Poetic Forms and Genres: Alfred Tennysons Ulysses and T.S. Eliots Journey of the Magi - Assignment Example

Suzana Zdravkovska 19 May 2009 Poetic Forms and Genres Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” When we read poetry, it is not our mission to simply discover whether the poet’s ideas are new or old, neither is our mission to criticize one’s poetry if we have never written a single word in our whole lives. However, it is worth knowing something more about the period the poet belonged to, if we are trying to understand a poem and enjoy it. Alfred Tennyson belongs to the period of the English bourgeois literature or as many people recognize as the Victorian age (1832-1880). Although the term “Victorian” has evolved after the First World War and for some historians and literature critics it has also a very strong negative connotation related to the period immediately after the World War I and the disappointment in the moral and ideological values that have been the basis of the Victorian Age during the rule of Queen Victoria. Historical events during the Victorian Age such as the adoption of the Reform Bill (1832), Chartism (1836-1848) and many others speak for the period itself and we should not waste time on history anyway. Literature in this period is the object of our interest. Needless to say, literature has been strongly influenced by all of those events and the bourgeois lifestyle and society in general. Among all literature genres poetry has been regarded the highest if we are to judge according to the respect it has enjoyed. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) is considered “national treasure” for the British. His best works include “Poems by Two Brothers” (1827), “Poems Chiefly Lyrical” (1830), “Poems” (1832), “Poems” (1842), “In Memoriam” (1850), “Maud” (1855), “Idylls of the King” (1859), “Enoch Arden, and Other Poems” (1864), “Works” (so-called ‘Imperial Edition’ 1872), several plays (“Queen Mary”, “Harold” “The Falcon” and others), etc. “Ulysses” (1842) is one of his best poems. It is a pure monologue in blank verse, more compact in its composition than the rest of his poems, using strong, core and “sober” language, whose richness is beyond any critic. To clarify the meaning of monologue as a poetic form we have to give its definition and say that it is a speech in verse or prose uttered by one speaker as a part of a larger work or as an independent work in itself, and blank verse means unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter often used in long poems and dramatic verse, with a very flexible form and well adaptable to monologues like “Ulysses” (Myers, Jack, & Simms, Michael, “The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms”, 1989, p.33). Tennyson uses many motives from Homer’s great epic “Odysseus”. In “Ulysses” the speaker (narrator) is Odysseus himself, who is bored with the peaceful life after his return to Ithaca and invites his sailors to join him on this last, big, exploring journey. Ulysses thus praises the spirit of the explorer and discoverer who can not reconcile with the existing things in life. “…Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die…” (“Ulysses”, lines 56-61) On the contrary, Telemachus is a personification of a lazy, conservative temperament that lives by the conventions. Odysseus is happy to let Telemachus rule and “leave the scepter and the isle” to him, thinking he will do better. However, Odysseus shows open disdain towards his own son, his “old wife”, but most of all towards his people. A large number of the words Tennyson uses in “Ulysses” carry a potential emotional charge within themselves as they arouse many associations in every reader regardless of one’s age. People must never be satisfied with what they have achieved to some point in their life, and spend the rest of it in laziness, and without any further ambitions. Some of the contemporary critics have tried very hard to prove that Tennyson does not identify himself with Odysseus attitude, but it is mixing of the rational life’s attitudes of a man with the attitudes that are born in poetry and we have to accept them the way the poetry depicts them. Others have found out signs of affirmation of the bourgeois scientific and technological advancement, thus the liberals of the XIX century have praised him, and the disappointed intelligence of our time reject him as “Victorian” with a strong contempt. Yet, “Ulysses” is purer and better than that. It is affirmation of researching, courage and persistence, i.e. features that will prevail a long time for all the people that are neither supporters of the bourgeois nor the proletariat class. In “Ulysses” Tennyson shows that he is able to respect the virtues he has not possessed except maybe as a poet and to give those a poet’s honor. Milton’s rhythms and phrases from the Satan’s speeches echo throughout the last verses of “Ulysses”. It is probably a borrowing that allows Tennyson to achieve heroic tone of the poem. “…Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in