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What is madness and how did authors, poets, and writers explore this in the 19th century? How has institutionalizing madness and the popularity of the insane asylum contributed to the artist, poet, author, or philosopher’s representation of it? Pick any two authors, artists, poets, or philosophers and compare and contrast their ideas of madness as they portray it in a single passage, painting, poem or otherwise with Walt Whitman's notion of madness and the asylum in "Song of Myself".

The assignment will be posted to your individual blogs and will be judged based on persuasive, thoughtful, and innovative connections between the materials you choose and those discussed in the three class periods. Please include the passage or the artistic representation of madness that you choose to analyze as well as a specific Whitman passage in your post. Please don't be concerned with the length of your blog because pictures of insanity can speak a thousand words and you are encouraged to use any form of artistic medium to display 19th century madness. Just be sure to make solid connections and analyze those connections clearly and concisely.

“Erected in 1868, the venerable Stone House, located upon the campus of The Pines Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center, 9822 Route 16, Machias, NY, is the sole surviving structure of the 19th Century Cattaraugus County Alms-House and Insane Asylum, which became the Cattaraugus County Home/Farm and Infirmary.” [] In the 19th century the containment of the “insane” became more prevalent, possibly giving rise to a new representation of madness in 19th century art. For poets like Walt Whitman, painters like Edvard Munch and novelists like Herman Melville, confronting the issue of insanity in the outside world became an important element of their work. By analyzing these three artists and their famous works, all in relation to one another, we may begin to see how “institutionalizing madness and the popularity of the insane asylum” may have contributed to their representations of it. The connections that emerge between their works may be found in the blurring of the lines between art, artist and society when they’re contained within the context of madness. Certainly, a key aspect to the representation of madness in art is that the artist is using a medium to represent or extend him or herself into the work. In this way, the madness represented in art is saying as much about the madness in the artist as it is about madness as something external. The art is an extension of the artist. For Walt Whitman, he is able to more clearly represent this notion by literally acknowledging the crazed figures in his work as extensions of himself, or, quite literally, himself entirely.

…and, to complete the thought, and fulfill the connection between the “lunatic” and Whitman being one in the same, he goes on to say… What’s interesting here, and is a place from where we can begin to build the bridge between Whitman to Munch and Melville, is that in these artistic representations of madness, there seems to be an overarching theme of madness in relation to nature. For Walt Whitman, madness is relieved by nature. He writes:



…and as a result of these saving graces…



It is in the narrator’s dreams of “love,” “summer,” “autumn” and “winter” where “the insane becomes sane,” along with a number of other freeing revelations for the suffering. While for Whitman nature seems to be an access point for healing, in both Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” and Herman Melville’s novel //Moby Dick// nature seems to be a source, or at least an extension, of madness.

Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” is a portrayal of Munch’s own madness in that it is an extension of his perspective through an art form, but the lines begin to blur when we look into the world that the painting emerged from – the world, the mad reality, around Munch.



// Edvard Munch, who lived from 1863 to 1944, said of his own life, "Disease and Insanity were the black angels on guard at my cradle.” In a page in his diary headed //Nice 22.01.1892//, Munch described his inspiration for “The Scream” thusly: “I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” This is Munch’s madness on the outside. It is not his scream, but the scream of the landscape around him. The original title of the work, given by Munch, was “Der Schrei der Nature” or “The Scream of Nature.”

Instead of the madness originating from the inside, there is delineation between Munch’s experience of reality and his portrayal of the world around him as the source of madness. The figure in the painting does not in fact make a sound – it does not make the scream – while the reality in which the figure is placed does. As a painting the real “scream” comes from the landscape.

Perhaps Whitman and Munch do share this theme of a maddening reality on the outside of the artist, for there are lines from “Leaves of Grass” which delineate a separation for Whitman from the insane, rather than combining them. Take the following for example:



In this section of “Leaves of Grass,” the narrator is written on the outside looking in. As all embracing as the concept of universal unity might be, Whitman is still able to use his poem to capture moments of detachment and separateness between him and those that suffer.

Not only does Whitman capture the external insanity and madness in his work, but also he acknowledges the outside source of the misery. He identifies the “agents” of the madness and points a finger of fault in their direction. There is in fact a “they” who are responsible. Take the following excerpt for example: Here, Whitman looks on, watching how his “brother” is treated, and noting those external reasons why. // Michel Foucault, in his work //Madness and Civilization//, speaks to the possibility of another version of “they” or these “agents” of madness. Foucault further helps us bridge the connection between real madness in society and its depiction in art by acknowledging the possible existence of “ships of fools” during the 15th century. These ships contained the mad and insane of society, sent to wander the oceans forever, with no port allowing them to dock. The “they” have placed these people on these floating asylums to be rid of them forever. In 1494, humanist Sebastian Brant published //Das Narrenschiff//, or //The Ship of Fools////, a long, moralistic poem written in the German language. Foucault describes it, and the possibility of real “ships of fools,” saying: There seems to be no concrete evidence as to whether or not these ships actually existed, but what is certain is that literature like the 15th century book ////Ship of Fools// (1494) by Sebastian Brant, and Herman Melville’s //Moby Dick//, are allegories depicting boats filled with lost beings, with no direction but sea-bound, inevitably doomed by their own madness.

