I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
This poem by John Clare is a very raw and vulnerable bit of insight into the speaker's feelings and emotions. This poem was not received well by Clare's readers when it was first published. "I am" was written after John Clare was put into an asylum for insanity. His readers believed that the poem was much too concentrated on Clare's descent into "madness." What is madness, and how can madness or insanity often prove helpful in the creative process? Even though Clare was crazy, can one still make sense of his poetry? What poetic devices that we have studied does Clare use to construct his poem? Use quotations to support your answer.
12 comments:
Madness is merely a deviation from the societal norm. I cannot say that madness consists of having irrational thoughts, because if everyone in the world had irrational thoughts, what would madness be then? In the case of John Clare, I think that his "madness" was a revolution in his poetic style, a sort of release from what he was tied down to. His poem "I Am" is not sporadic, nor is it incomprehensible; rather it is unbridled and honest. I do not believe that poetry that does not make sense can be considered poetry at all. Even the most experimental poets have a purpose to their work. If a poet claims that his or her work has no "purpose," he or she is wrong in that the purpose behind their work is to have no purpose.
My favorite part of Clare's "I Am" is the heroic couplet "And e'en the dearest- that I loved the best-/ are strange- nay stranger than the rest." Other devices that Clare uses are simile ("My friends forsake me like a memory lost") and alliteration ("and sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept").
Madness is what society deems as unconventional. When a person begins to have abnormal thoughts or thoughts that go against society, society has the tendency to declare insane or unfit. Many poets, authors, and painters are often viewed as mad because they drift away from the social norm. However, all great people are often views that way during their time period and by later generations are considered to be geniuses that were ahead of their time. Readers can connect with Clare's raw emotion because at one point in our life, we have all experienced it. At point we have all felt that our friends have forgotten us; "my friends forsake me like a memory lost." or that our dreams have been destroyed, or for a new beginning. In his poetry, Clare ends each stanza with a couplet, "lost/tost, best/rest, and lie/sky." The beginning of each stanza is sonnet, where the last word of the first and third verse.
I believe there are two kinds of madness: political madness and true madness. Obviously, declaring a person insane makes other less likely to listen to them, and so many radical thinkers were rendered "harmless" by their oppressive governments. The other, true madness is the inability to link cause and effect - to establish a logical train of thought - and to perform reality checks. In essence, a truly mad person will have no perception of what can logically occur, and will regard the wildest thoughts as possible. While this is obviously detrimental to everyday life, it can serve a unique purpose in creative life, where indirect connections are a sign of brilliance. Thin is the line between genius and insanity.
After reading your historical background, the poem makes perfect sense to me. (As an aside, the fact that this poem seems no less rambling than other poetry I have read seems to say something about the general state of mind of poets.) I do not think his "madness" impeded his ability to write at the moment the time of writing, perhaps he was simply politically insane. The essential message of bereavement and isolation are by no means limited to the insane, and I consider it very relevant to life.
Apart from the extremely common similes, (...like a memory lost.) the poem features an extened metaphor in the second stanza: that of the "living sea" of an insane life, and the "shipwreck" of his hopes. There is a sudden shift in progression between the second and third stanzas, from his telling of his abandonment, to his wish of being alone. Also, the poem rhymes in a standard ABABCC pattern - it is very strictly structured, perhaps in an attempt to bring order to his troubled life.
Madness is seen as a state of unbalance in the mind. You have different perceptions and emotions from those considered "sane". But really, madness is relative comparison. What do you measure as normal? And why is that normal? Is it because everyone else thinks so too? Standards like that are far too arbitrary to classify someone as "insane". So being maniacal isn't neccessarily a bad thing. It just means you're judged to be different. And different shows others a completely different view. Opening someone's eyes to a totally unrelated thought helps to expand knowledge. Clare's poem is very lyrical and entirelly comprehensible. It has an ab-ab-cc pattern, which always gives an emphatic effect on the last two lines of any stanza. "Into the living sea of sea waking dreams/ Where there is neither sense of life nor joys/But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems" is my favorite line. How he cleverly compares his life's hopes to a useless ruined vessel by metaphor gives that line a more passionate feel, and the personification of the sea into a living thing does the same. And the paradoxical "waking dreams" adds the great tone to the poem s well.
I hold a firm belief that everyone is "mad" in their own way, and it is just the extent of one's madness that is left for debate. It is impossible that conventional thoughts can run through one's head on a 24 hour basis. Those who think away from the social norm, or are proclaimed to be mad, are at a significant advantage in the creative world. This might lead to the formation of sentences or artwork that seems abstract and without meaning to someone who does not force to take their pattern of thought outside of traditional and structural thinking. Clare is completely comprehendible in his poem "I Am," despite the claim that he is mad. It can be sensed that Clare is frustrated with the social standards of the society in which he lived. This realization has brought him to wish that he could be alone, and sometimes dead, to avoid confrontation with his writing.
