. A big hole is left in our lives by such an absence (Bowen, 2018).

In “The Fly” by Katherine Mansfield, I find it is a rather heart-breaking study of grief and loss of the boss’ son as well as sacrifice and ignorance. Mansfield creates the impression and mood that the Boss is in control of everything, having ordered to re-decorate the office. He said to be dropping ink onto a fly which may also symbolise the men who were sent out to fight in the war, who like the fly, died. Mansfield may also be suggesting that the continuing dropping of ink onto the fly maybe the continued signing of orders by the generals which subsequently kills the fly and in this case the soldiers. The boss loved his son so much, just as any parent would. Although he was very distraught about losing his son, he forgets about him later on in the story when he starts to experiment with the fly. He becomes ignorant to the sacrifices that his son had made during the war and concentrates on his career, and continuing his child-like behavior with the fly. Death is the cessation of the different biological functions that sustain living organisms which is permanent (Buyukcan-Tetik et al., 2017). Death and in particular human death is considered to be a sad event as a result of the affection for the being that has list his life and the subsequent termination of familial and social bonds with the person who has died. The fear of death, grief, sorrow, anxiety, necrophobia, depression, sympathy, solitude and compassion are other concerns related to death. The certain thing with life is that one day, it will end. Such knowledge is with no doubt the most defining feature of human condition.

The death of a child is one of the greatest traumas parents have to deal with. The death of a child actually produces greater stress in comparison to the death of a spouse or a parent because most of children`s death are not expected and to a great extent are usually violations of the usual order of things where it is expected that children are the ones to bury their parents. The emotional blow that comes as a result of the loss of a child brings about a wide range of physiological and psychological problems which include anxiety, depression, guilt, pain, marital problems, and cognitive and physical symptoms that are linked to stress. All of these issues have the tendency of persisting even long after the death of a child and could possibly even lead to diagnosed psychiatrist conditions like the complicated grief disorder which includes such symptoms that are similar to posttraumatic stress disorder. In general, parents who are bereaved are more likely to be depressed significantly than other parents who are not bereaved and also tend to have physical functioning that is poorer in overall (Waugh, Kiemle and Slade, 2018). To a significant extent, they are lonelier and their functioning cognitively is lower. In the Yellow wallpaper, a feminist fiction, with the theme of death by suicide is depicted through the patterns of the wallpaper, which also leads to the wife’s insanity. In “A temporary matter”, by Lahiri, the death of a baby, with grieving parents.

In the Oval portrait, Poe introduces motifs of life and death, when he says that the narrator could not be seen in the life of this girl. The author speaks about the impression of the narrator to the story itself, for example, that it makes looking at the situation through the eyes of a sick and tired man who is interested in painting. The oval portraits central idea resides in the existing relationship between art and life that is rather confusing. Art and the addiction to it are in “The Oval Portrait,” considered as killers that take the young brides life (Poe, 2019). In such a context, art can synonymously be equated with death and the relationship between life and art is viewed as a rivalry. It takes the theory advanced by Poe that poetry as an art is beauties rhythmical creation and that the death of a woman is the most poetical topic in the world. According to “The Oval Portrait,” the woman is condemned to her death by her beauty. Here we have a female of rarest beauty and a passionate studio painter. From the very beginning, all the stories illustrate "Life is short, art is long." And in the literary works in the very eight stories, there are themes and elements of love: women, charm, gentleness, respect, loss, love, death, life, obsession, madness and insanity. Sadly, all the stories have elements of sacrifice. Each story endures the loss of valuable human life and all end in the final chapter where it concludes with the inevitable death. In "The Oval Portrait", the painter, who is intoxicated by his labour and art, looked at his hobby as this was his whole life. And with his help, he wanted to capture the perfection of his beloved. In all the stories, the miracle motif occurred as they climaxed towards the end of every story. The motives of the life and death clearly appear in the literary works. When the artist finished his portrait, he said, “This is indeed Life itself!”(But she was dead). For him, perfection embodied in death, and in his lifetime seemed imperfect. A sacrifice of his work of art for a woman, a sacrifice in “A rose for Emily”, a sacrifice for the swimmer, a sacrifice of a son in “The fly”, a sacrifice of sanity in “The yellow wallpaper”. All these stories are sad stories which make the reader want to know more and makes one reflect on life itself. The death of love is a sacrifice in itself. For death is the sacrifice of love and love is the sacrifice in return of death.

