The End of Arnold

Blog and bloggers, I owe you an apology. Here are the Arnold-related thoughts that have been floating through my head since the last Arnold class:

I really enjoyed that class. I think we finished with him on a powerful note, and I realize that his poetry has really grown on me. I think the reason for this is that I always regarded his poetry to be aesthetically pleasing, and now I truly understood the substance and thought put into it. For example, "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," about Arnold's fascination with the Carthusians, is strong. Thematically, his poetry begins to linger towards Eliot; revealing striking cultural comparisons, carrying the weight of the world, its gloom and fate, alienation from the new world. But Arnold seems not as tragic as Eliot, his seriousness is spread out and explained and incredibly personal; he tells a story. (Eliot's modern confusion stems from, perhaps, too many non-congruent stories, his point being that we live within chaos. For Arnold, there is a still emotion.)

I am learning now how the turn of the 19th century exploded into the 'modernist' world. In Arnold's work there is an obvious transition from the Victorians. 'Social change' was on verge of eruption. Arnold's fascination with the Carthusians implies a sort of desperation into the non-secular: a look into absolute devotion. Was Arnold the foreshadowing secularization of the West of the 20th century? More likely, he was picking up on the changes that were at the height of his life beginning to take place. Perhaps the Catholic church seemed less pious than before due to those 'social changes'. Arnold, raised as a Protestant, was perhaps indulging his curiousity in a a sort of devotion that seemed more akin to Catholicism.

Certainly the context of such poems bring them to life. Aesthetically passionate that they are, given the context we have dicussed in class, the clash of wordiness and depth certainly create a foundation of the 'modernism' that was to come. It reminds me of a more low-key way of Eliot's in the Waste Land, when he writes:

"You brought me hyacinth's first a year ago-
They called me the hyacinth girl.
Yet when we came back late from the hyacinth garden,
Your hair wet and your arms full I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed-
I was neither living nor dead,
looking into the heart of the light
the silence.
(Empty and barren is the sea.)"

(Pardon me if the quote is a bit off)
In technique and effect compare it to Arnold's passage:

"The library, where tract and tome
Not to feed priestly pride are there,
To hymn the conquering march of Rome,
Nor yet to amuse, as ours are!
They paint of souls the inner strife,
Their drops of blood, their death in life."
(Arnold, Stanzas from the old Chartreuse)

Note in these passages the use of emotion, intellect and history. Neither appeals specifically to the aesthetic or to the intellect, but merges the two, and results in profound effect. They think through a philosophical mind but get their point across using emotion: "Their drops of blood, their death in life..."

I think that the most poignant identification of the 'modern' is the specific (but certainly not flamboyant), effective evoking of emotion. We see this when we discuss Eliot's work, as contributive to the 'modern art movement', whose basis was to SHOCK. What is common streams of modern art that perhaps differenciates itself from what came before it is the technique of juxtaposing together things that have not before been implemented together, or perhaps are not even artistically or sociologicaly. I.e., words not often used together: "Blonde hands" (Andre Bretons "Solluble Fish"), to "unconventinal" sexual expression. Eliot shocked by mixing history and tradition. These techniques EVOKE EMOTION in an intellectual way that, by doing a close reading of some of Arnold's work, he begins.

An example of this in Arnold is one we discussed in class:
"The generations of thy peers are fled,
And we ourselves shall go;
But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page,
Because thou hadst-what we, alas! have not."
(Arnold, The Scholar-Gypsy)

The Scholar-Gypsy tackles the legend as a story that is true: the story of a student who went to the gypsies and never returned. He investigates a life as a legend, therefore combining seriousness and fantasy. While the tale may be whimsical or even untrue, Arnold creates a despair that underlies it, a meaning: "Amd life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life...," of leaving civilization by leaving Europe, by leaving the new life that is taking over, the new way. Arnold, (unconciously, I think), begins the emotion that Eliot continues, and ESPECIALLY, introduces this THEMATICALLY, with a subtle critique of civilization. Interesting that his writing is affected in this modern way, that he is writing differently in terms of critique and technique, but he is self-aware: Aware that he exists in a modern, rapidly changing time, and he is the last of the old tradition, holding on to his books with a final breathe. He is the Scholar-Gypsy. Seriousness with Fantasy...Ironically, he delves into the New Age (in form), as he describes to us his own desperate hanging on to tradition. This reveals insight into the power of artistic evolution: no matter how resistant you are, as social norms change and we are forced to change with them, artistic tradition changes too.

It will be interesting to investigate what Eliot thinks of Arnold- Just how "modern" he thinks him to be!

In short, studying Arnold's poetry brought his ideas to life. I now see much more clearly where he was in time.