Comment 1 of 1, added on June 28th, 2006 at 7:00 AM.
Dear Professor,
I am a student of English Literature, and I have written this piece
on a poem by Matthew Arnold : 'The Buried Life'. Could you please give
me your opinions about it?
It`s as follows:
I have chosen The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold, because of its
philosophical tune and the optimistic ending of it, something unlike a
typical Arnold poem.
In the opening, the speaker is aware of a something in his saddened
breast that even his loved one's gay smiles are no anodyne. He then
addresses his beloved, asking fervently to let him read her inmost soul.
He complains of the human heart. That even Love is incapable to
reveal people's hearts to each other; that they conceal their feelings and
thoughts lest they would be ignored or blamed by others. So everyone
lives behind a disguise and hides oneself there.
In that moment, he invites both himself and the loved one to exempt
of them and not let the spell benumb their hearts and make them dumb,
instead have their lips unchained.
Every Man keeps his genius self from his capricious play in this
distracted world. Man's life is resembled to a river that flows
indiscernibly in the heart. We move not seeing the stream in our hearts, even
though driving on it eternally. But in the whips and scorns of time, we
tenderly desire into our beating hearts, our original course- whence our
life comes and where it goes. Though never do we practice it deep
enough.
We have been on many tracks and never on our own line, never have
been ourselves and if we try, unable we are to express the nameless¹
feelings in our breasts. And it's all in vain. We won't demand then the
stupefying power from the nothingness of the hours. They still benumb us
time to time, bringing a melancholy into all our day.
The interminable hours abides until a loved one's hand in ours
rescues us. With her caressing voice, the lost pulse of feeling stirs up in
the just-grown-plain heart, and what we mean we say; and it's a time
that you hear your life's flow in your heart smoothly.
Thereupon, a cooling calmness pervades his breast; he has none of the
former ambiguities and thinks that he knows the hills where life-the
river, rose and the sea where it pours.
_______________________________________________
1. Nameless is used twice in the poem, indicating an emphasis on
man's strange, unpredictable, and impulsive life and temperament.
Bearing in mind the Victorian era- the time of production of the
poem, we get a sense in finding that 'behind the satisfaction in the
industrial and political preeminence of England during the period, they also
suffered from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense too of being
displaced persons in a world made alien by technological changes which
had been exploited too quickly for the adaptive powers of the human
psyche. '
(The Norton Anthology of English
Literature, p.1891, Abrams, et al)
That lost something is what we easily recognize in The Buried Life By
Arnold. The speaker in the poem fails to understand the people around
him, accusing them of hypocrisy. He generalizes this theme and
distinguishes that within himself as well. He finds out that no one can
express his true self and if he does try, it is drown at red ink. An
intermittent strain of gloominess will now and then haunt him and the
nothingness wags human heart. The only redeemer is a beloved who frees him. Her
Love can not only rescue our very miserable from world's abyss, but can
also give him a cognition and knowledge of his own path in life, and
answer him where he is supposed to go- though Arnold never answers the
question in the poem.
Considering his significant temperament of resignation and his alien
attitudes in not standing people because they act not by their true
selves, how can this person find love in another? He does emphasis on the
importance of love in life, but he refrains to elaborate on it. 'A
loved-voice caressed our world-deafened ear' he remarks. But is he sure
enough he won't include his loved one to his black image of others after
the enchantment of love fades away?
By his own logic, as Melancholy comes to man time to time, I would
say that his very love is not to abide much in his heart and it is doomed
to decay, although it might amuse him for some very short time,
As I said it's philosophical, but a philosophy that is not
convincing, at least to me.
Source:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth edition, Abrams, et al
Mon from
Iran
Copyright © 2003-2008 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved.
Dear Professor,
I am a student of English Literature, and I have written this piece
on a poem by Matthew Arnold : 'The Buried Life'. Could you please give
me your opinions about it?
It`s as follows:
I have chosen The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold, because of its
philosophical tune and the optimistic ending of it, something unlike a
typical Arnold poem.
In the opening, the speaker is aware of a something in his saddened
breast that even his loved one's gay smiles are no anodyne. He then
addresses his beloved, asking fervently to let him read her inmost soul.
He complains of the human heart. That even Love is incapable to
reveal people's hearts to each other; that they conceal their feelings and
thoughts lest they would be ignored or blamed by others. So everyone
lives behind a disguise and hides oneself there.
In that moment, he invites both himself and the loved one to exempt
of them and not let the spell benumb their hearts and make them dumb,
instead have their lips unchained.
Every Man keeps his genius self from his capricious play in this
distracted world. Man's life is resembled to a river that flows
indiscernibly in the heart. We move not seeing the stream in our hearts, even
though driving on it eternally. But in the whips and scorns of time, we
tenderly desire into our beating hearts, our original course- whence our
life comes and where it goes. Though never do we practice it deep
enough.
We have been on many tracks and never on our own line, never have
been ourselves and if we try, unable we are to express the nameless¹
feelings in our breasts. And it's all in vain. We won't demand then the
stupefying power from the nothingness of the hours. They still benumb us
time to time, bringing a melancholy into all our day.
The interminable hours abides until a loved one's hand in ours
rescues us. With her caressing voice, the lost pulse of feeling stirs up in
the just-grown-plain heart, and what we mean we say; and it's a time
that you hear your life's flow in your heart smoothly.
Thereupon, a cooling calmness pervades his breast; he has none of the
former ambiguities and thinks that he knows the hills where life-the
river, rose and the sea where it pours.
_______________________________________________
1. Nameless is used twice in the poem, indicating an emphasis on
man's strange, unpredictable, and impulsive life and temperament.
Bearing in mind the Victorian era- the time of production of the
poem, we get a sense in finding that 'behind the satisfaction in the
industrial and political preeminence of England during the period, they also
suffered from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense too of being
displaced persons in a world made alien by technological changes which
had been exploited too quickly for the adaptive powers of the human
psyche. '
(The Norton Anthology of English
Literature, p.1891, Abrams, et al)
That lost something is what we easily recognize in The Buried Life By
Arnold. The speaker in the poem fails to understand the people around
him, accusing them of hypocrisy. He generalizes this theme and
distinguishes that within himself as well. He finds out that no one can
express his true self and if he does try, it is drown at red ink. An
intermittent strain of gloominess will now and then haunt him and the
nothingness wags human heart. The only redeemer is a beloved who frees him. Her
Love can not only rescue our very miserable from world's abyss, but can
also give him a cognition and knowledge of his own path in life, and
answer him where he is supposed to go- though Arnold never answers the
question in the poem.
Considering his significant temperament of resignation and his alien
attitudes in not standing people because they act not by their true
selves, how can this person find love in another? He does emphasis on the
importance of love in life, but he refrains to elaborate on it. 'A
loved-voice caressed our world-deafened ear' he remarks. But is he sure
enough he won't include his loved one to his black image of others after
the enchantment of love fades away?
By his own logic, as Melancholy comes to man time to time, I would
say that his very love is not to abide much in his heart and it is doomed
to decay, although it might amuse him for some very short time,
As I said it's philosophical, but a philosophy that is not
convincing, at least to me.
Source:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth edition, Abrams, et al
Mon from Iran