Melancholy in Matthew Arnold’s Scholar Gypsy
Discuss on the elegiac quality of Arnold’s poetry. / Write a note on the dominating note of melancholy in Arnold’s poetry. / Discuss Arnold’s criticism of life expounded in his poems. / ‘Arnold’s poems are always of regret, loss of faith, instability and nostalgia. ’ Elucidate. In its ancient Greece ‘elegy’ used to denote a kind of poetry dealing with the subject matter of change and loss. As a humanist Arnold was very much concerned about the gaining of supremacy of science, theology and natural philosophy over arts, poetry, and moral philosophy as academic subjects.
This passionate sense of loss and the concern for rapid shifting in the taste of his people are strongly evident in the poems of Matthew Arnold. His best of poems comes when he is this brooding mood. As a poet Arnold provides a record of a sick society. In the Scholar Gypsy (1867) Arnold’s attitude to the gypsy is closely analogous to that of an adult towards child. He appreciates even envies its innocence, but realizes that there is no return to such state is possible for himself. The child loses its ‘innocence’ not by some act of sin or by a defect of intellect, but merely by gaining experience and developing into an adult.
The realities of adult life turn out to be less agreeable. The gypsy, like a child, is the embodiment of a good lost, not of a good temporarily or culpably mislaid. When Arnold contrasts the gypsy’s serenity with the disquiets and perplexities of his own age, he is not satirizing the nineteenth century, or renouncing it, or criticizing it, or suggesting a remedy, he is rather, exploring its spiritual and emotional losses, and the stoic readjustment which this will entail for it: —No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours!
For what wears out of the life of mortal men? “Tis that form change to change their bearing rolls; The poem starts with description of the lethargic setting of the Oxfordshire countryside. The setting prepares us of the story that will follow: how a young Oxford scholar left his place in the prestigious institution and took up the simple rural life. The introduction immediately places the preference of a simple and artless country life over the toil for so called knowledge. The young scholar hasn’t forsaken life for good. The interaction between the cholar and the uncomplicated country dwellers reminds the poet that the truer self is often found in places where we are less likely to look for it. Though the poem starts with a notion of loss it doesn’t end with the same. Through the course of the poem the poet tries to find out that long lost innocent and goodness in life. And, the Oxford leaving scholar finds it in the life of the wandering gypsies. The poem ends with a tone of hope and desire, Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smile Dover Beach (1867) also possesses a tone of psychological loss.
Line 15-20 focuses on the human misery and the thought it evokes in to intellectual minds from ancient till now. The later stanzas explore a temporal contrast of hope and achievements. Past abound with faith but now there remains only ‘melancholy’. The world which seems To lie before us as 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 … The setting of the poem differs from that of the Scholar Gypsy. The sea is calm but temporarily. A stormy night is looming and poem prepares the environment for that.
The storm looms from the loss of faith. Previously the sea of faith was full and around the land it, Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now only the melancholy on the loss of faith can be heard. This poem however doesn’t leave any hope. The readers are left in the darkness only to hear the clash and clamours of the arms and armours of the ignorant armies. Both in these poems Arnold deals with the theme of loss of the innocence and faith in his age. But like Wordsworth there is hardly any compensation for the damage.
The experience does not hold any higher innocence but only renewed frustration. In its most classical sense Arnold’s poem thus contains the elegiac tone in them. Like an alchemist Arnold tries to find out the ailment of his age. But the motive is hardly to find a cure, rather to understand the nature of the crisis in its true being. And eventually he doesn’t suggest any solution rather invites his readers to share in his ideas. Though not written as formal elegies, both Scholar Gypsy and Dover Beach exhibit tone of classical elegies in their themes and motifs.
