Attitude to Love Presented in Poems - Essay Example

?Attitude to love (can be changed) Love is one of the most recurrent and celebrated themes in poetry from the early history of literature, and a profusion of poetry and other literature has focused on the theme of love and the attitude towards love. One of the basic reasons for the repeated use of the theme of love in literature is that it is an emotion which people all through human history have been feeling. In English literature, the attitude to love has been a major concern of poetry as early as Chaucer and the theme of love has been celebrated through various periods in the history of English literature. Some of the most famous poems in literature for their attitude to love include Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Robert Frost’s “Home Burial”, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, William Blake’s “The Clod & the Pebble”, and Bart Edelman’s “Had You Not”. This paper makes a reflective exploration of the theme of, and attitude to, love in these famous poems and compares it with the attitude to love in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Andrew Marvell’s highly acclaimed lyrical poem “To His Coy Mistress”, a fine example of metaphysical poetry, is noted for the attitude to love that the poet presents in it. Significantly, the attitude to love presented in this poem is closely linked with the familiar carpe diem theme in literature. Unlike other poets who celebrate the theme of love, Marvell’s carpe diem theme demonstrates an explicitly sexual lust connected with love. The young man in Marvell’s poem declares his love for the lady who is tentative and modest about celebrating their love to the level of lust. In his appeal to the lady to do away with her coyness to enjoy love, i.e. lust, the young lover refers to the concept of carpe diem or ‘seize the day’. “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime.” (Lines 1-2) In a reflective exploration of the language and structure of the poem, the overall attitude of the narrator towards love appears to be humorous and playful. Thus, the poem regards the coyness to enjoy love as a crime and the readers can identify the pretence of passion all through the poem. It is significant to realize that the poet’s attitude towards love is based on the idea that woman’s body is merely an object for lustful admiration and enjoyment. “His ‘vegetable love’, an allusion to an erect penis, could continue to outgrow empires and move with slow luxury… He adopts the approach of the Petrarchan tradition in praising the woman’s body parts, reducing her to an object of admiration. Not only would he like to take this time, he tells her, ‘Lady you deserve this state.’” (Brackett, 400) Therefore, the attitude to love in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is clearly based on the concept of carpe diem or ‘seize the day’ and love is nothing but finding pleasure in woman’s body. T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, commonly known as Prufrock, is another significant poem which deals with the theme of love and expresses the attitude towards love. Significantly, the poem expresses the narrator’s sexual aggravation, sense of decay, and consciousness of mortality, and, most notably, his fanciful view of love. Thus, the readers realize that the poet uses effective rhetorical devices in order to demonstrate Prufrock’s feeble and inferior view of himself. Prufrock is presented as a coward and insecure person who cannot attract the love of any women in his society. Tony Pellum, in her review of the poem, maintains that “J. Alfred Prufrock, with an unromantic name himself, describes in this interior monologue his fanciful view of love and discovers his cowardice and timidity along the way. T. S. Eliot employs numerous rhetorical devices to illustrate Prufrock's helpless and inferior view of himself.” (Pellum) It is essential to maintain that the poem is not actually about love, but about the narrator’s fanciful view of love. T. S. Eliot’s famous allusion in the poem, to Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, suggests the narrator’s attitude to love. In the following lines, Eliot not alludes to Marvell’s attitude towards love, but also reconfirms the same attitude: “To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question.” (Lines 92-3) A similar attitude to love is provided by Robert Frost’s narrative poem “Home Burial”, in which the poet deals with themes such as love, grief, desire. The attitude to love is presented in the background of the death of a child and difference of opinion of the couple on the idea of love. Significantly, love is treated as a means to make the wife participate in the sexual activity and it is a tool to ease the grief of the wife over the home-burial of the dead child. In other words, the husband uses the concept of love as a philosophy in order to lead his wife to sexuality: “Though I don’t like such things ‘twixt those that love. / Two that don’t love can’t live together without them. / But two that do can’t live together with them.” (Lines 57-9) Here, there is an obvious suggestion to the idea that the couples are having problems sexually and it is suggested by the actions and setting of the poem. Therefore, the husband’s attitude to love is closely connected with his attempts to seduce his wife to sexuality. “The language used to describe her actions is submissive and dodgy, with words like “withdrew,” “shrinking,” “beneath,” and “slid.” This shows that the husband still believes in the relationship sexually, and he still considers them in love. He regards the baby’s death in opposition to their love, for he asks why she took the death of “a first child so inconsolably- in the face of love”.” (Caro) In short, Frost’s “Home Burial” presents an attitude towards love which is similar to the one presented in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. Matthew Arnold’s best-known poem, “Dover Beach”, admired as his masterpiece, deals with a refinement of the poet’s attitude towards love and it shares a sensual meaning of love with the previous poems discussed in this paper. Love is undoubtedly a major theme in the poem and the poet presents his attitude to love in the final stanza of the poem. “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.” (Lines 29-34) It is important to realize that love is distressed refuge