Sometimes this blog feels like a “diary of a madman.” There were short stories in Chinese and Russian by that name, right?
Thinking today of the literary critic John Ruskin’s term “pathetic fallacy.” Here is the initial Wikipedia description of it: “the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. ” Apparently, Ruskin, writing in the mid-19th century was reacting to Romantic poets of the early 19th century and possibly “sentimental” playwrights of the late 18th century. The basic dichotomy I used in one of my literature classes was realism versus romanticism.
I think most of us can feel this pathetic fallacy just by going for a long walk. It seems like the sun, the air, the wind, and possibly a storm each contain human emotions in them. A song by 10,000 Maniacs comes to mind, “Like the Weather.” It starts with the lines: “Color of the sky as far as I can see is coal grey./ Lift my head from the pillow and then fall again.” It’s on YouTube of course.
As Mark Twain put it, “God created man in His own image, and man, being a gentlemen, returned the favor.”
Update, the stories referred to in my first paragraph above were by Nikolai Gogol and Lu Xun. I have read (and even “taught” the one by Lu) but not the one by Gogol.