Some literary techniques include his use of a metaphor, "Into the nothingness of scorn and noise," and a simile, "My friends forsake me like a memory lost." Also, Clare uses an ababcc rhyming scheme throughout his poem.
Clare's ailment seems closer to severe depression than "madness," but in his time, madness was simply a general term applied to a wide range of psychological conditions. "I Am" indicates the paradox between Clare's existence and the absence of life and happiness that he feels. He is hopelessly depressed and feels abandoned by his friends as well as the rest of society.
Clare seems to sap inspiration from his overwhelming depression. He mentions that he dwells in a "living sea of waking dreams" and that his woes "rise and vanish in oblivious host." He is assailed by his own depressing thoughts and is compelled to relay them into his poem. In fact, the entire first two stanzas are simply descriptions of his sadness.
There are many examples of simile and metaphor in the poem. He compares the way that his friends perceive him to "a memory lost." He describes his "life's esteems" as a "shipwreck." He also alludes to heaven, implying that he eagerly awaits his death so that he can be free of his depression and with God.
There is a difference between madness and insanity. Madness is a state of mind that can be brought on temporarily or permanently by certain effects. A person cannot be born "mad" but I do believe that insanity starts at birth. Insanity is more of a medical condition whereas madness is just a difference of opinion. Madness can be helpful creatively because it is a different state of mind. Madness can cause an open mind and make you more aware of your surroundings and in a different way than normal.
We still understand his poetry despite his madness because he is still writing of things we can all relate to. Poetry is never something concrete but more abstract, and his madness only add to the abstract-ness.
The madness exhibited by the poet is quite obvious. This madness, however, is transformed when it put into a poetry verse. It becomes more, a microcosm of the author and his stated madness. The madness, in turn lead to a revolution in the world of poetry. Any debilitating illness could be turned into a topic of a poem. Madness was no longer spited, it was embraced for it's artistic use. As a result, the poet's have become known a revolutionaries.
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All of your comments have been really introspective and range from a variety of opinions-good job! I'm not sure if everyone filled out the blog, but if you haven't, please think about the how the standards of society have changed the public's acceptance of "madness" or "insanity", how this has affected the poetry world, and why. Do you believe the "people" as a whole have subjected their fellow peers to catagories or do you believe those considered suffering were being persecuted-which catagory does Clare fall into? Is this by the author's choice? Please use quotes.
During the 1800s, "madness" is not at all what it is thought to be today.
Think back on a time when only refinement and upright behavior was accepted. Life and passion were strangled in the corset of society. Every move one made had to be carefully controlled and thought out.
This suppression of feeling and emotion would sometimes result in wild bursts of passion often perceived as "madness". It is no great surprise that a poet as creative as John Clare could be added to this group.
This passage in particular describes the sort of reaction society had to John Clare's work: "Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams..."
After being constantly being scorned by society and beaten down by circumstance, it is no wonder that Clare grew to be somewhat eccentric. However, looking at the clear-minded thought and planning put into "I Am" leaves this reader little doubt regarding the clarity of Clare's mind.
This "madness" known truly as passion has been written about in other stories dating back to Bronte's depiction of the "mad" woman in the attic (and later recounted more sympathetically in Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea").
Even though modern times are far more accepting of passion than the suppressive Victorian atmosphere, there are still numerous stories of mistaken madness such as Kesey's "One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest".
I certainly think that Clare had still a good deal of sanity while writing "I Am", regardless of what eccentricities Victorian society inspired.
-Diana Heriford
(Please use my blog grace period.)
Madness in general is either mental deficiency, outlandish ideology, or a mixture of both. Skewed viewpoints, alternate thinking, and principles that break normal morality are often labelled negatively and considered 'mad.' Clare uses the knowledge that his ideas are different in the line where he says, "Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest."
In the creative process, specifically, madness detracts by limiting the number of people who can perceive the work correctly but helps by giving the writer the chance to think beyond his time or in a way nobody could have imagined. Everyone had different understandings of what they perceive, and poetry is usually ambiguous enough to allow for multiple interpretations that are inherently correct. Sometimes it takes knowledge of the author in order to make a completely correct perception of the work, but anyone can apply their own experiences and thoughts to create their own meaning.
In the poetry world, poems can be scorned by one generation and lauded by the next. Societal values and base morality fluctuates, and so do the amount of readers who can correctly perceive the poem's contents without letting base assumptions create incorrect perceptions or simply ignorance of the poem entirely.
Gary, I particularly love the comment of the purpose is to have no purpose - right on!
Emily, way to establish personal connections!
David, excellent analysis of structure and literary devices.
Yousra, great comments on madness.
Grace, good focus on the persona trying to find his own world.
Ray, I agree that he found inspiration from depression.
Emily, interesting point on madness vs. insanity.
Diana, way to go with bringing in the time period!
Hunter, good comment on the need for ambiguity in poetry.
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