to the poet who does not believe in the true value of love. In fact, Arnold presents love as the ultimate refuge for the modern world which is devoid of the hope in religion, peace, or joy. Everything is meaningless to the poet and he does not find any shelter in love too, because love is also devoid of commitment or fidelity. “Notably, in “Dover Beach” self-affirmation in defiance of the illusionary optimisms propagated by ‘the world’ (whether under the sign of love or under the sign of faith) is an ideological stance…” (Harrison, 28) “The Clod & the Pebble”, one of William Blake’s most deceptively simple poems from the Songs of Experience, offers two divergent attitudes towards love. In other words, the poem deals with the selfless and the selfish versions of love. While the little Clod of Clay presents the selfless version of love by suggesting that love does not seek its pleasure, the Pebble of the brook has a contrasting view that “Love seeketh only Self to please, / To bind another to Its delight; / Joys in anothers loss of ease. / And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.” (Lines 9-12) Significantly, the poet’s attitude towards love seems to be implied by the opinion of the pebble, which is the hard and unchanging version of experience. As Andrew Lincoln remarks, “the Pebble’s claim that love ‘Joys in anothers loss of ease’ may refer not only to a malevolent delight in the emotional conquest of others, but also to the predatory aspect of pity, which feeds on object. The phrase ‘Heavens despite’ is characteristically ambiguous: it expresses the selfish defiance of the Pebble, but also hints at the hypocrisy of the Clod of Clay.” (Lincoln, 175) Therefore, William Blake highlights the selfish nature of love which is the experienced fact of life. One of the most contemporary poems, Bart Edelman’s “Had You Not” also offers a similar attitude towards love which is presented in the context of modern world. One of the most significant novellas in world literature, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka presents a similar attitude to love as presented in the poems discussed in this paper – Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Robert Frost’s “Home Burial”, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, William Blake’s “The Clod & the Pebble”, and Bart Edelman’s “Had You Not”. Franz Kafka introduces the readers to the terrifying world of the young Gregor Samsa who undergoes a monstrous transformation. The novella presents the protagonist’s greater outward degradation as opposed to his greater inward purification. As Harold Bloom (2008) maintains, the protagonist was focused on the mundane concerns of his life as a salesman in the beginning of the story, including train connections, professional rivalry, envy, and office politics. “After a time all such matters seem trivial and remote and by the time of his death are supplanted by the nobler feels of live for his family despite the fact that everyone in it, even to some extent his mother, has so egregiously and ungratefully deceived, betrayed and physically maltreated him.” (Bloom, 29) It is important to recognize that this change in the attitude of the protagonist toward love and affection is brought about by his second metamorphosis which affected his soul, whereas the first metamorphosis merely changed his body. Significantly, Gregor’s dehumanizing metamorphosis into a giant insect-like creature changes his overall attitude towards love and affection. “By now he hardly felt the rotten apple in his back and the inflamed are around it, which were completely covered with soft dust. He recalled his family with affection and love.” (Kafka, 49) In a comparative analysis of the attitude to love presented in the poems such as Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Robert Frost’s “Home Burial”, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, William Blake’s “The Clod & the Pebble”, and Bart Edelman’s “Had You Not” and that presented in Kafka’s famous novella The Metamorphosis, it becomes lucid that the attitude that is presented in Kafka’s work is the permanent and most fundamental one, because it is an attitude directed by a person’s transformation in soul. Unlike the attitudes of the narrator’s in the various poems discussed in this paper, which are caused by the human being’s physical need of love, The Metamorphosis presents an attitude towards love which is the result of a permanent transformation in the soul of the protagonist. Therefore, the attitude towards love as presented in The Metamorphosis seems to be a superior one, in comparison to the attitudes directed by the sexual, physical, and selfish needs of human beings, as presented in the various poems in this discussion. In conclusion, it is the soul of a human being which produces an enduring and true attitude towards love, whereas the other attitudes are not honest or sincere. Works Cited Arnold, Matthew. “Dover Beach.” The Columbia Anthology of British poetry. Carl Woodring and James S. Shapiro. (Ed). Columbia University Press. 1995. P 621. Harrison, Antony H. The Cultural Production of Matthew Arnold. Ohio University Press. 2010. P 28. Blake, William. “The Clod & the Pebble.” Songs of innocence and of experience. Princeton University Press, 1994. P 175. Bloom, Harold. “Introduction.” Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Infobase Publishing. 2008. P 29. Brackett, Virginia. The Facts on File companion to British poetry: 17th and 18th centuries, Volume 2. Infobase Publishing. 2008. P 400. Caro, Benjamin. “An analysis of the poem “Home Burial” by Robert Frost.” 2007. August 3, 2011. . Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Prufrock and Other Observations.  1917. Bartleby. August 3, 2011. . Frost, Robert. “Home Burial.” The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry. Jay Parini. (Ed). Cengage Learning. 2005. P 349. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Stanley Appelbaum. (Ed). Courier Dover Publications. 1996. P 49. Lincoln, Andrew. “Commentary on the Text.” Songs of innocence and of experience. William Blake. Princeton University Press, 1994. P 175. Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” Selected Poetry and Prose. London: Routledge, 1986. P 40. Pellum, Tony. “Afternoons and Coffee Spoons: A Review of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot.” 2002. August 3, 2011. . Read More