Reading Notes W6: Bunina & Wordsworth, Part X

Anna Bunina

"Conversation Between Me and the Women"

The women are happy because of Anna. They're proud of talent and refer to as a "poetess" before telling her that her palette is able to write an ode or a fable (385). They claim that they wait for madrigals, which I remembered as being a kind of song from my music literature class, yet all the receive are epigrams, which are "a short, often satirical poem dealing concisely with a single subject and usually ending with a witty or ingenious turn of thought." (385). They're eager to hear her answer to the question of whether or not she sings (385). Anna says she's been singing for five years (385). Russian verses aren't in fashion at this time anymore, apparently (385). Anna seems to sing only about nature, and very peacefully so (385-6). The women don't care about what Anna sings about since they aren't being praised in her songs; they think animals are the only things she praises (386). Anna claims that she does sing about people too (386). When she shares who she's sung about in the past, the women again do not care because nothing has been about them (387). "So what good are you?" (387). They tell her she only sings about men (387). If I'm understanding Anna correctly, she claims that she's writing about men because men are dominant in writing and music, and that she doesn't believe people would care for her works if they were about women. "All an author's fame is in their hands" (387).


William Wordsworth

"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

Wordsworth has gone five years without returning to this place that he enjoyed visiting as a child (351). The experience seems very nostalgic and unbelievable to him: "One again / Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs" (351). He's cherishing being reunited with this place, and soaking in all of its beauty (351). He claims that we as people "become a living soul" with an "eye made quiet by the power / of harmony, and the deep power of joy" and that allows us to "see into the life of things" (352). He notices the place has changed over the years (352). "I have learned / to look on nature, not as in the hour / of thoughtless youth" (352). He seems to really want to return to his past self, as a young boy, so that he could once again view this place from the same wondrous eyes (353). Wordsworth is a "worshipper of nature" and "this green pastoral landscape, were to me / more dear, both for themselves and for thy sake" (354).



Bunina, Anna. "Conversation Between Me and the Women." The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. E, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 384-387

Wordsworth, William. The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. E, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 345-348, 351-354