Honors Humanities 9th Grade (Period 8) Assignments
- Instructor
- Madison Howard/Kramer
- Terms
- Fall 2018
- Spring 2019
- Department
- Humanities
- Description
-
In this Honors Humanities course, we dig deeper into literary analysis and criticism through the use of the short story, poetry, the novella, and supplementary articles or video. Extra assignments outside of the normal Humanities atmosphere such as projects and essays help the student to grow in ways that they cannot in the larger classroom setting. This class is designed to bring a student closer to their own understanding of the Humanities world and how it functions.
Upcoming Assignments
No upcoming assignments.
Past Assignments
Due:
Assignment
Due:
Assignment
"The Verb to Be" by Andre Breton
I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no wings, it doesn’t necessarily sit at a cleared table in the evening on a terrace by the sea. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of insignificant facts like seeds that leave one furrow for another at nightfall. It’s not the moss that forms on a rock or the foam that rocks in a glass. It’s a boat riddled with snow, if you will, like birds that fall and their blood doesn’t have the slightest thickness. I know the general outline of despair. A very small shape, defined by jewels worn in the hair. That’s despair. A pearl necklace for which no clasp can be found and whose existence can’t even hang by a thread. That’s despair for you. Let’s not go into the rest. Once we begin to despair we don’t stop. I myself despair of the lampshade around four o’clock, I despair of the fan towards midnight, I despair of the cigarette smoked by men on death row. I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no heart, my hand always touches breathless despair, the despair whose mirrors never tell us if it’s dead. I live on that despair which enchants me. I love that blue fly which hovers in the sky at the hour when the stars hum. I know the general outline of the despair with long slender surprises, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I get up every day like everyone else and I stretch my arms against a floral wallpaper. I don’t remember anything and it’s always in despair that I discover the beautiful uprooted trees of night. The air in the room is as beautiful as drumsticks. What weathery weather. I know the general outline of despair. It’s like the curtain’s wind that holds out a helping hand. Can you imagine such a despair? Fire! Ah they’re on their way … Help! Here they come falling down the stairs … And the ads in the newspaper, and the illuminated signs along the canal. Sandpile, beat it, you dirty sandpile! In its general outline despair has no importance. It’s a squad of trees that will eventually make a forest, it’s a squad of stars that will eventually make one less day, it’s a squad of one-less-days that will eventually make up my life.
Translated from the French by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow.