After he was released from prison, Oscar Wilde did not write any literary work, as he lost the driving force behind his literary writing. However, there is one exception: the suffering he experienced in prison, which inspired him to write a poem called The Ballad of Reading Gaol. A long poem divided into six stanzas in which he talks about an upcoming death. The poem is one of the most beautiful poems he ever wrote.
Wilde narrates using his great language the story of a trooper who killed his wife, whom he loved, and was sentenced to death. He describes the moments and the emotions felt by the prisoner who is living his last night in prison. Wilde found this narrative theme a means to express himself while in Reading Gaol prison. As soon as he finishes the story of the executed man, he describes life in prison, the building that is filled with oppression and torment, and the exhausted, destructive repetition of time. However, there is one tone in the poem that is repeated throughout the poem:
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
The prisoner here is incredibly sorrowful, but what makes him look upon the sky like this? Is it the only place where he can unleash his mind, thought and spirit? Does he plead with God to have mercy on him and relieve him of the pain of death? Does the sky carry an infinite aesthetic idea that keeps him away from all the travesties and disasters that occur on Earth? As soon as I finished reading this wonderful poem, I wondered: Why this repetition of the word sky and what it represents in the poem? I disregarded the question, as many imageries I remember of the sky began to show up in my mind. The word sky is often mentioned in literary texts, but in this context, what is the importance of the word in the literary text? How do novelists view it in their writing?
There are wonderful imageries of the sky in literature. Instead of being confined to its upper side and as an infinite form, the sky has become an aesthetic imagery that expresses the human being, its desires and hopes. Some literary texts hardly mention the word sky or refer to it, but some earthly human actions refer and direct to the sky and express it indirectly.
In his epic work, the novelist Tolstoy wrote two scenes in the novel with reference to the sky, and each scene has its own circumstances and nature. The first one was at war, through the character of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. The second was at peace, through the character of Count Pierre Bezukhov.
Prince Andrei is one of Tolstoy’s most sullen and depressing characters. An adamant atheist, like most of Tolstoy’s characters in his major works. He leaves his pregnant wife in his old father’s mansion and goes to war for glory. Following his victory records, Andrei, all by himself, developed the plan for the next battle: Battle of Austerlitz. He only believes in glory and fame, while death, injury and loss of family do not frighten him at all. How can you convince someone who only sees glory through battles, and wants to be like Napoleon, to find glory in the beauty and joys of life?
Tolstoy did use a magic trick to change this idea, but rather he presented Prince Andrei with signs and directions, including a reference in the scene of the eternal sky, which is one of the most famous scenes of War and Peace, and hardly any critical study dealing with War and Peace does not address this great scene. In that minute of the Battle of Austerlitz, or what is called the Battle of the Three Emperors, when it became clear to the Russian General Kutuzov that the defeat of the Russian and Austrian armies had been caused by Napoleon and his soldiers, Tolstoy created the fictional protagonist, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, gave him the war flag and granted him a historical presence in the site of the Battle of Austerlitz. He received the flag, declaring that a defeat could not be achieved while he was present. In a suicide-like operation, he rushed, raising the flag, towards the opponent forces, and was joined by the soldiers, influenced by his screams, who had minutes earlier been fleeing the battlefield. Why did Tolstoy write this part? Does he have a romantic tendency? No. It is neither a romantic tendency nor a knightly tournament. Nevertheless, Andrei, who had dreamed of glory, rushed to embrace it, but ultimately fell dead, or as Napoleon expressed it, it was “a great death, to die holding the flag”.
He said speaking to himself “What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,” thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky–the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. “How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,” thought Prince Andrei–“not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it, I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!…”
Here in this part, Tolstoy’s art based on inner turmoil is presented. When Andrei was lying with the flag in his hand, he saw that eternal sky, the sky that he had never looked at with such splendor and beauty. He looked at the most harmonious, beautiful and peaceful things, all in the Battle of the Three Emperors! Andrei was stuck between that earth raging through an unreasonable and unnatural war that represented criminality in humans, and that great eternal sky. There is an inner conflict and controversy in Andrei’s soul, as if Tolstoy wanted to show him that in that site of land of Austerlitz there is an eternal and sublime peace, which he looked forward to and enjoyed: it is above you and above every warrior in this turbulent land. The idea of the eternal sky is the writer’s condemnation of that war and all the wars that took place and will take place, and how great it is that the sky summarizes the sublime feeling of peace, love and serenity.
