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Bezig met laden... A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life Of Matthew Arnolddoor Ian Hamilton
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English poet Matthew Arnold had two lives. In his youth, he was an impassioned lyric poet. In his later years, he was Victorian England’s best-known social prophet, educational reformer, and literary critic. Arnold’s poetic life that gave us ” Dover Beach,” ”The Scholar-Gipsy,” and ”Empedocles on Etna” --was effectively over by the age of forty, when he began to devote all his energies to "purposeful” prose composition. As Auden said, he ”thrust his gift in prison till it died.” From the very start, though, Arnold had viewed his poetry-writing self as irresponsible, delinquent. As the eldest son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, the great shaper of Victorian morality, his destiny--he knew--was inescapable. He had been born to ”make a difference” to the age in which he lived.For about twenty years, however, Matthew Arnold made efforts to resist his destiny as a social moralist, and this book is the story of that losing battle. As a biographical narrative, A Gift Imprisoned confronts a number of intriguing puzzles. Chief among these, of course, is the much-pondered Marguerite. Who was she: a dream-girl, an invention born of too much exposure to the novels of George Sand, or a real person met in Switzerland in 1848? Then there is Dr. Arnold himself: a devitalizing ogre or an inspiration? And, overarchingly, there is the matter of Arnold’s attitude to his own gifts as a poet: Why did he so early on abandon the poetic life and settle for three decades of drudgery as an inspector of elementary schools? Was it really a fierce love of duty that took him down this path--or was it, rather, that he all along had insufficient faith in his own talent? And this leads to the question that matters most of all: How much faith do we and should we have in his talent?In this compelling study, Ian Hamilton brings his own formidable gifts and his lifelong passion for his subject to bear on one of the most mysterious literary figures of the last century--and a figure who still fascinates today. The result is a biography of rare originality and significance. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)821.8Literature English English poetry 1837-1899 Victorian period, 19th centuryLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3.5)
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The above is a very honest statement quoted from the book’s preface. Ian Hamilton is not trying to pull over the reader’s eyes by suggesting that his book is the complete and definitive life of Matthew Arnold.
This stamp of honesty is ingrained throughout the book, within his style of writing, his objectiveness and his refraining from turning the biography into a hagiography.
Ian Hamilton has created a remarkable piece of work. It is made even more remarkable as it appears Arnold did not leave behind a bounty of diaries, letters etc from which a biography could be constructed.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Wordsworth, Browning and Tennyson, Arnold has all but been forgotten, his poetry no longer fashionable, consigned to be a poet only enjoyed by scholars.
While Arnold’s poetry never had the emotional charge of Wordsworth or the introspective humanity of Tennyson, it did have a grace and a force of nature. While the poetry of his contemporaries had all the beauty and style of a supermodel, Arnold’s poetry was the beauty of the soul, the person within not the external superficial beauty that one could tire of looking at.
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.
Dover Beach
Ian Hamilton does a great service to the memory of Matthew Arnold with his insightful, intelligent and penetrating analysis of Arnold’s verse. Hamilton shows us the development of Arnold’s poetry and as such puts that work in context biographically and historically.
If there is one thing that a biography of a poet’s life should try to attain is to have the reader want to read or reread the poetry of the biographer’s subject.
Arnold turned his back on the world of poetry to concentrate on prose during the last twenty or so years of this life. The nineteenth century and beyond was a poorer place because of this decision.
“He thrust is gift in prison till it died” W.H. Auden. (