Victorian Anguish in Mathew Arnolds Dover Beach - Essay Example

Representations of the Victorian Anguish in Mathew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” Mathew Arnold, the acclaimed poet and critic who lived in the Nineteenth Century actively shared the pervading anguish of the time. The century, which marked the Victorian Period, was in the tumultuous grip of the conflicting ideas propagated by religion and science. The Biblical story of creation detailed in Genesis was thrown to the winds by the revolutionizing Theory of Evolution propounded by Charles Darwin. Religious faith, man’s anchorage, was slipping away, offering no substitute. Arnold was obsessively concerned about the rise of materialism and the erosion of more enduring spiritual values. Standing in the direct line of poet-critics from Philip Sydney to T.S Eliot, he hoped that literature would rise and take up the place of religion offering consolation and sustenance to man. His short poem “Dover Beach” reflects his melancholic temperament and his dismay at the retreating tide of religious faith. He extols humanity to hold fast to one another because the world is a deceptive and dangerous place, the darkness of which needs moral and spiritual enlightenment to guide people through. The poem begins with tempting description of the night-scene from the Dover Beach. The sea is described as calm, the tide full, “the moon lies fair upon the straits”, the distant lights on the French coast come on and off, the vast cliffs of England stand “glimmering”, the bay is tranquil, and the night air is sweet. The speaker invites the other to come to the window and witness the alluring scene. The poem is in the form of a talk, and there is an inevitable presence of a listener. The speaker is airing his thoughts and feelings to an intimate ‘other’ present with him. The seventh line in the first stanza of the poem marks the transition in the speaker’s mood. From the alluring description of the outside view and the invitation to share the beautiful moment with him at the window, he swiftly moves to the melancholic aspect of the repetitive sound of the waves gathering and flinging back the pebbles from the shore on their coming and retreating. He calls this “the grating roar of pebbles”. The noise is disturbing in its recurring pattern of “Begin, and cease, and then again begin”. The slow and “tremulous cadence” of the waves bring to the poet “the external note of sadness in”. Arnold uses poetic techniques like inversion to heighten the impact of his words. In the last lines of the first stanza the inversion in “with tremulous cadence slow” works wonders bringing home the melancholy and sadness in the speaker’s mind. The second stanza is short with only six lines. Referring to the Greek master Sophocles, who brought out the landmark play Oedipus Rex, Arnold asserts that poets are visionaries who can imbibe the present’s particularities and foresee the impact of them on the future. The impending catastrophe for Greek civilization as envisaged by the prophet-like writer Sophocles is hinted at here for the purpose of underlining his own intuitive feelings of possible degeneration in the wake of the new advancements in science. The third stanza moves back in line and the speaker is seen reminiscing about the invaluable role played by religion in the lives of men. He describes, The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. The link between the first and the third stanza in its comparison of faith with the sea is remarkable. Faith, the sea of it encircled the world like a girdle providing safety and protection. As in the first stanza, there is a transition to melancholy. The present, in striking contrast to the past is vulnerable without the past is vulnerable without the girdle of the sea of faith. The sound of the waves only reinforces the sense of loss and helplessness. The girdle moves off baring the nakedness, putting the world to shame and disgrace. The closing line of the stanza, “And naked shingles of the world” exerts its powerful impact driving home the ideas of hopelessness, shame, disgrace and above all the vulnerability of man when he begins to waver between his faith and materialistic aspirations. The ending of the poem is the poet’s speaker’s solution to the prevailing situation of chaos and confusion. He tells his companion: ‘Ah, love, let us be true/ To one another!...” The stanza proceeds to provide the dismal picture of what the world has turned out to be with faith gone. The world is not the “land of dreams” as it appears to the naïve. Its beauty, variety and newness are all deceptive. There is no real joy, no real love, no light, no assurance, no peace, no alleviation of pain. The world offers nothing. The last three lines yield the poet’s essential vision of what the world is. Devoid of all that is good, vital and enduring, it is like a Warfield where there is no light, only alarms of struggle and flight, the warriors fight blindly to self-destruction. It is a dismal picture that the poem provides of the world that has turned to materialism. But the first lines in the closing stanza offers a solution that is practical and promising. Arnold, who stressed through his writings that poetry has a lofty mission, has proved himself right with this short but moving and enlightening poem. The brevity and simplicity of the poem only enhances its impact. Honesty, loyalty, fidelity and commitment are all values which sustain man. Materialism is only capable of brining in more and more chaos heralding total annihilation of virtue and civilization in its entirety. Read More