International Journal for Exchange of Knowledge: 1 (1): 16- 22, 2014 ISSN 2394-1669

THE NOTE OF MELANCHOLY IN MATTHEW ARNOLD’S POETRY

DEVYANI SINGH*
Dept. of English, Bokaro Steel City College, Bokaro, Jharkhand, India - 827006
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
Keywords
Matthew Arnold was deeply influenced by his age. It was an age in
Religious which the Industrial Revolution had increased the wealth and prosperity
controversies, of the nation. The people had become materialistic in attitude and the
Pessimism, spiritual life had been given up by the masses. There was an obsession
Analytical, with the religious controversies of the age which was the result of
Introspective Darwin‟s ‘The Origin of Species’ and the advancement of science. It was
no longer possible to believe blindly in the biblical story of creation told
Received on: in the Genesis. Man was wavering between religion and science. Arnold
15.05.2014 suddenly found himself without any control in a world of lost faith and
Accepted On: desire. In Arnold (1822-1888) one can thus catch the first glimpses of
09.07.2014 Victorian pessimism, the pessimism of an age of transition and
*Corresponding uncertainties. His poetry thus reflects his temperament - one who is
Author analytical, introspective, prone to weight and reluctant to be swayed by
emotions.

MATTHEW ARNOLD Empedocles solves the problem by throwing

himself into a ravine. Arnold more controlled
“The poetry of later paganism lived by the and less emotional, throws himself into a
senses; and incidentally, the poetry of sonnet, or elegy, and thereby eases his mind.
medieval Christianity lived by the heart and
the imagination. But the main element of the Matthew Arnold was deeply influenced by
modern spirits life is neither the senses nor his age; an age in which the Industrial
understanding, nor the heart and Revolution had increased the wealth and the
imagination; it is the poetry of reason‟‟ prosperity of his nation. The result was that
(Compton 1991) the people became materialistic in attitude.
The spiritual values of life had been forsaken
In this last phrase the germ of the poetry of by the masses. Moreover, Arnold was
pessimism is present. It was the endeavour to obsessed with the religious controversies of
rationalize the visions of the imaginative life the age which came in the wake of Darwin‟s
that led Arnold, Clough, Fitzgerald, and ‘The Origins of Species’ and the
James Thompson into that mood of wishful advancement of science. It was no longer
melancholy that crystallized into a more or possible to believe implicitly in the biblical
less pessimistic criticism of life. In Arnold story of creation told in Genesis. Man was
(1822-1888) one can thus catch the first wavering between religion and science. The
glimpses of Victorian pessimism, the old faith was fast crumbling down and there
pessimism of an age of transition and was nothing to take its place. Arnold felt
uncertainties. In temperament, analytical himself suddenly set adrift in a world of lost
introspective, prone to weigh, reluctant to be
swayed by emotions, he felt the intellectual
difficulties of his time, and could never quite
escape their disturbing atmosphere.
DEVYANI SINGH

faith and blind desire. He experienced a “Ground-tone of human agony” (Walker

poignant regret at the decay of the old faith Hugh 1964)
and the impossibility of accepting the new which sobs through his work. Men holding
philosophy of science with its alluring such convictions must inevitably be
appeal. „Dover Beach‟ (1967) is a fine melancholy; and Arnold the poet was
reflection of Arnold‟s melancholy habitually melancholy. In this respect his
temperament and his dismay at the retreating verse is unlike his prose, which has more of
tide of religious faith: the charming gaiety and playfulness of his
own manners. Both gaiety and the
“The sea of faith melancholy was feature of his character. J.C
Was once, too, at the full and round earths Shairp has touched the contrast with
shore admirable taste in the lines which describe
Lay like the folds of a bright griddle furled. the youthful scholar of Balliol:
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roars‟‟ “So full of power, yet blithe and debonair,
(Palgrave 1985) Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay,
Or half-a-dream chanting with jaunty air
This attitude towards religion was the most Great words of Goethe catch of Beranger:
characteristic feature in Arnold. His negative We see the banter sparkle in his prose,
attitude towards faith was closely related to But know not there the undertone which
his position in history. He stood just far flows,
enough away from the French revolution to So calmly sad, through all his stately lay”
look back upon it and its effects in a spirit of (Walker Hugh 1964)
criticism. It had shattered the old world, and
left in the place of an ordered system only – Looking thus upon life, Arnold naturally
could not be among the optimists. He
“blocks of the past, like icebergs high“ couldn‟t be like Macaulay, who was at ease
floating “on a rolling sea” (Walker Hugh in his Zion because of the material progress
1964) of the time. Nor could he be like Browning,
who was convinced that;
On the other hand, he was not far enough
away to enable him to see what was to be the “God‟s in his heaven,
nature of the new world which must arise All‟s right with the world” (Legouis 1934)
from the ruins. He was:
Arnold could find no solace among the
“Standing between two worlds, one dead, former class, because he saw that the
The other powerless to be born” (Walker “something that infects the world” could be
Hugh 1964) cured not by material but only by spiritual
means. Neither could Arnold be among the
These fundamental convictions, that the faith Browningite optimists. To him it meant the
which had shaped Europe was gone, and that assertion that the new religion had been
the feudal mould of her society was born, without the proof. Still less could such
shattered, are the secret of the wonderful a man feel himself in harmony with the
attractive power exercised over Arnold by attempts to revert to the Middle Ages. He
Senancour, the author of „Obermann’. thought the middle ages irrational. He knew
Senancour too had felt the vastness of the that any attempt to blot or blur the record of
change, and it is the cause of that - human progress must end in failure. In „A
Summer Night’ (1853) he has drawn
 MELANCHOLY IN MATTHEW ARNOLD‟S POETRY

