"TO HIS WIFE" v. "Dover Beach"

[Senna Jawa]

Have the copy of the poems at hand. Make your window W--I-D--E. I'll post the comment in a moment, right after this.






TO HIS WIFE

Since our hair was plaited and we became man and wife
The love between us was never broken by doubt.
So let us be merry this night together,
Feasting and playing while the good time lasts.

----------

I suddenly remember the distance that I must travel;
I spring from bed and look out to see the time.
The stars and planets are all grown dim in the sky;
Long, long is the road; I cannot stay.
I am going on service, away to the battle-ground,
and I do not know when I shall come back.
I hold your hand with only a deep sigh;
Afterwards, tears -- in the days when we are parted.
With all your might enjoy the spring flowers,
But do not forget the time of our love and pride.
Know that if I live, I will come back again,
and if I die, we will go on thinking of each other.

​

General Su Wu [circa 100BC]
(trans. by A.Waley)



*****


Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold


The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[1867]

 

[Senna Jawa]

comment

TO HIS WIFE: The poem tells us so much almost without words: We know that the couple tries to relax in the evening (early night). Then they rest in their bed. The general has to leave in the morning. He should sleep, to charge himself with energy, but he's restless: "I spring from the bed" -- that's all that the poem says! Then the so familiar image is provided, it's a jewel: "The stars and planets are all grown dim in the sky", and you don't need to be told that very little of the night (and of the sleep) is left. Twenty one centuries after these words were written they are as good as ever. Most of us went through this experience and feeling, when you need to get up in the morning because of travel or of an important challenge, but the sleep doesn't come. I've seen the sky becoming just slightly less black, the stars becoming dim, and I know the dejected feeling of resigning myself to the fact that not much sleep is available to me. I am sure that many of you were in this situation and know the feeling.

Each phrase, each image, each thought feeling in this poem is personal, authentic (true), and images are sensual and unique, describing a unique situation, while at the same time they are familiar.

Dover Beach: M.Arnold talks about the image which includes both the French and the English coast. It is very rare that you can see the both (and certainly not in any detail). That's ok, a poet has his right to create plausible images which go beyond the ordinary experience. However, this is supposed to be a night scene! Thus the superficiality of the whole thing. And it is worse than that, because at the same time, in the same stanza (meant by me in a strict logical way--it is shorter than the double break between the lines would suggest), in the same stanza the narrator addresses someone: "Listen!", and the whole thing now feels even more superficial: we know now, that we are in contact with LITERATURE, and not with anything true. I don't even feel that the author/narrator was at the sea at the time of the scene, or at any time! In those days Brits were used to the seas, and such image feels to me quite cliched. It's an advanced cliche but cliche nevertheless. The poor juxtaposition of the two scales--the global one from coast to coast, and the intimate one--is not glued together at all in this text.

The first (logical) stanza ends with the line: "[...] bring / The eternal note of sadness in.", which is blatant "telling".

The next stanza, about Sophocles, doesn't sound convincing, it sounds like more of the arbitrary "telling", when M. Arnold tells us about the insides of the Sophocles' mind. Does the Southern Greek/Turkish sea bring the same mood as a Northern one? M.Arnold is making it up, that's all.

His "we" in "we / Find also in the sound a thought" makes his text sound didactic, especially when iinterpreted as "all of us". But even if "we" means "just the two of us" )), the whole thing still doesn't sound authentic (it doesn't feel like a personal experience of any particular individual), it's an imposition.

The author struggles with finishing his stanza, so he saves the day with "this" in "this distant northern sea". Observe that "distant" sounds quite disagreeable here because to the narrator that "northern sea" is neither Northern (rather Southern) nor distant--it was distant to Sophocles but Sophocles didn't give a damn, had never thought about it, probably didn't know that it existed. Thus it is quite silly to write here "distant", simply superficial.

In the next stanza all pretense and artistic discipline are gone, it's a shameful-shamless stanza.

The next to the last stanza ("Ah, love...") amounts to a false message (I am alergic to bullshit, can't stand it): "let us be true / To one another! for the world, [...] Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, [...]"--and if the world is ok then you don't have to be true to one another? There is no true affection/feeling in this poem. In some poems the lirical subject might be not sympathetic, and when that's what the poem is about then it can be a wonderful poem. Here we have a poor text, that's it. After all, the narrator is supposed to be a wonderful, wise and romantic guy. Yeah, sure!

