Oxford - the City of Dreaming Spires

Oxford is a beautiful, elegant and compact city that spoils visitors with things to do and look at.It is one of the oldest cities in the United Kingdom, and it feels almost soaked in history - from the architecture to the traditions still upheld today. Immersing myself in Oxford's rich heritage was a sheer easthetic pleasure and wonderfully educational adventure. Oxford is not just a chic, stylish, scholastic place as one might think; it is also a lively and vibrant, bohemian and underground, upbeat and extremely friendly city. It is a melting pot of cultures, a home to a number of the oldest and biggest museums, libraries and botanic gardens in Great Britain. It is a city of "dreaming spires", picturesque canals, romantic rivers, hidden nooks and impressive yet intimate colleges. It has got tranquil and cultured atmosphere, it has got fantastic, grotesque gargoyles lurking from the outsides of buildings and it is totally dominated by cyclists! If you go to Oxford, watch out for bikes! Oxford cyclists have no rules and respect for pedestrians whatsoever ;-) Nevertheless, it is so easy to fall in love with this charming, inspirational place.

In the picture below you can see fabulous spires of Balliol College. Balliol College, along with Merton and University, lays claim to being the oldest college in Oxford. Founded in about 1263, the college still occupies its orginial site on historic Broad Steet. I took the picture while standing outside Tourist Information Centre and waiting for our University and City Tour guide.

Radcliffe Camera. The word "camera" has nothing to do with photograpy. It derives from the Latin word meaning "circular". Radcliffe Camera is the most recognisable building in Oxford. It was completed in 1749 by James Gibbs, with money bequeathed by the physician, John Radcliffe. Now it is a monumental circular reading room for the Bodleian Library. Radcliffe Camera is not open to the public.

Gargoyles - grotesquely carved heads of animal or human origin, with or without bodies - originally had a practical use as waterspouts (generally) on sacred buildings, throwing rainwater clear of walls. They were also used as educational devices for a largely illiterate population, and were believed to ward off evil spirits with their own grotesqueness. One of the earliest recorded gargoyles is a Classical Greek lion mask on the Acropolis in Athens dating from the 4th century BC.
Gargoyles later became more ornamental in character and assumed many forms - often humourous and very inventive. Most were carved between the 10th and 15th centuries in Western Europe.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, living in 12th-century France, made some interesting (and not wholly complimentary) observations on the gargoyle carvings he saw around him:
"What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read? What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, strange savage lions and monsters? To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man? I see several bodies with one head and several heads with one body. Here is a quadruped with a serpent's head, there a fish with a quadruped's head, then again an animal half horse, half goat... Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities we should at least regret what we have spent on them."
You can detect the answer in Pope Gregory's instructions to St. Augustine regarding the conversion of the pagan peoples to Christianity"

Turf Tavern. Not just any pub, but a famous attraction in Oxford. Its foundations date from the 13th century. Popular place among university students and visitors as well. Great ale!

Turf Tavern's mission statement: Education in intoxication.

Carfax Tower and the Quarter Boys.

 The Carfax Tower is the last remaining structure of the 14th century church of St Martin. It stands at 23 m and no other building in the centre can exceed that height. The 99 steps are worth the climb.

  

Enjoying one of the best indoor 360 degree panoramic views of Oxford from the Cupola. In the picture, The Bridge of Sighs, also known as Herteford Bridge. It crosses over New College Lane and links two quadrangles of Hertford College.

Its popular and romantic name comes from an alleged similarity to the famous bridge in Venice. However, it was never intended as a Venetian replica and it is simply that as a covered bridge the name has stuck.

The development of vision in Emily Brontë’s selected poems

After the portrait by Branwell Brontë, ca. 1833, in the National Portrait Gallery

Emily Brontë has often been described a “mystic” and many critics have touched upon this aspect of her works. Most of the claims reffering to her alleged mysticism are based primarily on her poems. It is undeniable that at certain times a kind of subconscious pressure seems to have invaded certain poems (both Gondal and non – Gondal) powerfully. Sections of the poems valued for for their transcendental qualties have often been taken as a description of the poet’s own feeling  when confronted with an experience thought to be “mystical”. In this sub – chapter I shall examine some of the poems which feature nocturnal visions or visitations by spirits, and I shall take into account those poems a major function of which seems to be to explore such visionary and imaginary gifts. The sense of visitation by visions which is powerfully and prevalently present in some of Emily’s poems, according to Derek Stanford can be associated with mysticism. He explains that he applied the term “mysticism” to certain poems, in order to “focus attention on the relationship which Emily’s mind established with something beyond it.”[10]

