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omnipoetics:sale_of_souls [2025/02/19 20:45] – [Author] mahrukhomnipoetics:sale_of_souls [2025/04/24 00:44] (current) – joshua
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-==== Sale of Souls by Adah Isaacs Menken (p.195) ====+==== Sale of Souls by Adah Isaacs Menken  ====
  
 +<WRAP center round info 60%>
 +**//The Serpent and the Fire// (p.195)** \\
 +</WRAP>
  
 ===== Author ===== ===== Author =====
  
-{{:omnipoetics:mazeppa.png?nolink&200 |}}[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adah_Isaacs_Menken|Adah Isaacs Menken]], born in 1835, was an American actress, poet, and painter renowned for her daring and nonconfomist persona. She gained fame for her provocative stage performances, most notably in "[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazeppa_(poem)|Mazeppa]]," in which she rode a horse nearly naked. Her postumous poetry collection, //Infelicia//, where the poem //Sale of Souls// belongs, dealt with emotional and psychological challenges, demonstrating her fragility and enthusiasm. Along with her artistic aspirations, Adah Isaacs Menken had a difficult personal life, including many marriages and the loss of her two children. She died in 1868 at the age of 33.+{{:omnipoetics:mazeppa.png?nolink&200 |}}[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adah_Isaacs_Menken|Adah Isaacs Menken]], born in 1835, was an American actress, poet, and painter renowned for her daring and nonconformist persona. She gained fame for her provocative stage performances, most notably in "[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazeppa_(poem)|Mazeppa]]," in which she rode a horse nearly naked. Her posthumous poetry collection, //Infelicia//, where the poem //Sale of Souls// belongs, dealt with emotional and psychological challenges, demonstrating her fragility and enthusiasm. Along with her artistic aspirations, Adah Isaacs Menken had a difficult personal life, including many marriages and the loss of her two children. She died in 1868 at the age of 33.
  
-Menken published an autobiography titled //Some Notes of Her Life in Her Own Hand//, in 1868 and said she was born in France. She has varying conflicting reports of her birth name, including Marie Rachel Adelaide de Vere Spenser, Adah Bertha Theodore, and Dolores Adios Los Fiertes. In her wiki section on Early Life and Education, it says she had a gift for languages and became fluent in Spanish and French. All the different accounts on her identity, her artistic and performative abilities stand out. With reference to her poem //Sale of Souls//, SaF mentions a quote in its commentary:+Menken published an autobiography titled //Some Notes of Her Life in Her Own Hand//, in 1868, and said she was born in France. She has varying conflicting reports of her birth name, including Marie Rachel Adelaide de Vere Spenser, Adah Bertha Theodore, and Dolores Adios Los Fiertes. Her wiki section on Early Life and Education says she had a gift for languages and became fluent in Spanish and French. All the different accounts of her identity, her artistic and performative abilities, stand out. Concerning her poetry in general, and //Sale of Souls// in particular, SaF mentions it being "assertively Jewish" in early works and "militantly feminist later on."((Rothenberg, Jerome and Javier Taboada, Serpent and the Fire: Poetries of the Americas from Origins to Present, “Sale of Souls" by Adah Isaacs Menken”, University of California Press, 2024, p. 198)) It also mentions her quote on the poem:
  
 +<blockquote>
 I have written these wild soul-poems in the stillness of midnight, and when waking to the world the next day, they were to me the deepest mystery. I could not understand them; did not know but what I ought to laugh at them; feared to publish them, and often submitted them privately to literary friends to tell me if they could see a meaning in their wild intensity. (A.I.M) I have written these wild soul-poems in the stillness of midnight, and when waking to the world the next day, they were to me the deepest mystery. I could not understand them; did not know but what I ought to laugh at them; feared to publish them, and often submitted them privately to literary friends to tell me if they could see a meaning in their wild intensity. (A.I.M)
- +</blockquote> 
-===== The Context behind Sale of Souls ===== +===== Themes and Images ===== 
-/.+{{ :omnipoetics:confusion_of_tongues.png?400|}} 
 +  * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros_(concept)|Eros]]: Greek god of love, synonymous to life energy/instinct in philosophy and psychology, 'erotic', passionate and physical desire. 
 +  * Souls being sold: to the devil (as in showbiz)? Passion and creativity goes unvalued, unless souls are sold. 
 +  * Memory, past. 
 +  * Poor, weak, sad heart - loving heart, lost heart. 
 +  * God of ambition: it sleeps within Eros's heart but is awakened by the cry. (v) 
 +  * Fainting child/golden haired child: literal or her creative birth? 
 +  * Babel: //Confusion of the Tongues// by Gustave Dore.  
 +  * Angels and the unholy. 
  
 ===== Thoughts about the poem ===== ===== Thoughts about the poem =====
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 The plea at the end of the poem may express the poet's desire to see this happening before her times comes to an end. The plea at the end of the poem may express the poet's desire to see this happening before her times comes to an end.
 +
 +===== Poem's Structure =====
 +
 +== Free Verse ==
 +Menken’s poem does not follow a strict rhyme scheme or, making it a free verse composition. This lack of formal structure allows for a more organic, emotional, and fluid expression of the speaker’s distress. The poem’s rhythm shifts between moments of frantic energy (“Oh, I am wild—wild!”) and slower, reflective lines (“When will the morning dawn?”), mimicking the speaker’s emotional turmoil.
 +
 +== Use of Sections (Roman Numerals) ==
 +The poem is divided into sections marked by Roman numerals, suggesting a thematic and emotional progression. Each section presents a different aspect of suffering, moral decay, or reflection:
 +
 +Section I – A desperate plea for salvation (“Angels of the weary-hearted, come to thy child”).
 +Section II – Condemnation of materialism and human ambition (“Souls for gold! Who’ll buy?”).
 +Section III – Allegory of history’s oppression (“The hollow echoes that the iron-shod feet of the years throw back”).
 +Section IV – Reflections on love, motherhood, and memory (“They speak of my Eros”).
 +Section V – Chaotic imagery of destruction, referencing Babel (“The tramp of hoofs on the iron streets”).
 +Section VI – A longing for liberation (“When will the storm be hushed?”).
 +This structured progression creates a narrative arc, leading from despair to critique, and ultimately to a hopeful yet unresolved yearning for change.
 +
 ===== Excerpts ===== ===== Excerpts =====
  
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 Comments: hoping for the day women will not be under a patriarchal's control anymore. Comments: hoping for the day women will not be under a patriarchal's control anymore.
  
-===== References ===== +{{tag>English United_States Poem  Resistance Adah_Isaacs Feminism_and_gender_roles 19th-Century Romanticism 
-/. +}}

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