Analysis and comments on Strayed Reveller, The by Matthew Arnold
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Comment 1 of 1, added on May 17th, 2005 at 3:45 PM.
This is the title-poem from Arnold's first collection of poetry, in which he declares his intentions to write a new kind of poetry. Arnold is rebelling against the influence of the Romantics, particularly that of Keats and Shelley, who both wrote poetry with classical themes. The "strayed reveller" of the poem is very likely Arnold himself, claiming that he will only stay a while with the enchantress Circe, who here is the goddess of forgetfulness. Arnold believed that the Romantics (and here he included Byron, too) had somehow exchanged objective knowledge and moral power, two of the primary facets of the poet, for the power of the imagination, which distorts things and stops poets from seeing things "as they really are," to quote a later phrase of Arnold's. Circe will help him forget their ways and learn to observe the world "without pain, without labour," that is, not forced. The poem is about a young poet trying very hard to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors.
The youth asks Circe to let him have a "bright procession ofeddying forms" go through his soul. When she asks who he is, he explains how he has left his hut and assumed the dress of a Dionysiac reveller. He steps over the sleeping bodies of Odysseus's men and joins the procession of revellers. He driks from a bowl on an altar in Circe's place and falls asleep. Circe chides him at first, but then encourages him to drink more and already he feels the inspiration that it gives him, "More soft, ah me,/ Than Pan's flute-music" (his metaphor for Romantic pastoral poetry).
The next part of the poem introduces Ulysses (Odysseus), who has by now become Circe's lover and whose men are no longer pigs, and he wonders who this young man might be that Circe has "lured" to her island. Circe says that she didn't lure him, at which point he wakes up and recognises Ulysses. The latter (whose Roman name is often used rather than his Greek one)confuses Bacchus (the god of wine) with Iacchos (a god connected with the Eleusinian mysteries)-- OK, it's Arnold's mistake and this writer is a pedantic nit-picker. Ulysses wonders which "divine bard" the young man has been emulating, perhaps suggesting that Arnold's models should be Homer and the classical poets rather than his predecessors the Romantics. This certainly ties in with what Arnold says later on in essays l
John Butler from Canada
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This is the title-poem from Arnold's first collection of poetry, in which he declares his intentions to write a new kind of poetry. Arnold is rebelling against the influence of the Romantics, particularly that of Keats and Shelley, who both wrote poetry with classical themes. The "strayed reveller" of the poem is very likely Arnold himself, claiming that he will only stay a while with the enchantress Circe, who here is the goddess of forgetfulness. Arnold believed that the Romantics (and here he included Byron, too) had somehow exchanged objective knowledge and moral power, two of the primary facets of the poet, for the power of the imagination, which distorts things and stops poets from seeing things "as they really are," to quote a later phrase of Arnold's. Circe will help him forget their ways and learn to observe the world "without pain, without labour," that is, not forced. The poem is about a young poet trying very hard to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors.
The youth asks Circe to let him have a "bright procession ofeddying forms" go through his soul. When she asks who he is, he explains how he has left his hut and assumed the dress of a Dionysiac reveller. He steps over the sleeping bodies of Odysseus's men and joins the procession of revellers. He driks from a bowl on an altar in Circe's place and falls asleep. Circe chides him at first, but then encourages him to drink more and already he feels the inspiration that it gives him, "More soft, ah me,/ Than Pan's flute-music" (his metaphor for Romantic pastoral poetry).
The next part of the poem introduces Ulysses (Odysseus), who has by now become Circe's lover and whose men are no longer pigs, and he wonders who this young man might be that Circe has "lured" to her island. Circe says that she didn't lure him, at which point he wakes up and recognises Ulysses. The latter (whose Roman name is often used rather than his Greek one)confuses Bacchus (the god of wine) with Iacchos (a god connected with the Eleusinian mysteries)-- OK, it's Arnold's mistake and this writer is a pedantic nit-picker. Ulysses wonders which "divine bard" the young man has been emulating, perhaps suggesting that Arnold's models should be Homer and the classical poets rather than his predecessors the Romantics. This certainly ties in with what Arnold says later on in essays l
John Butler from Canada