Headshot of Myself

Author: Madelyn Dumas | Majors: Creative Writing and Economics

I am Madelyn Dumas and I study with intents of majoring in economics and creative writing, and minoring in Italian. Geoffrey Brock advises my creative writing thesis which started in the Fall of 2021 and will span throughout the Spring of 2022.

My Thesis is titled “Hounds of Eden”. It is a poetry thesis which draws inspiration from other literature to explore the human longing for “paradises”, or in other words, the widely shared, innate, human desire for something this world does satiate.

I apologize in advance for the cheesiness of this claim: I did not choose my research topic, my research topic chose me. My ever-hungry mind has always sought the thin red thread of beauty that laces itself throughout history. I have spent 8 months in Italy and spent the entirety of that time clinging to the heels of my professors and the writings on museum walls. History mesmerizes me– not because I care a great deal about important dates or large battles, but because history is a story of humanity swinging on a pendulum and hoping to find the truth that lies somewhere in between the extremes. I suppose I am rather narcissistic: I like history because it mimics me. I, too, want to find the truth that lies somewhere balanced between the host of ideas a millinnea of philosophers have poured forth. And I, like the philosophers and poets and peasants before me, believe the untouchable truth explains the for which I long . Therefore, I love literature because it attempts to capsulate the beauty I long for, and history because it explains what informed the literature. John Steinbeck’s East of Eden tells this story. I read the book on accident, almost by compulsion, most often late at night, as if an act of defiance against sleep. The Book inspired my use of Eden imagery, though it just hints at it itself. Steinbeck joins the thousand of voices that search for the timeless red thread. My thesis is an effort to write poetry which joins the thousand voices.

Geoffrey Brock had been recommended to me by Ryan Calabretta, and I believe I would trust Ryan Calabretta with my life if it came down to it. I was in Padma Viswanathan’s class, and found her to be quite extraordinary—anyone married to her couldn’t be so bad. And additionally, I am an Italian minor. I remember Geoffrey Brock reading an Italian poem during a poetry reading and feeling like I ought to get under his teaching. So eventually we connected, and he became my mentor for my thesis. It has been lovely, and he has been patient, kind and insightful. My research looks like reading and writing. Geoffrey has provided much needed feedback and edits, he additionally sends inspiration and recommendations my way. I am eager to work alongside him again this next semester. I believe because of this thesis, coupled with my current life circumstances, the world grows more beautiful and complex to me each day. I have Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, C.S. Lewis, William Blake and, surprisingly, John Milton, to thank for the patterns of this world which I recognize now but could not have 6 months ago. I am grateful. Lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

 I seek to explore universal human longing. The object itself proves elusive: longing is the result of being unable to obtain. Thus, my challenges have been: 1) fear, and 2) a finite mind. In regards to 1), I am afraid of overstepping, or of claiming to know a truth unknowable, or of approaching a powerful, two-edged truth clumsily—with mere knowledge of an undergrad girl who has lived little of the tragedies that history books unfurl. In regards to 2), I am approaching a topic I can never comprehensively address. Authors throughout history scratch the surface of the root the red thread, or else their works should not have outlived them. Their works bare a trace of ageless beauty which preserves them. But the authors did not leave a formula to solve or a map to trace the root of truth. And if I had to guess, truth must be constantly unfolding from some fixed epicenter—always growing, always enveloping itself. So if the authors had left a map, it would quickly prove inadequate. In short: the material itself, the pangs of longing a human feels as they strive onward, is really quite challenging to articulate and frightening to approach. Though, admittedly, this is also the appeal. I hope to boldly fall short.