The allegory of the ship can be seen in Moby Dick when you consider that Peqoud’s crew contains madness in various forms. In these following lines from Moby Dick, Melville is able to succinctly capture Captain Ahab’s relentless, mad and maddening, draw towards the great whale//: And from chapter 87 of Herman Melville’s ////Moby Dick//, “The Grand Armada,” we’re encouraged to “withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men. " For Melville, the madness of men is its own great beast, and although it might get drawn out my nature, by some great whale impossible to be caught, by some goal to be conquered, the man is still the source. Captain Ahab is not the only character from the novel to experience madness. After Pip jumps overboard and is left behind in the "awful lonesomeness" of the ocean, when rescued, the other sailors describe him as "an idiot" and "mad.” But according to Ishmael, "man's insanity is heaven's sense." In this way, Melville dances around the meaning and source of madness. The reader isn’t allowed to understand Melville’s own meaning of the state of being. And finally, in this excerpt from //Moby Dick//, Melville defines Ahab’s madness in such a way, that he might as well be making those final connections between “The Scream,” “Leaves of Grass” and //Moby Dick//, along with connecting all the madness that runs throughout these works:



It is this same madness that eludes these artists, weaving its wily through their work, causing their audience to experience their own version of madness, when the world outside doesn’t line up with the world inside, and we our left lost and answerless in a darkness we perhaps created by looking for answers in the first place. “For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious throb.”

By working in the specific theme of madness I found it surprising how much light was shown on the concept of individuality and community in the poem. For whatever reason, these are concepts that kept coming up for me in our class work around the issue, but by taking a look at the use of insanity, and particularly the focus on the “insane” individual in the poem I began to see how Whitman’s writing shifted – his perspective shifted. He is at times in the poem all about himself as individual, but he also uses the text to draw himself into union with those he writes about, drawing all of us together. Digging for other artwork and revealing information, about them, of which I knew nothing about, was a very interesting pursuit. The connections, surprisingly, of madness through the three works was much easier to access than I expected it would be. I imagine some of my connections are loose because of the different kind of work it would take doing this within the context of a class, still, seeing the overarching theme run through everything was a fun surprise. Also, being allowed to create a “blog-paper” in the type of format I wanted was a very empowering and creative endeavor. It feels freeing to insert photos, and possible videos, into a paper, while still tending to the quality of paper writing a seminar paper might require. I got a good sense that you wanted me to bring the artifact, the 19th century insane asylum, and the associations with it, out of the context of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” to help shine more light on the poem’s meaning, by using other art of my choice that deals with the same concepts. The open-ended nature of the length I could see as a problem. When you say, “ Please don't be concerned with the length of your blog because pictures of insanity can speak a thousand words and you are encouraged to use any form of artistic medium to display 19th century madness,” it left me unsure, but freed me up to do exactly what I want. I suppose, on your end, during evaluations this might pose a problem. As a student, I could always argue that “you didn’t say it had to be that long or that short” and “I wanted to use all pictures because I think that draws the connections well enough” or whatever the student’s argument might be, you’d want your assignment prompt to be structured in a way that assists your grading. Also, the question, “How has institutionalizing madness and the popularity of the insane asylum contributed to the artist, poet, author, or philosopher’s representation of it?” lost me a bit. How can I show that insane asylums affected art, unless of course I failed the assignment by not finding actually art that depicts actually insane asylums? Did I? I think the first question here is a variation on the question that proceeds it, so you can see above for that topic. As far as skills or knowledges go, not having extensive knowledge about Foucault made the project a little tricky. Although writing about Foucault wasn’t expressly asked for, I found it important to look into his work a little bit to get some semblance of the context of the assignment. I understand that this is the nature of doing the writing assignment without the class. Other than that, I felt like I was totally capable of taking this on. Again, I jumped the gun and answered this question to some degree above. I think more fully defining what you mean by “ artistic medium” in your prompt could be helpful. Are you saying I could have written a short story around the topic for my blog posting? Or are you just referring to the type of art we use to write on? You say we can use photos to speak a thousand words? Do you mean that we could write as much on a painting as a poem, or do you mean we could use a painting as part of our argument? This was the most confusing part of the prompt.
 * what more/extra did you learn about "Song of Myself" through the assignment? Be specific in summing up what new things you've discovered about the poem, post-assignment? **
 * what did you enjoy in/about the assignment? what was your favorite part of the assignment? why? **
 * did you get a sense of the goal or purpose of the assignment as you were doing it? what kind of sense? **
 * were there any unclear parts of the assignment? **
 * did you understand how to do all the parts of the assignment? were there any required skills or knowledges that you had difficulty with? **
 * can you suggest a few things to make the assignment better? more enjoyable? **