Arnold's theory of Poetry

MATHEW ARNOLD

by Matthew Arnold

THE STUDY OF POETRY

                               This blog is designed as a reflection of my understanding of the task assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad in the essay “The Study of Poetry” by Matthew Arnold. Click on the link to navigate to Dr. Dilip Barad Sir’s blog on Matthew Arnold’s essay.  

                                   Matthew Arnold, one of the best critics of the Victorian era was a rebel against the romantic era. William J. Long quotes on Matthew Arnold,

“We cannot speak with confidence of his rank in literature; but by his crystal-clear style, his scientific spirit of inquiry and comparison, illumined here and there by the play of humour, and especially by his broad sympathy and intellectual culture, he seems destined to occupy a very high place among the masters of literary criticism.”

His views of Poetry as a high conception are well weaved in his classic essay “The Study of Poetry”.  

The essay deals with

a.     The importance of Poetry according to Arnold

b.    Critical analysis of Chaucerian poetry

c.     Critical analysis of Burns’ poetry

d.     His views on the era of Pope and Dryden

Click here to read the original essay. 

 

Here I am sharing my understanding and views regarding Arnold’s essay.

 

Arnold reflects his views on what poetry is and how to evaluate poetry. He believed that poetry has a message or is an undertaking of knowledge or an advancement of life.  He assumes that poetry has a great future and begins his essay by saying,

“The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay”.

 

For poetry the idea is everything and the rest is a world of illusion.

 

“Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea;

The idea is the fact”.

 

Poetry, according to Arnold is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science. The science will appear incomplete without poetry. Arnold declares that we should turn to poetry in order to comfort us as well as to understand life and interpret it to us.  Arnold upholds poetry to be greater than philosophy and theology.

 

Now to fulfill such a great notion, Arnold believes that poetry should be of a higher order. The quality content or the central idea has the most importance that it indirectly becomes “fact”.

To quote Arnold,

“The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us as nothing else can”.

 

In reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it should be present in our minds.

 

Arnold suggests a concrete method for discovering which poetry belongs to a class of truly excellent- the method of touchstone lines.

The field of poetry shall be excellent if there is no space for charlatanism.

To keep in one’s mind the lines and expressions of great masters (Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, and Dante) and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry, in order to discover the truly excellent poetry is what Arnold believes.  These lines and expressions, possessing very highest poetical qualities enable us to feel the degree in which a high poetical form is present or wanting to be in the poetry we analyze. So he takes some major poets and analyzes their poetry and provides us shreds of evidence that support his viewpoints.

 

Here are the major characteristics of good poetry according to Matthew Arnold-

The major thing that Matthew Arnold brings to light is that,

"A work of art should be time tasted"

Arnold writes in The Study of Poetry,

"Critics give themselves great labour to draw out what in the abstract constitutes the characteristics of a high kind of poetry. It is much better simply to have recourse to concentrate examples; -to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest quality, and to say, the characters of a high quality of poetry are what is expressed there."

 He bids us to shun the false valuations of the "historic estimate" and "the personal estimate" and to attain to a "real estimate" by learning to feel and enjoy the best work of real classic, and evaluate the wide difference between it and all lesser work.

Arnold further says, 

"Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of truly excellent, and therefore do us most good, then to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great. Of course, we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all their poetry which we may place beside them"  

To see how far am I able to apply Matthew Arnold's touchstone method in my selected poetry I have selected Sylvia Plath's "Mirror"-

Here is the text...

“Mirror” was written two years before Plath committed suicide in 1963. It appeared in Plath’s posthumously published collection Crossing the Water. 

“Mirror” explores the life of a woman as an object reflected within it. The poem can be regarded as a retrospective investigation of the self through “unmisted” eyes.

The poem seems to pass the test of poetic truth and poetic beauty by giving a touch of a serious matter of life that is extrinsic perception and the poet touches upon a rarely noticed the subject of everyday life that is ‘mirror’ by assuming its voice and giving a beautiful and rare perception. 

As far as style and manner of the poem are concerned, it has a very lucid style and the manner in which the poem is told seems to be simple and straight forward with a different and unique perspective. so it can be said that this poem passes, to some extent, Arnold's concept of true poetry but it does not have that seriousness and superiority of style which Arnold demands. 

The very substance of poetry, according to Arnold, should be true and demands an excellent seriousness of idea. The poem ‘Mirror’ has the centrality in the object which it represents. It has a good seriousness of idea which the words represent, it’s the Mirror which is given a voice and then it’s the lake in the second stanza speaking about the looks at a woman through the eyes of the mirror.

According to Arnold, ‘poetry is the criticism of life’. This poem of Sylvia has to offer the readers a woman’s life and how she is slowly growing towards old age. The first stanza informs about the perceptions of a mirror and how it observes and reflects things around it. On one hand, the mirror is shown almost emotionless, governed only by truth, but on the other hand, it is also shown to have a heart and despite being “unmisted by love or dislike”, as stated in the earlier lines, it shows a shred of affection. It can also be argued that the mirror is used as a conduit by the poet to express herself. The poet ‘swallows whatever she sees’, that is, adopts any mode of thinking projected towards her in an attempt to fit in. And in this, she has lost her true self. In this sense, she is like a mirror.

In the second stanza, the lake takes the position of the mirror and the lake is as well truthful as a mirror but this seems to be disagreeable to the poet and this had caused her sadness. The idea of ‘truth causing agony’ can be called the central idea explored in the poem and so we can say that the concept can well match the very idea of criticism of life.

It poem has a note of sincerity as it presents the reality with two perceptions and is equally successful in reflecting the central theme in the minds of readers. It can be said that it has an accent of worth and power in it. 

To see whether 'Mirror' is good poetry or rather presents a usual thought or idea, I have picked up a few other poems of the same 

Thank you...