FS 1963: Magazines, Media, Modernism

I really am enjoying messing around Gephi. It’s an interesting way to look at written works. I hope we can learn how to do it because I would love to do this for other works. Anyway I had fun fiddling around with Gephi’s color system so I could better see the nodes. Not that the black isn’t cool or anything, but I just wanted to see what it could do. It was really interesting how the color system worked. And it made it easier to see everything connected with one another. I could clearly see death/writing (they were on top of each other) and greatness as one of the biggest nodes. Poetry was also a big node however I only deleted death/writing and greatness. When I deleted those three nodes I was greatly surprised with what occurred.

As it can be seen from the graphs the nodes deleted ended up making a triangle with Poem, poetry and T.S. Eliot. I’m not sure what this means exactly but I found it interesting that poem and poetry would connect and even more so that T.S. Eliot would connect with both. Does that mean that T.S. Eliot is primarily poetry? Or does that mean that poetry is primarily T.S. Eliot? See? It’s a confusing conundrum. Yet within this triangle everything else connects with it in some form whether directly or indirectly. So poetry is unaffected by death/writing/greatness nodes as is poem and T.S. Eliot.  So does that mean that these subjects are not part of T.S. Eliot in the Little Review 1918 issue?

I am not sure myself but Gephi enabled me to see how things can change if you remove nodes so I then removed poetry. By removing poetry the triangle was gone and there were clear connections from poem to T.S. Eliot. I also was able to clearly see other straight forward connections like Irony to Mediocrity, Aesthetics to Literature. I found these to be the most in your face nodes after deleting poetry. Is it possible that these direct connections mean that irony is a weakness, and that literature is a form of aesthetics or vice versa? It is truly interesting to use Gephi to go into a work of literature and see how it is represented. 

A portrait by Jack Yeats-His brother

The Wide World
Vol. 25, No. 146
Pitt-Kethley, Andrew (editor)
London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1910-06

The Tyro:
A Review of the Arts of Painting Sculpture and Design
Number 2
Lewis, Wyndham (editor)
London: The Egoist Press, 1922

Coterie:
A Quarterly: Art, Prose, and Poetry
Nos. 6/7: Xmas Double Number
Green, Russel (editor)
London: Hendersons, 1920-12

Dana: An Irish Magazine of Independent Thought

Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 4

"The Sower" by Edward Dowden

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse

Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 17

"The Grey Rock" by W. B. Yeats

Le Petit Journal des Réfusées

No. 1, p. 6

"Abstosophy"

I. Cosmopolitan V. 51 #1, 1910-06, page 189 "Rexall '93' Hair Tonic"

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=1236613507359375&view=pageturner&pageno=190

2. The Lady's Realm V. 29 #171, 1911-01, page 11 "3003 'Anticapilla'"

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=1236636911234375&view=pageturner&pageno=12

3. Good Housekeeping V. 51 # 2, 1910-08 page 139 "Ed. Pinaud's Hair Tonic"

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=1237323314687500&view=pageturner&pageno=140

  I looked throught the very first issue of The Crisis. The picture on the cover threw me off just a little bit. It was a picture of a child with a hoop and stick. I thought there would be something related to it inside the journal, but I did not find anything directly related. The advertisements were all in the last several pages of the journal. I read some of the stories and as interesting as they were some of them were sad and disturbing. I know that coloured people were not treated fairly in the early days of history, but to read actual events of cruelty made me a little uneasy. I couldn't believe how people were treated back then and how so many events were ignored or stories changed because of the colour of someone's skin. 

 After reading this journal I believe there was some bias, but that was to be expected. Some of the advertisements were directed toward coloured people and others appeared to be more generalized. There were ads for education, housing, work and several products.

This appears to be a journal that non-coloured people probably did not read. If they did, it makes me wonder what they would think or how they would react to reading any of the articles posted in the journal. 

I very quickly settled on Dana: An Irish Magazine of Independent Thought as my magazine of choice, primarily because I have a particular fondness for the Irish historical and literary tradition, and because it was very stripped down to literary material and the advertisement of additional literary material. The work I picked was in the fourth volume, a poem by James Joyce that was simply titled "Song" (124). This is a pretty little piece I have seen before in various settings, but which has never stood out in particular. It is a very nice poem, but taking the context into consideration made it something more than that.

"Song" is located on an even-numbered page, which in the usual pagination puts it on the left side, directly across from "Literary Notices," by F. M. Atkinson, and directly following William Buckley's "King Diarmuid." In fact, the poem appears on the same page where "King Diarmuid" ends, effectively attaching it to the story like a footnote or a related quote. "King Diarmuid" is the story of a king and hero who meets his doom at the hands of a woman; however, at the last, she takes pity on him and allows him at least to die rather than persist miserably. With this prelude, then "Song" takes on a decidedly less innocent, lighthearted air. Rather than the pleasant praise of a young lover for his lady, it is lonelier, spoken from afar, spoken as a loss and not as a gain.

The "Literary Notices" following the poem seem a little less related and impactful; however, there was one fragment of this section which resonated for me. The first item of notice is a Mr. Swinburne's collected works, the first volume of which has just been released. Swinburne's youth is considered with great delight, and it brings to mind Joyce's own youth at the time of this publication. Atkinson romanticizes the idea of "what I have written I have written," suggesting that a young man's work is no less valid because he was young, that it provides insight into his growth as a writer. The commentary reminded me, as a reader, that even the great James Joyce was at this time a young writer, still getting started. In some ways, it halts my incessant need to read into his poem and urges me to consider its charm, its love for antiquity and its traditions of courtly love (antiquity is another idea discussed with respect to the young Swinburne) which, in many upper-level classes, might otherwise be somewhat brushed over.

I am not sure I got this right so please forgive me if not.

 I chose to look at the Dana magazine on the site vol. 2 no. 7. I found that it was related to the turmoil of Ireland. Especially the Protestants vs. The Catholics and the fact that it was in 1904 means the Easter Rising of 1916 did not occur yet. So it was interesting to read the feelings of the Irish before a huge event would occur in their history, probably one of the biggest aside from the Great Famine. There was a variety of articles, letters, poems and other forms of literature to convey how the Irish were feeling at the time. So the magazine’s issue reflects the past of the Irish as they were feeling about their situation in religious and national aspects.

The different forms of text in the issue relates to how strongly the Irish were feeling at the time. Their poems, articles and letters reflect their sense of emotion during a time of conflict that was escalating to the point of the Easter Rising of 1916. So it can be seen that the magazine’s reflection of the past shows the discord that was going on for Ireland at the time of its publication. So therefore the item alone is trying to represent Ireland and what is going on through the country religiously, publicly and nationally. It then reflects the past by gathering all the said items of text that it posesses and it uses it in it's publication to express those feelings of the time. Giving a sense of what the people were thinking though these trying times where the nation was shaking at it's core. I find it interesting this occued before the Easter Rising of 1916 because that means that these occurances are feelings from before that would greatly intensify afterward. Yet the feelings shown in the publication almost seem as greatly intensified even then as it would after the Easter Rising.