Poem pairs to learn Flashcards
(18 cards)
The Burial of the Dead and The Darkling Thrush: first half (barren, infertile setting conveying a sense of desolation and isolation)
‘The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervour less as I’
‘April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire’
Whilst both Hardy and Eliot address themes of isolation, spiritual emptiness, and decay, the poems differ in that Eliot’s use of setting is far more figurative/metaphorical. Whilst ‘The Darkling Thrush’ could be interpreted as a description of a literal outing into the countryside, Eliot, writing as a modernist, keeps his setting far more fragmented and ambiguous. Additionally, there is a lack of pronouns in the first lines of Eliot’s poem, suggesting that this voice is articulating universal thoughts.
The Burial of the Dead and The Darkling Thrush: alternative first half (depiction of nature as violent and dissonant, and this expressing the speakers’ despair and sense of victimisation)
‘The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres’
‘What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?’
In neither poem is nature regenerative; it is presented instead as twisted, uncomfortable and even violent. However, Hardy and Eliot are dwelling upon different dilemmas here: Hardy is reflecting on the ugliness of a modern, industrial world without any spiritual or artistic drive or appreciation for beauty, whereas Eliot is questioning whether any life or meaning can emerge from a post-war world which has experienced so much death and decay.
The Burial of the Dead and The Darkling Thrush: second half (exploring the potential for regeneration)
‘Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom’
‘That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware’
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?’
In ‘The Darkling Thrush’, Hardy uses the transformed setting of the woods to suggest that humans are not intrinsically ‘victims of time and nature’, as if you have the right perspective than the world can be beautiful and hopeful (though there is still an element of tentativeness with regard to whether the speaker can escape his pessimistic outlook). By contrast, the ending of ‘The Burial of the Dead’ links back to the poem’s beginning and its presentation of fertility as something unnatural and unwanted. Arguably Eliot is suggesting that human’s are victims of nature’s indifference, unaffected by death and conflict and unwilling to slow down to accommodate for people’s suffering/grief. Alternately, Eliot could be suggesting that human’s aren’t victims of time and nature, but victims of their own self-destructive, conflict-obsessed nature (point to the reference to Mylae).
Prufrock and The Voice: first half (romantic longing and reflecting upon the past)
‘Woman much missed how you call to me, call to me
Saying that now you are not as you were’
‘And I have known the arms already, known them all,
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare’
So, both Hardy and Eliot depict people who long for romantic love and often dwell upon the past as a means of dealing with this longing. However, Hardy has experienced love in its entirety, so his reflecting upon the past brings joy and relief from a lonely present, but Prufrock hasn’t really ever properly felt romantically connected to a woman, so his reflections upon the past only heighten his anxiety and make him nervously ponder how he should ‘presume’ – so Hardy longs for a real love of the past, whereas Eliot’s Prufrock longs for a hypothetical love of the future
Prufrock and The Voice: second half (characters stuck in a cycle of romantic longing and illusion)
‘Thus I; faltering forward
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling’
‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’
The key difference between the poems is that, whilst Hardy is longing for a remembered romance of the past, Prufrock never fully experienced such love, so his longing is far more fictional and surreal. However, for both Hardy and Prufrock, their romantically unfulfilled present is presented as lonely, unstable and unwanted.
Prufrock and The Going (regret surrounding the past, and self-criticism as a means of character development)
‘[…] while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.’
‘For I have known them all, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’
Hardy experiences regret because he was emotionally detached and uncaring whilst Emma was alive – he realizes his errors and is willing to change, but crucially too late, and Prufrock does acknowledge his character flaws, but doesn’t act on them and make any meaningful change as his fear of social interaction persists (therefore more tragic and unresolved)
Prufrock and The Going: second half (dwelling on mortality and the meaninglessness of life)
‘Well, well! All’s past amend, Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . .’
‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’
‘drown’ and end-stopping creates a weighty, nihilistic ending similar to the ending of ‘The Going’, with life being presented as a kind of emotional/spiritual death – however, the distinction between the two poems and their endings is that Hardy sees his past mistakes with clarity and deeply reflects on them, creating a sense that if he had another chance with Emma, then he would be more devoted, caring, communicative etc., yet Prufrock avoids thinking about how he is personally responsible for the miserable life he has created, and instead hides in a fictional, imaginary world – thus, I find ‘The Going’ more resolved in terms of exploring the theme of regret
I Found Her Out There and The Burial of the Dead: first half (setting conveying a longing for the past)
‘Where the ocean breaks
On the purple strand,
And the hurricane shakes
The solid land’
‘And have laid her to rest
In a noiseless nest
No sea beats near’
‘[…] He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.’
So, in both poems there is a contrast between the emptiness, uneventfulness and aimlessness of the present, and the excitement and passion of the past. These contrasts are both represented by settings, and real, tangible, remembered settings, yet they differ in some ways. Whilst Hardy builds his poem upon one central and alternating contrast between ‘here’ in Dorset and ‘there’ in Cornwall, Eliot’s use of location is generally far more fragmented and ambiguous. Whilst Marie is reflecting on a specific location in the lines above, the poem rapidly moves on and shifts towards the less tangible, more symbolic setting of the Waste Land (‘what are the roots that clutch?’) – also you have a difference in universality
I Found Her Out There and The Burial of the Dead: second half (exploring the cyclical nature of life and the possibility of regeneration, through setting)
‘Yet her shade, maybe, will creep underground’
‘As it swells and sobs / Where she once domiciled, / And joy in its throbs / With the heart of a child’
‘You were were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?’
So, whilst Hardy is exploring the (generally) harmonious cyclical nature of his wife’s death but then spiritual rebirth, Eliot explores death on a mass scale, pointing to the pointless and disturbing nature of war and conflict
Regeneration as something natural and reassuring (helping Hardy cope with his own personal grief, even if he is deluding himself), vs regeneration as something either not possible in a desolate, post-war society, or as something inappropriate and deeply disturbing
Rhapsody and At Castle Botorel: first half (conflict between time and memory)
‘It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since of before,
In that hill’s story?’
‘Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium’
In both poems, the inescapable passing of time is set up in opposition with the unique beauty of memory. However, Eliot presents time as far more active and violent in disrupting memory and causing the fading of the past, juxtaposing beauty and death to create a deeply unsettling atmosphere. By contrast, Hardy’s sentimental memory seems to withstand time’s passing because of their continued emotional importance – the message is that the moment may have been fleeting, but that doesn’t mean it is forgotten/any less important
So, you have the fragility of memory (subject to time’s abuse and destabilization) compared to the strength of a personal, deeply emotional memory, which appears to resist time’s erosion.
Rhapsody and At Castle Botorel: second half (reflecting on the inevitable fading of memory/the past)
‘though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now’ […]
‘I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,’
‘The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,’
‘She is alone’
The passing of time is presented as something destructive, as the preservation of memory/the past is beautiful. Though whilst Hardy presents time as increasingly aggressive/destructive/inescapable, Eliot seems to move away from that a bit and adopts a more sentimental tone, humanising the moon (though the final line then reintroduces a sense of time being aggressive and violent - ‘the last twist of the knife’)
Rhapsody and At Castle Botorel: second half (reflecting on the inevitability of the passing of time, and on mortality)
‘[…]Shrinking, shrinking’
‘For my sand is sinking
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.’
‘Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.
The last twist of the knife.’
So before, the passing of time is bad because it disrupts memory and stability, and now its bad because it forces the speaker to confront an unsettling and mundane modern world
Hardy feels abused by time because it has indifferently removed Emma from his world yet forced him to keep on living alone and without companionship, and Eliot’s speaker (possibly Eliot himself) feels abused by time because he has to face another day in a mechanical, modern, unfeeling, mundane world in which memory is fading/becoming more eratic and less comforting
The Hollow Men and In a Waiting Room: first half (a spiritually barren and meaningless present)
‘On a morning sick as the day of doom’ […]
‘About its walls were framed and varnished
Pictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished’
‘We are the hollow men,
We are the stuffed men’
So, both poems start by asserting the emptiness and meaninglessness of existence and distinct lack of spiritual hope. However, Eliot asserts an even stronger sense of exhaustion/emptiness (very grave, lots of repetition, sense of stasis and the inescapability of despair) whereas Hardy suggests that the sense of meaningless is slightly lighter through his satirical tone and masculine rhyme – so it sets up a shift vs limited shift
The Hollow Men and In a Waiting-Room: second half (the possibility of faith, and how convincing this shift is)
‘Like the eastern flame
Of some high altar’
‘But the words of the child in the squalid room
Had spread a glory through the gloom’
‘Sightless, Unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star’
‘The hope only / Of empty men’
‘For thine is
Life is
For thine is the’
Overall, Hardy’s poem is more positive as the final image is one of ‘glory’ – even if the speaker isn’t necessarily as optimistic as the children/able to view the world how they do, he seems to still be in awe of their enthusiasm for life. By contrast, The Hollow Men ends not on the possibility of hope but on the despair of the speaker (‘not with a bang but a whimper’)
A Game of Chess and The Haunter: first half (voicing and disconnection between characters)
‘Hover and hover a few feet from him
Just as I used to do,
But cannot answer the words he lifts me –
Only listen thereto!’