             

In Stanford’s eyes the notion of visitation and visions which permeate considerable number of Brontë’s poems, deals with her “interior”, personal religion, and is much connected with a gnostic cult of night, since the vast majority of such poems are known to be composed at night. As day illuminates the world with all its multiplicity so that the distinction of its objects become apparent, it is night that darkens the world and so that all disparity and difference seems to be blurred and cancelled out. He goes on further stating that the removal of distinctions appears to produce a new unity, which only “the mystical mind can recognize”[11].

The  aspect of vision and visitation in Emily Brontë’s poems

 

Many poems by Emily Brontë appear to chronicle moments when she achieves her visionary or dreamy states and when her vision seems to overwhelm her and surpass her art, the example of such experience is recorded in the poem Alone I sat on the summer day:

        Dreams have encircled me, I said

            From careless childhood’s sunny time(…)

            But now when I had hoped to sing

            My fingers strike a tuneless string.[12]

Poems preoccupied with dreams and visions put forward an argument that Emily’s visionary states might be treated as “mystic” to some extent. Many of them record the experience of feverish dreaming, very often nighmtmares, resulting in a sudden waking accompanied by an unearthy sound, or the experience of encountering a dead associate[13]. One of the poems which evoke the vision conceived while dreaming is in The night of storms has passed. The speaker awakens from a nightmare about the “gulp o’er which mortality has never been” and then she notices “a shadowy thing”, which she mortally fears. The “thing “evokes a supernatural phenomenon, its terrifying appearance so much penetrates the speaker that when awake she is unable to move, to breathe freely, is immbilized completely by the basilisk gaze of the “thing”. One of the most striking characteristics of the poems is both the earthly closensess and cosmic distance of the “shadowy thing” to the speaker[14]: “And truly at my side/I saw a shadowy thing  whose “fearful face and eyes were fixed on me”.

            It seemed close, but, and yet more far

            Than this world from the farthest star

            That tracks the boundless blue.[15]

The poem Laid Alone in the Darkened Room describes a visionary moment experienced by the speaker again. It tells about “stern power” which is ready do descend on the speaker, and which produces “strange sensation”. Then it says that the visitant, whatever it is, arrives. Precisely how the visitant is conceptualised is not clear, from the poem, it can be only concluded that Emily Brontë recoils from the difficulty of putting the experience into precise words. It is clear that the vision enodowed with “stern power” is monitoring and controlling the speaker in an inexplicable way.

In Silent is the House,  the poet seems to be talking about an experience which will not return, however she insists that that memory can bring back the vision: “Memory has power as real as thine”. The poem breaks off suddenly as if she finds she cannot make rational sense of her experience. Poems dealing with nocturnal visions are very frequent and considerable in number. According to Edward Chitham “ For Emily’s purpose, night provided an ideal theatre for the visitattion of that spirit which confessed to her alone; a solitary, private, and gnostic communicat.” He continues stating  that Emily’s mystic – quietist poems, provide with a sense of “communion within communion”. He believes that poems dealing with some nocturnal visions are the outcome of a communion with night, which “serves to usher in a deeper phase of a sacramental knowing.”[16]

 

Whether the recurrent dream and vision, “phantom bliss” as Emily prefers to call it, can be described as the proof of mysticism is an open question. However, it should be said that the sense of communion with something outside the poet is very strong, although the precise nature of the power inherent in this “something” is fairly nebulous. 

Author: Dora Lorenc 



Bibliography:


[10] E. Chitham, T. Winnifrith, The Brontë Facts and Brontë Problems, p. 194
[11] M. Spark, D. Stanford, Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work, p. 178
[12] Alone I Sat on the Summer Day, ed. B. Lloyd – Evans, The Poems of Emily Brontë
[13] E. Chitham, T. Winnifrith, Brontë Facts and Brontë Problems, p. 111
[14] J. D. Ghnassia, The Metaphysical Rebellion in the Works of Emily Brontë, p. 57
[15] The Night of Storms Has Passed, ed B. Lloyd – Evans, The Poems of Emily Brontë p.  67
[16] E. Chitham, T. Winnifrith, Brontë Facts and Brontë Problems, p. 201