Away Melancholy By Stevie Smith Flashcards
(11 cards)
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Speaking to herself in the imperative - trying to shake off the sadness
The grim desperation reinforced by the opening anaphora - ‘Away’
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the river flow?
Away melancholy.
Rhetorical questions show her need to appreciate the world around her now her
senses are dimmed by melancholy - as if challenging herself - if the natural world is
as it should be, should she not be happy?
Refrain ‘Away melancholy’ is almost a command to herself - as if it is a mantra(chant) - but
the repetition of it only highlights its ineffectual nature(more so when in parenthesis)
The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy.
Anthropomorphism of ant - ‘busy’, ‘his’ - directly compared to man
By comparing man to an ant, the speaker tries to put life in perspective - if we are
only animals why can’t we just ‘hurry’ and ‘eat’ rather than dwell on our existential
pain?
Refrain ‘Away melancholy’ is almost a command to herself - as if it is a mantra - but
the repetition of it only highlights its ineffectual nature(more so when in parenthesis)
Archaic verbs form a nod to the bible - an awkward attempt to give them a sense
of biblical significance? Mocking it?
Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
The asyndetic listing further emphasises the fact that we too are led by animal
urges and instinct - a good reason to just soldier on, led by a primordial biological
instinct
‘Hey ho’ nautical lexis feels awkward/ out of place - a sense of the weight of the
‘anchor’ of her feelings? A mock levity?
Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.
Man juxtaposed with animals - she elevates them as superior as capable of higher
thought and religion
We create the concept of morality, presented in the metaphor, ‘raiseth a stone’, the
stone suggesting the unflexibility and burden perhaps of sticking to our own ideas of
virtue.
She extends the metaphor with the suggestion that we ‘pour into’ the stone our
ideas of goodness and call it ‘god’, the verb ‘pour’ hinting at the abundance of good
we put into it, as it flowing freely, an idea reinforced by the sibilance and adjective
choice in ‘‘stuffed stone’
Refrain ‘Away melancholy’ is almost a command to herself - as if it is a mantra - but
the repetition of it only highlights its ineffectual nature(more so when in parenthesis)
Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God,
Stone of man’s thought, be good?
Direct address suggests that there is a second more negative voice, the ‘devil’ on
her shoulder who whispers of the evil tricolon inherent in humanity, ‘Tyranny, pox,
wars’
Another rhetorical question ponders if God is a creation of man and man has
inherent evil within us, can God really be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the , stuffed
Stone of man’s good growing,
By man’s called God,
Away, melancholy, let it go.
She extends the metaphor with the suggestion that we ‘pour into’ the stone our
ideas of goodness and call it ‘god’, the verb ‘pour’ hinting at the abundance of good
we put into it, as it flowing freely, an idea reinforced by the sibilance and adjective
choice in ‘‘stuffed stone’
Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;
Changes in line length disrupt the flow of the poem giving the stanza a thoughtful
quality - also hinting at the fragmented nature of her thoughts? She decides it is
enough that we ‘aspire’ to good and love
Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs
explaining,
Not his failing.
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go
The final stanza conjures up the powerful image of man in his worst state with the
visceral tricolon ‘Beaten, corrupt, dying’, soaked in his own blood
At this point, we think not of pain, suffering and evil, but of ‘love’, powerfully
portrayed in the phrase ‘Cries, love, love’, the repetition serving to reinforce the
power and insistence of the thought
She concludes the mystery of human nature is not our weakness or darker side but
our strength and goodness, even at the worst moments, shown in the antithesis of
‘virtue’ and ‘failing’ in the last line
The final refrain stood alone at the end, gives the poem a cyclic quality, the lack of
full stop suggests that the speaker’s struggles are continual, but the open ending
also leaves the possibility that the final, positive thought has alleviated her
melancholy
Structure
An internal monologue
No fixed rhyme or metre
Varying line length and the repetition of the refrain reflects the chaotic nature of
internal monologues - obsessive, broken thoughts which are difficult to shake off?
Broken syntax and caesura creates an awkward rhythm which reflects the
speaker’s mental state
Context
Smith lived with depression from an early age, speaking of thoughts of death and
suicide as early as 8
In 1953 she had a mental breakdown
4 years later she wrote this poem
