While we were talking about The Sick Rose in class on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were giving Blake a little too much credit for his work. Some of the things we were saying were clearly true. The rose clearly makes a circle on the page in which different stages of the moth’s life are portrayed. So obviously there’s the idea of the circle of life. And there’s obviously the idea of death and rebirth illustrated in the woman/worm/thing coming out of the dying rose. However, I also think there were some elements of the analysis that can’t actually be inferred from the painting as having been Blake’s ideas. For example, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Blake was trying to show that the circle of life was inescapable since the poem and illustrations were contained within the stem of the rose. Clearly he was trying to make the rose a circle to show the circle of life, but where else could he have placed the text? Simply by the nature of putting a circle on the page, he was cutting off the amount of space he had to write and draw. Trying to accomplish this outside of the circle would simply be illogical. Though this example may seem a bit nitpicky, it was not the only assumption that I felt we irrationally attributed to Blake; however, it is the one that I remember most clearly. This DID make me wonder though. How much can we ever really attribute to an author or artist? Sometimes their intentions are clear, but how deeply can we really analyze a text or image without attributing our own thoughts to the artist?
3 thoughts on “The Sick Rose: How Deep is Too Deep?”
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I thought the exact same thing! While I definitely agree with some of the ideas discussed, I definitely agree with the intention of the circle of life. Professor Schwartz also said in her argument that the thorns represented being captured and stuck in the cycle of life, but how else would you denote that the flower is a rose without thorns? Were they really supposed to be used as a tool suggesting capture or are they merely a biological aspect of anatomy of a rose? I was also questioning the woman emerging from the rose in joy or in escape. How can we say that Blake was intending for it to represent either of these things at all? There is no indication in the poem, and her body language is too vague in my opinion to jump to assumptions. This discussion really made me think about the lines of interpretation; what components make a valid argument?
This reminds me of something I’ve seen circulating around the interwebs lately…
http://i.imgur.com/QWGrU.jpg
It is true that it is difficult for viewers to verify their argument about an artist’s production. This is because even if there are certain interpretations that we can make from some evidence; for instance, his works before or after the particular work we are analyzing, the artist’s social context, other artists in the same era and those he was influenced by, it does remain unclear the way through which we can know the limitations of “valid” analysis. This has made me think that the process of artistic analysis, which can also be called ekphrasis, is mostly demonstrative of the reception of an artwork. While Blake did not necessarily want to say that the cycle of life is inescapable, it seems so to some viewers. In response to Caroline’s argument that there seems to be no other way in which Blake could have placed the text in his print, one might say that an artist as versed as Blake could have changed the entire arrangement of the print to place the text elsewhere, but he might have planned this particular arrangement to achieve his idea that the cycle of life is inescapable. This idea can also be inferred from the small scale of Blake’s print, the text is stuffed in the small circle in a way that triggers viewers to think that the cycle is continuous and, from a distance, quick. Likewise, one can respond to Lainie’s argument by saying that the thorns are very prominent, and if Blake did not want the thorns to appear so sharpened and so many, he could have changed the focus on the rose, which also bring me to think of the reason for Blake’s particular choice of a rose, rather than any other flower that also opens and closes, but does not have that many sharp thorns. As viewers, we are also inclined to consider the thoughtfulness of Blake and take into account every detail and choice he made to demonstrate his idea(s).
At the end of the day, whether Blake meant to choose such elements, the analysis is mostly for viewers to muse and draw interesting connections and contrasts, thus making the process of analysis mostly an issue of reception rather than making a valid argument on behalf of the artist. This way the audience exercises more freedom in looking at artworks.