It is odd that Tolstoy ends the first part of his book – at the height of war – with the sky scene. At the same time, he ends the second part – in a time of peace – with a sky scene as well, but with another character, Count Pierre Bezukhov. The same effect and the same aspirations, except that Pierre is the kind of epic hero who does not hesitate to express what is in his soul. He is not ashamed to express himself by crying, unlike the gloomy Andrei.
“It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812–the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly–like an arrow piercing the earth–to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.”
Critic George Steiner, his book Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, describes these scenes as “where the artistic form assumes the shape of a large moving arch. A movement rising outward from a conscious center (the eye of the character through which he sees the scene), then, it stops with a return to the ground.” This movement has a symbolic significance because it expresses the actual visible events, although it also has a metaphorical concept to define the agony of the soul. There are two gestures that mirror each other: the upward vision of the eye, and the gathering of human consciousness on the ground, closing the eye to reveal the soul’s grasp of external spaces. Where the sky and the gray clouds above Austerlitz tell Prince Andrei that everything is passing, while his dulled feelings cry out reminding him of the events at the Mass, the splendorous night rescued Pierre from the pettiness and evils of worldly society. However, in this revelation of Tolstoy there are social and moral implications. The calmness of the sky after the clouds have cleared, the refreshing serenity of the night, and the wonderful flourishing of the fields and forests revealed the meanness of worldly things and their distance from reality. It revealed the cruelty and stupidity of war, and the worthless triviality of social norms that kindled the fire of sorrow in the heart of Countess Natasha. These revelations disclosed, in a new and dramatic way, an ancient meaning of morality: no human being can be the prisoner of another human being, and the trees in forests will continue to swish and groan even after the invaders are buried in the ground.
According to the French novelist Victor Hugo, the idea of heaven revolves around divine justice and paradise. Hugo does not mention the sky directly, but all the events in the literary text point straight to the it. I will not stray too far from mentioning Napoleon. Indeed, it seems that he was associated, in human literary heritage, with scenes related to the sky. In the Battle of Waterloo, the plans heralded a resounding victory for Napoleon, but a huge rain cloud –untimely – covered the battlefield and changed the nature of it making it difficult for Napoleon. Just a few drops were enough to change the equation. Hugo poses the question and answers it directly: Could Napoleon have won the Battle of Waterloo? No, because of God. It is time for the supreme and impartial justice to take care of the matter. The principles and elements upon which the standard attractions in the moral and material systems are based started to complain. The fresh blood, packed cemeteries, and the mothers shedding tears all represent frightening advocates. When the earth complains of severe distress, the sky hears it. Napoleon was complained about to infinity, and his downfall was destined. The Battle of Waterloo was more than a cloud, meteors passed over it; God passed over it!
In the novel The Man Who Laughs, the sky is present in the first and last chapters of the literary work. Its presence is linked to a characteristic that marks Victor Hugo’s literary texts, which is the sea. The sea was a witness to a major crime and carried the testimony of this crime for decades, entrusted it deep inside it and sent it upwards. In other words, the sea absorbed these sins and released the goodness of it to the top, to become in doing so a criminal, a witness, a judge, and a ruler. Mysteriously, a group of children kidnappers drop a boy on an island and leave on their ship to an unknown destination. On the one hand there is the child, he is little, left alone in the dark, with cold, hunger, loneliness, and storm. On the other hand, there was the small ship that had already sailed, in what seemed to be a calm atmosphere, and would lead its passengers to safety. The sea, here, does not represent a social authority that the protagonist must conquer nor a warrior that he must plunge his sword into and kill. The sea is portrayed in a new form, a battle and a courtroom. One of the masterpieces of literary texts written about the sea is the chapter on the Ortach in the sea. This chapter is more like an epic, in which its heroes are individuals who did a wrong thing, leaving a helpless child on an island, with instructions from a major character or characters! The depth and ingenuity of this chapter was in the imagery and movement, the path that leads to the end, death. However, the author in this chapter recalls infinity, which is the sky that covers criminals at sea. At this point, the captain of the ship shouts: Is there still something that can be thrown into the sea? There was nothing, everything the ship was carrying had been cast into the sea to save it from sinking. But the ship was straining under a heavy load, that had not yet been cast; it is invisible yet very heavy. What is this very heavy invisible thing? Sins. They are no longer worried about surviving, for the path will lead to drowning, but this drowning must not happen before sins are cast into the sea. The crime that began a long time ago, specifically ten years ago, and ended with the child being left alone on the island. Any film director –regardless of the size of the cinematographic equipment and the skill of any screenwriter – will never reach that moment of extreme beauty in the sea storm scene, when the foreheads of the sinners on the ship are level to the surface of the sea, and nothing indicates their tracks except the hand that was raised towards the sky, praying to God!