the old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal-temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” (“Ulysses”, lines 65-70) Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) belongs to the poets of the Modern Age, namely the period between 1918 and 1950. Eliot was born in the USA. America, as a country without tradition has been T.S. Eliot’s vulnerable point. His theory of dissociation of sensibility has been much talked of, attacked and praised. Poetry for Eliot is not an expression of emotions but an escape of emotions. Eliot attacks the romantics throughout his poetry and praises the metaphysical poets. He thinks the romantics waste too many words to show their emotions, and like Pound and others, Eliot wants to quiet the emotions in his poetry. “The Journey of the Magi” (1927) is a philosophical poem that deals with faith. It shows the experience (reminiscence) of one of the three wise men (the Magis) and begins with a quotation borrowed from a sermon and a persona is introduced: “A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter”. (“The Journey of the Magi” lines 1-5) The basic problem in the poem is rather individual; the one of accepting religion, i.e. faith, and it is also a problem of suffering. It is a kind of a narrative. A narrative poem is “a nondramatic poem that tells a story” (Myers, Jack, & Simms, Michael, “The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms”, 1989, p.206). The frequent use of ‘And’ suggests the way of reading the Bible. They, the Magis, start the journey doubting “that this was all folly”, because of the many hardships, which is psychologically justified. The change of location (temperate valley, wetness, fruitfulness versus the fruitless desert, dawn) symbolizes the beginning of something new. The “three trees” are objects correlative with the three crosses of crucifixion; the “white horse” symbolizes transition from one religion to another. While the first two parts of the poems are reminiscences of the journey from long time ago, the third one is a sort of interior monologue. The poet asks himself questions about what bothers him. The reader is also involved. “Birth” and “death” written in capital letters have also a symbolic meaning: “… this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us…”, the Magis were pagans and had to neglect their own gods; “…like Death, our Death…” – they had to die in order to be born as Christians. Mentioning death again in the last line but written in small letters now, Eliot refers to an ordinary death and life after death. Eliot as a poet is a symbol of the disappointed generation of intellectuals both in America and Britain. Eliot’s poetry in general depicts his view of modern civilizations. Eliot was a very prolific poet, playwright, essayist, but he is of small value as a theorist. For Eliot, the act of writing poetry is an act of fusion of various or even counter-parted elements – thoughts, feelings, and findings in many areas of experience, - into a new, complex unity. In the beginning Eliot has been very unjustifiably belittling and depreciative of Tennyson’s work, but later on he has reviewed his unfavourable judgement of Tennyson’s as well as Milton’s, Hopkins’s, Dryden’s works. In conclusion to Eliot’s way of writing poetry, we should say that “Eliot did not have a message in mind when beginning a poem, for as he once told a critic: ‘The conscious problems with which one is concerned in the actual writing are more those of a quasi musical nature… than of a conscious exposition of ideas’” (Kennedy, X.J. and Gioia, Dana, “Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama”, 1995, New York, p.687). “The Journey of the Magi” may not be his best piece of work, compared to “Gerontion”, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, “The Waste Land”, “The Four Quartets”, “The Hollow Man”, etc., yet common readers and students find it more understandable and easier to follow. However, to be able to fully enjoy a poem, we certainly must read it a few times, reflect on the lines, take notes and make an analysis for private use that would finally lead us through many contradictions in our own opinion to the structure, the style, form and contents which are inseparable. This will finally result in reading or listening poems with pleasure and not confusion, and to be perfectly honest, both Tennyson and Eliot require that sort of procedure while trying to understand their poetry. MLA formatted: The Purdue OWL. 26 Aug. 2008. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 23 April 2008 . Sources: 1. Myers, Jack, & Simms, Michael, “The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms”, Longman Inc., 1989, New York, p.33 2. Kennedy, X.J. and Gioia, Dana, “Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama”, Harper Collins College Division, 1995, New York, p.687 3. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fourth edition, vol.2, ISBN 0-393-96462-0, W. W. 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