analysis

ARTS 1A: Document Analysis 5

First read the following seventeenth-century poem by Willem Godschalk van Focquenbroch, our primary source document this week. Address the questions which follow in your notebook.

“Thoughts in my Room,” by Dutch poet Willem Godschalk van Focquenbroch, written after 1649, translated by Maria A. Schenkeveld.

In this small room there is no sound, A solitary joy is my treasure Since fortune here no more is found I now get from my books my pleasure And thereby mock the world around. All worldly joy I consider a ghost A short and vanishing illusion. I sit and smoke here, by which aid I daily come to the conclusion: Of less than smoke is pleasure made. My room thus fosters sanity: Wherever I look I see the glaring Examples of foolishness That teach me, while my eyes are staring The world is nothing but vanity. The grinning mask that I see Shows that the world needs close inspection. To pose as truth, will untruth try And fools will put on a saint’s perfection: A fool would trust what meets the eye. My fiddle and my flute display A lesson, strikingly appearing Because like a sound that fades away Almost before it strikes one’s hearing, So fleeting is a mortal’s stay. The jewels that I look upon, As a diversion once presented, Give often cause to ponder on The hollow joys of youth, lamented When old age comes and spring is gone. Turn to the next page.

When on a bottle my eyes fall With balm for many wounds entrusted, Life looks not great to me at all In that it sometimes is adjusted By drops of medicine so small. And when the coats-of-arms I see My old nobility displaying, Then I am from the cares set free That always around the Courts are staying; I mock at all that slavery. Or when I contemplate the face Of Charles, who once ruled Britain’s nation I ponder: is not life a case Of stage-play and dramatization Where each man fills an actor’s place? True, one portrays here majesty, A Lazarus, or other. As different as their stations be, Their graves reveal that they are brothers. Bones show no inequality. And when a sidelong glance I cast At pictures of my blood relations I think: death claims us all at last. Though on my walls hang imitations The models perished in the past. The fate that death turns each to dust, All servants, serfs and lords see beckon; Both poor and rich men always must With their return to ashes reckon; Death equalizes all, I trust. This is the food my privacy Brings ever to my ruin. I learn that no security Comes from the world’s luxury. For everything is vanity.

Turn to the next page.

In your notebook, write a response to the following questions. As part of your notetaking practice, quote from this document—that is, literally place “quotation” marks around something that is stated, as part of your answer.

1. What did presence of a “grinning mask” teach the writer?

2. What did the “bottle . . .with balm for many wounds” signify to the writer, and why?

3. For this poet, what “Comes from the world’s luxury”?

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