‘”Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.’
So, despite this interaction involving two distinct voices, the two characters seem less connected because the conversation is essentially one-sided and the man’s inability to speak/connect emotionally with his wife is what is thwarting their relationship. And whilst The Haunter is written just from the perspective of one character (which may imply a stronger sense of disconnection), because both characters are longing for each other, it actually seems less so this way - their ability to connect is thwarted by circumstance (death) rather than by the character deficiency of one specific person.
The lack of connection between a dead wife and alive husband is a more natural, comfortable separation, whereas the inability of a couple to have an emotional conversation whilst both of them are alive is arguably more disturbing/uncomfortable/unresolved.
A Game of Chess and The Haunter: second half (changes in voicing/in the nature of disconnection between the people)
‘Tell him a faithful one is doing
All that love can do
Still that his path may be worth pursuing,
And to bring peace thereto.’
‘And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME’
So, whilst in ‘The Haunter’ there is some sense of resolution regarding the same two characters (accepting their distance but also love for each other), in ‘A Game of Chess’ Eliot simply introduces another, equally dysfunctional relationship and conversation which feels more fragmented and interrupted (a frantic, fragmented snapshot of domesticity). Though arguably they both remain unresolved due to the fact that ‘The Haunter’ is merely a piece of ‘fiction’ – this weak attempt at making himself feel better won’t necessarily last, and he will be left still with his feelings of romantic longing, guilt, regret etc. – key difference is are the relationships dysfunctional because of post-war, or because of post-death
Prufrock and The Darkling Thrush: first half (setting being used to convey disillusionment/despair - nature feels unnatural/uncomfortable/corrupted, and this is perhaps linked to modernisation and changing societies)
‘The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,’
‘Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table’
Hardy presents nature as violent, twisted and dissonant in order to reflect the speakers’ sense of disillusionment with a changing and modernising society (in which art and sensitivity has been sidelines etc.). Eliot similarly conveys Prufrock’s disillusionment with a modernising world through a disturbing simile of forceful medical examination. A key difference is that Eliot’s simile is far more surprising and subverts the norms of love poetry to a far greater extent (the evening sky is no longer a symbol of natural beauty and wonder). Hardy does present nature as harsh/unwelcoming, but he doesn’t use juxtaposition of imagery to create the same uncomfortable/disturbing feeling.
Prufrock and The Darkling Thrush: second half (shifted or transformed settings)
‘An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.’
‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’
In ‘The Darkling Thrush’, the setting undergoes a positive transformation, with the specific, real location of the woods suddenly become beautiful, spiritual, hopeful etc. The setting does not actually change (‘blast-beruffled’ still implies harsh, maybe even hostile weather) but what has changed is perspective - its a spiritual, not physical, transformation of setting. By contrast, Prufrock’s desolate, hostile urban setting doesn’t suddenly become positive and hopeful, but he instead just shifts into a new, idealised, fictional setting of the sea and mermaids within his head. The vision is comforting to him because it is very distanced from reality, and he sees reality as a living Hell. However, the poems are similar in that these shifted/transformed settings aren’t fully stable - Hardy’s speaker doesn’t seem fully convinced by this new optimistic perspective/able to adopt it (shown through tentative language) and Prufrock’s vision ultimately breaks down and he is forced to return to reality, which he likens to a kind of spiritual/emotional death.
