Give an estimate of the greatness of Arnold as a poet.

What are the merits and demerits of Arnold’s poetry?

Write a note on the salient features of Arnold’s poetry. Illustrate your answer from the poems you have read.

“Arnold was a good poet but he was not a very great one”. Elucidate.

Ans.

The Note of Pessimism: Arnold was a good poet but he was not a very great one. He was not a popular poet. The true tone of Arnold’s temperament is its sadness: a pensive melancholy, essentially Romantic in origin, is his chief trait. The pessimistic note runs through his poetry. Arnold is conscious that he has fallen upon an era of transition; he finds himself “wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.” In Arnold, we thus catch the first glimpse of Victorian pessimism, the pessimism of an age of uncertainty and transition.

Virgilian Cry of Horror: Arnold is the greatest of the English elegiac poets. The mood of plaintive reflection exactly suits him, as in “Rugby Chapel”, “Thyrsis”, “Dover Beach”, and other poems. “He does not concentrate sorrow on the individual, but widens his view to human life in general… “His is the Virgilian cry of horror at the spectacle of life.

His Moral Spirit and Philosophy of life: Such pessimistic and melancholy poetry is generally depressing but in Arnold is does not become enervating on account of another quality of his-his fine stoical moral spirit. Amoled held that poetry is a criticism of life’ and that poet ought, therefore, to have a philosophy clearly thought out in his own mind and underlying all his utterances. The philosophy of life contained in Arnold’s poems is very much like, that of the ancient Stoics. All true happiness from within and all that the wise man can do is to seek within his own bosom for an inward good, to possess his soul in peace, while practising resignation in regard to outward things.

His Classicism: Arnold’s poetry has many fine classical qualities such as perfect lucidity of expression, clear transparency of meaning, the absence of farfetched images and long, involved constructions. Arnold’s classical inspiration also explains his fine economy in the use of words and restraint in the expression of passion.

For this reason readers-particularly young readers-often find him cold. Self control, wistfulness and serenity are the prevailing qualities of his poetry, rather than outbursts of passion. The studied efforts after perfection of form, so apparent in Arnold’s poetry, marks a return to the manner of the 18th century classicists.

As a Nature-Poet: As a poet of Nature, Arnold continues tradition, but with a difference. “Arnold goes to Nature not so much for spiritual revelation as for relief from the tumult and distractions of the everyday world. Again for Arnold, Nature’s ‘secret was not joy, but peace’. Unlike Wordsworth, “horn Nature always gave joy, Arnold is influenced by the peace and the quiet of Nature, and he loves her in her quieter and more subdued moods. Pictures queness of description is another marked characteristic of Arnold’s nature poetry. Truthfulness of natural scenery characterizes poems like ‘Resignation”, “The Scholar Gypsy’ and ‘Thyrsis’. Of Thyrsis’ Arnold himself said, “The images are all from actual observation.” Arnold makes ample use of Homeric similes. In his similes he is content with a resemblance of a general kind, so that his description of the seen introduced for comparison has often a Homeric simplicity.

Use of Suggestive Pictures and Phrases: Arnold is also very felicitous in his condensed pictures and phrases which suggest a scene without fully describing it, as, for instance,

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires

Those wide fields of breezy grass;

Where black-wing ‘d swallows haunt the glittering Thames.

His Shortcomings: There are certain shortcomings which lower Arnold’s position as a poet. First, he lacks spontaneity rapture and emotional flights of imagination. “The urge is there to fly, the desire is there to soar, and the flying and soaring too are there to some extent, but the strength of the wings slackens are long and the opinions flap in vain endeavour.” Secondly, Arnold has an uncertain ear for rhythm. “The rush and sweep, the swell and surge, the profuse strains of unpremeditated art, the race of unbridled joy, the flow of notes in crystal stream, the bursting gladness of harmonious madness, the roll, the rise, the carol- these forever dear to Apollo, are not there in Arnold’s poetry. He has the poet’s vision, but not the poet’s voice.” Thirdly, there is some lack of poetic intensity in his poetry. His poetry has “No colour, no warmth, no leap, no passion, no rapture, and hence according to some, fit to be read only by those who have crossed the golden threshold of life and entered the courtyard where leader-eyed despairs and pulse-less philosophical consolation sit cheek by jowl, engrossed in mutual admiration.”

Another irritating defect of Arnold is his clumsy habit of repetition. “No English poet has so cruelly overworked the interjection. “Ah”, Far worse than any number of Ahs’ is Arnold’s habit of using italics.

We mortal millions live alone

Calm’s not life’s crown though calm is well.

Fear are the poems in which Arnold has not used the trick of italicising. Sometimes whole passages are italicized, as the end of Thyrsis’. Very often the italics are unnecessary.

According to Hugh Walker, Nowhere in Arnold do we find movement. Nothing happens in his poems. They have very little of action. “Arnold had no the bardic, the architectonic, gift, according to Quiller Couch. The movement in Arnold’s poems, even dramatic ones, is that of thought rather than action. Arnold’s choice of a large number of subjects which required no action-movement’, reduces his appeal and detracts from his greatness as a poet.

A Poet for The Cultured Few: Both Quiller Couch and 1-LW. Paul maintain that Arnold is not a poet for the masses. “Arnold was never popular and never will be”, observes-the former. “A popular poet, as Byron was, as Tennyson is, he never was and is never likely to be”, says the other. Arnold is a poet for the cultured few. There is hardly any other poet, who appeals so exclusively and directly to the cultivated taste of educated classes. He may be said to have written with the university audience in mind. Arnold did not illuminate like Shakespeare the dark depths of human nature. Neither did he reveal with a single flash, like Wordsworth, the inmost recesses of the human Soul, Arnold tried, “to see life steadily and see it whole”. But he saw it as a scholar of cultivated taste and sensitive mind.

His Real Greatness But his merits and excellencies far outweigh his defects. He must be awarded a place of honour among English poets. “His wistfulness and serenity: his intellectualism and philosophical reflections: his sober and serious preoccupation with the problems of life; his chastened stoicism. his calm and accurate descriptions of nature are sufficient to win for hint a pretty high and permanent place among poets.”