Another imagery of the sky related to the sea popped up in the last chapter, but this time the sky represents paradise. Hugo poses a similar question in the chapter titles: Could Paradise be regained on earth? Paradise here is represented by a human being of enormous beauty and magnificence. With this being on earth, has paradise become earthly? The title of the last chapter answers the question directly: Nay; on high! This is because paradise, according to his conception, cannot be imagined on earth, it is eternal. The protagonist – the man who laughs – is heading up, to paradise, to the sky, but here it is more like a paradox as he goes up by going down, towards the sea.
In Adi Alherbish’s collection of short stories: Amthoula Al-Warda and Al-Natasi (أمثولة الوردة والنطاسي), there are two imageries of the sky. The first one is shown in the story of the disappearance of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. The sky, in this story, is distressed as its spatial image above is lost. The protagonist does not know exactly where he is, whether walking on a night path among the stars or is he in Al-Barzakh (Limbo). His location is unknown. Everything that is felt or seen places the character stuck between the sky and earth. However, the sky is not associated with personality, rather with a distant memory. If the place had absorbed the personality of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, then there is a possibility of a memory that would restore the Fatimid Caliph’s certainty and materialism, to remember the story of the Prophet Yunus and the Whale. Except that the lead who will be communicating with the sky is the Whale. When the great novelist Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick, he focused on the prophet himself in the story of Prophet Jonah, as it was a wonderful and very excellent example of a literary text centered around the ocean and the whale. In the story of Adi Alherbish, the Whale is the central character, as one of Allah’s greatest creatures who praises Him. However, it did not feel as much tremendous praise as it did when it swallowed Jonah. For it is not praise, but rather a prophetic call to repentance in the depths of darkness reaching the sky; the door of heaven. Following Allah’s command, the Whale delivers the repentant prophet, but it misses the repentant voice and praise that was stemming from inside it, the Whale feels empty. The author says in a literary masterpiece describing the state of emptiness and hollowness in the Whale:
This thought comes to the whale’s mind: “Allah must be above the skies, the Whale ascends to the top, breaks through the water, and jumps in the air towards the sky, the stars, and the night, but it does not reach. The Whale feels the loss that tortures it, so it praises Allah and dives to the bottom seeking for more, however, does not find it, repeating this tradition time after time, sometimes jumping into the air and others diving to the bottom. All while it was devoted to the remembrance of Allah, the Most Gracious, praising Him, and wishing for His closeness. The situation becomes confusing for the Whale, making it forget itself and it becomes unable to recognize the sky stars from the stones at the bottom of the ocean. The surface of the water has become like a mirror, where the top is parallel with the bottom, for that the Whale does not know whether it is swimming in the ocean and jumping in the air or swimming in the air and jumping into the ocean! Only then will the Whale understand that the place and direction are not significant, and that it will not get closer to Allah by jumping into the sky or by listening to sea animals. It is crucial that the Whale praises Allah by itself, constantly, and carries Him endlessly instead of carrying His prophet. This is what will bring it closer to Allah, to the sky, to heaven.
The second imagery depicted is the story of the last thoughts that went through Giordano Bruno’s mind. This time, the sky is more present than in any other story. In the story of Adi Alherbish, the author narrates the story of the monk and philosopher Bruno, who was sentenced to death by the religious inquisition in Italy on charges of heresy. Adi Alherbish follows the example of Oscar Wilde, as he asks at the beginning of the story: Why isn’t there some kind of collapse, repentance, and pleading for some of the thinkers who were sentenced to death? It seems as if there is an aesthetic idea surrounding them and protecting them from fall, fear and panic. On the last night of prison, he wished that the prison ceiling were studded with stars. It is the most beautiful direct imagery of the sky you will ever read in literature:
He remembers his first night in the open air, when he left the village of Nola for Naples to become a Dominican friar. When night came, he lay on his back and contemplated the wide sphere. Above him, millions of stars were shining in the sky. He muttered to himself: “If beauty had an absolute form, it would be this! The face of God must appear upon it, and the light it reflects must be His light.” Thirty-five years have passed since that night, and now he is locked in a dark cell in Rome, waiting to be burned alive in public, and the reason is the stars.
Irish poet Dylan Thomas has a wonderful elegy about his father’s death. The word sky is not explicitly mentioned, and he does not refer to it directly, but the sky is alive and appears here through the night that is beginning to sweep and the day that is about to end. The poet incites his father to rebel against death, not to give up and enter quietly into that darkness of that night. When the light fades, he must get angry!
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
T1630