Conclusion

Death is part and parcel of human life, in fact, it is the only assured aspect of life. Different people hold different views and attitudes towards it, even though it is considered by most people as being tragic because of different reasons. It is worth noting that death does not only affect the dead individual but also those people around them. As such, it is only natural that authors of stories and poems write about death. To write about death, authors have to first write about life. Life and death is usually the plot in short stories and eight stories from the provided readings were identified which use life and death as a plot and central themes. We all die in mysterious circumstances. They all our life flashes before our very eyes moments before step outside out soul. I feel scared when I think of my last moment in this world. In these eight stories, death comes in mysterious ways. In my work, I revealed the main provisions of the poetics and aesthetics of life, death and love, distinguished between European and American Romanticism. I have focused on “The oval portrait” as a main story in order to unfold other stories. I identified and established a common foundation - the poetics and aesthetics of life and death by Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner and Cheever and Edgar Allan Poe. acquainted with the biography of the writer; determined that they belong to the mature stage of the American romanticism which were located at the junction of the era of romanticism and realism; I studied the specifics of their relationships and used the idea of ​​a closed psychological space to which Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner and Cheever had showed in their stories , and his theory of the literary work where Poe built. Like other short stories that I picked, I felt that The Oval Portrait being the heart of the assignment, discussed the attached great importance to the ideological and emotional impact of art); defined criteria and levels of the text, which was accomplished comparative analysis of works: time-space, system of images of the main characters, plot and compositional level, and the level of motivation; I carried out a comparative analysis of the short stories related to "The Oval Portrait", during which I have identified the following binary oppositions: "Real - Ideal", "natural - artificial", "woman - man", "Life - Death"; I defined what innovations of Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner and Cheever and Edgar Allan Poe about using composition, artistic time, the images of the main characters, motifs, writers that destroy the main opposition "Real - Ideal" at the core of the romantic era, the real is no longer opposed to the ideal, but forms with it unity, ideally situated within the real, and not outside it or above it. I feel it was an accomplished comparative analysis of works: time-space, system of perceptual images of the main characters, plot and compositional level with the level of motivation. I carried out a comparative analysis of the short story "Birthmark", even though it was not part of the stories we had discussed, but wrote a few lines to make a point of how it compared with "The Oval Portrait", during which "Real - Ideal" at the core of romantic era, the real is no longer opposed to the ideal, but forms with it unity in an ideal world, situated within the real, and not outside it or above it. System images protagonist’s subject-composite layer, motifs. I carried out a comparative analysis of the short story "Birthmark" and "The Oval Portrait", during which I have identified the following binary oppositions: "Real - Ideal", "natural - artificial", "woman - man", "Life - Death". Using composition, artistic time, the images of the main characters, motifs where the writers destroy the main opposition "Real - Ideal" at the core of the life, death and love, where the real is no longer opposed to the ideal, but forms with it unity, ideally situated within the real, and not outside it or above it.

Edgar Allan Poe, in most of his works, insistently figures the beauty of death and the death of beauty. It is possible to consider his epoch as “the age of the Beautiful Death,” a certain period of time where death was blown up into a departure that was elaborately prepared, into a spectacle that was fetishized. The body of the dead woman becomes an icon and object of idolatry. This motif is observed to grow from fear into fascination with death. Literal representations of death are pleasing peculiarly because in this case people tend to have approaches that are more distanced to the theme as death happens on the body of another person as an image. The husband in the oval portrait does not see the icon of his wife in her body but in the portrait he has spent too much time painting. He has ambitions of creating a lifelike painting which at the end becomes paradoxical because his wife dies (Halliburton, 2015). There exists a paradoxical and confusing relationship between death, life and art on the story which forms the thematic centre of the story. One can speculate the way Edgar was inspired into writing the type of stories he wrote and how they relate to his life. He grew up without a father, as his father abandoned them when they were quite young and then his mother also passed on when Edgar was still very young. Virginia, the lady whom Edgar married was his cousin and she also died at a young age (Halliburton, 2015). These events to a large extent explain why his works are focused on the outcast, bizarre and ghoulish. American short stories were elevated by Edgar Allen Poe before he also passed o at the age of 40. His works, in a huge way modernised science fiction, detective fiction and horror stories.

I carried out a comparative analysis of the short story "Birthmark" and "The Oval Portrait", during which I have identified the following binary oppositions: "Real - Ideal", "natural - artificial", "woman - man", "Life - Death"; I define what innovation Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner and Cheever and Edgar Allan Poe: using composition, artistic time, the images of the main characters, motifs, writers destroy the main opposition "Real - Ideal" at the core of the romanticism: the real is no longer opposed to the ideal, but forms with it unity. Ideally situated within the real, and not outside it or above it. By carrying out comparative analysis "Poe, Chopin, Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner, Cheever, Welsh, Lahiri " and "The Oval Portrait", I have identified similarities and differences in the motives, themes and images of literary texts. Based on these results I can say that Gilman, Kafka, Faulkner and Cheever and Edgar Allan Poe not only followed the romantic tradition, but also brought their contribution to the development of life, death and romanticism and literary process in general. Their innovation mainly consisted in the fact that they were subjected to sharp criticism the concept of life, death and love, which largely determines the poetics and aesthetics of love, death and Romanticism. The authors deconstructed binary oppositions underlying romantic concepts. Thus, I put forward at the beginning of the hypothesis was confirmed, all authors were able to transform the death of love. In the end of each short story, death has always prevailed. The fictional stories take us on a journey through life that endure love, desire, lust, selfishness and sacrifice for one’s own selfish needs and desires.

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