Look at the contrast with the general, who expressed his feeling straight, without any doubtful explanations and phoney justifications.

The last three lines of the Arnold's poem are pure bullshit in the style of novices, with all those "alarms" and arbitrarily (idiotically) introduced by the author "ignorant armies".

In conclusion: Arnold's poem does not have a believable image, nor a believable emotion (like love). All it has is a lot of pseudo-philosophical bull. This poem can fool today's readers but would not fool more refined audiences from the past, here and there, where they had good taste.

******
Regards,

Senna Jawa
​

 

[Senna Jawa]

stanzas

What I called "logical stanza" was most likely an actual true stanza, separated from the next by a blank line.

I got curious and googled. I have found three places with the poem. All three pages which present "Dover Beach" have a break where I have indicated. Otherwise they do not quite agree on other breaks into stanzas.

 

[twelveoone]

Would you mind terribly, if I agree? Even if I am working my way though understanding it?
I am a great admirer of the turgid ebb and flow of that era (Victorian)
moon-blanch'd land,
bright girdle furl'd.
They really don't write'em that way anymore (except sometimes here), 'tis a shame

T, and the whole thing now feels even more superficial: we know now, that we are in contact with LITERATURE, and not with anything true. I don't even feel that the author/narrator was at the sea at the time of the scene,

In conclusion: Arnold's poem does not have a believable image, nor a believable emotion (like love). All it has is a lot of pseudo-philosophical bull. This poem can fool today's readers but would not fool more refined audiences from the past, here and there, where they had good taste.

******
Regards,

Senna Jawa
​

I know this is slighly out of context, but I just read achilles....

 

[Angeline]

Thank you, Senna. You've given me a lot to think about, to digest.

You've always said that one shouldn't write poetry about something that isn't true. I agree with you that Arnold obviously didn't write about a real experience--though I've read that he wrote this while looking out the window toward Dover from his room in an inn where he was staying. Beyond that I think it's conjuring.

Do you think it's not possible to write good poetry about something the poet has not actually experienced? Maybe there can be a germ of something real around which the poem is built? But maybe that's not enough--if what I just described having read about Arnold, it wasn't enough to make him produce a poem that feels real. Certainly not to you, who is less forgiving of bullshit in poetry, nor even to me who is probably a lot more forgiving.

I also see what you mean about the Wu poem providing a wealth of information with very few words, whereas (one could argue) Arnold struggles (and fails) with many words to get a plausible image across.

And yet his (Arnold's) poem evokes emotion in me when I read it. I feel sad for his loss of faith and his foolish grasping to force a relationship to make up for it. You're right that Arnold's poem in comparison to Wu's feels false, but its images affect me anyway.

So why is that, in your opinion? Have we readers, in modern times, become less able to appreciate what is simple and true in a poem and instead need grand (and false) gestures to evoke a response in us? Why has that happened?

How can I see the logic of everything you say and still think well not that Dover Beach is a great poem (though I guess you'd agree it is great "literature" and not mean it as a compliment lol), but a poem that can evoke an emotional response from me?

Thanks again Senna, for the response and provoking my thoughts, which I know is good for me as a writer.


S.

 

[twelveoone]

minor bump
because I have high regard for intelligence, and this exchange SJ & A, may be the most intelligent thing I see in awhile

 

[wildsweetone]

I was in the right mind to read this morning, so printed this thread off and read through...

Two interesting poems and some interesting comments Senna and Ange.

I found both poems interesting.

The first 'To His Wife' by Gen. Su Wu seemed very basic, almost clippedand is succinct in its message.

The second 'Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold is full of fluff and flowers.

Both poems have plenty of imagery for a reader to imagine.

However the major difference in the words themselves, are that To His Wife is full of nouns and verbs and keeps the eye moving to read.

Dover Beach is full and overflowing with adjectives and every line forces me stop several times to imagine the noun more than what it is without the overused power of the adjectives.

There are more discrepancies with Arnold's poem than Senna noticed. One I picked up quickly is where he says the sea is calm, then the bay is tranquil and then goes on to say there's a long line of spray and the pebbles roar as the waves fling them...

Arnold's poem has too much imagery and it's inconsistent.

There is much much more to comment on regarding the differences between the two, so much so that I'm wondering why Senna put the two together to compare.