imperishably, under the figure of a In all his deepest poems, in „Thyrsis’ (1866)
helmsman, the picture of him who attempts and „The Scholar Gipsy’ (1853) in
to steer his way across the ocean of life by „Resignation‟ (1849), in „A Southern
any other chart than that of truth. The Night’, Arnold is passing judgement on the
tempest strikes him, life of his age, the life of his country, the
lives of individual men.
“And between
The lightening-bursts is seen This inner gloom of the poet was reflected in
Only a driving wreck, his poetry up to „New Poems‟ of 1867, when
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck his mood changed and his pessimism was a
And with anguished face and flying hair little ameliorated. Poems of the earlier
Grasping the rudder hard, volume 1849, 1852, 1855, 1857 were all
Still bent to make some port he knows not enveloped in gloom .The 1852 volume of his
where, poem finds him still envying the happiness
Still standing for some false, impossible of the birds, for man‟s lot is to know that;
shore” (Legouis 1934)
“Peace has left the upper world
In Arnold‟s opinion, that which the time And now keeps only in the grave” (Tilak
demands above all things is the discovery of 1992)
some shore, towards which to steer. Men
need some Columbus to guide them over a The essential greatness of his poetry may be
trackless ocean to new continent of which he found in what has been called “the dialogue
is aware of, though they are not. The of the mind with itself. “Its most prominent
misfortune is that men can find no such characteristic is a form of melancholy born
captain. Goethe the “physician” of Europe‟s of a painful awareness of a sensitive
“Iron Age” had laid his finger on the seat of individual caught between a dead faith and
the disease. However, he failed to find a an uneasy rationalism. Self-sufficiency has
cure. Arnold never conceived himself to be always been the classic advice of philosophy
capable of succeeding where Goethe had in a disorganized society;
failed. On the contrary; he rather teaches that
the problem has grown so complex that “Live In Yourself” (Trilling Lionel 1949)
scarcely any intellect could suffice for its
solution. Wrote Senancour, and added;

This feeling of almost insurmountable “and seek that only which does not perish”
difficulty is the secret of Arnold‟s (Trilling Lionel 1949)
melancholy:
Self cultivation in loneliness, in the face of
“It gives a sense of brooding pause, almost the degeneracy of the world, with reference
of paralysis of action, to his verse. It is the to some eternal but ill defined idea – it is a
secret of his attraction for some minds and, familiar burden of Matthew Arnold‟s
of an alienation amounting almost to communion with himself. In the midst of a
repulsion between him and many others. It jangled and uncertain world he tells himself
makes him, in verse as well as in prose, to learn;
critical rather than constructive. His much–
condemned definition of poetry as criticism “That an impulse, from the distance
of life; is at least true of his own poetry.” Of his deepest, best existence,
(Legouis 1934) To the words “Hope, Light, Persistence”,
DEVYANI SINGH
Strongly stirs and truly burns” (Trilling It is so too in the „Obermann‟ poems, the
Lionel 1949) ‘Stanza from the Grande Chartreuse’ the
‘Stanza from Carnac’, ‘Heine’s Grave’
The genuine Arnold was an elegist of deep and ‘Memorial Verses. In all there is the
tenderness and solemnity; a stoic poet of same grandeur of utterance, and the same
high seriousness, his poetry was entirely calmly sad undertone. They are the voice of
reflective. He does not shine in constructing a spirit almost crushed beneath the burden of
a story. He can express melancholy feeling life. Hence, there is a grave scolding note in
with rare purity and, when he chooses, even Arnold‟s verse. He is against the
with an emotion that is sometimes poignant. materialistic spirit. There is a plea for
To quote Walker Hugh (1964); gentleness and quite as against the bustling
energy. It was this which attracted him to
“Nothing in Arnold‟s verse is more arresting monastic life. Arnold denounces life. He
than its elegiac element. It is not too believed that man leads his life in grief and
much to say that there is no other English despair without ever experiencing the glow
poet in whom the elegiac spirit so reigns as it or joy of life. In „Scholar Gypsy’ the
does in him; ---he found in the elegy the tragedy and pathos of man‟s lot in universe
outlet, of his native melancholy of the is pathetically presented;
„Virgilian cry‟over the mournfulness of
mortal destiny. It is the natural tone of an “For whom each year we see
agnostic who is not jubilant, but regretful of Breeds new beginnings, disappointments
the vanished faith, --- regretful of its beauty, new;
regretful of the lost promise.” Who hesitate and falter life away,
And loose tomorrow the ground won to-
Not only are Arnold‟s elegiacs numerous, day”
they are almost among his finest works. And
always his spirit was that of Gray rather than The inevitable loneliness of humanity was
of Milton or Shelly or Tennyson. The elegies another cause of Arnold‟s melancholy, and
are not the elegies merely of the individual. most beautifully expressed by him;
The subject of „Rugby Chapel’ is his own
father. In „A Southern Night’ it is his “Yes: in the sea of life enisled,
brother. In „Westminster Abbey’ and With echoing straits between us thrown
„Thrysis‟ his most intimate friends ; but Dotting the shore less watery wild,
even in these instances of keen personal We mortal millions live alone.”(Palgrave
sorrow the poet widens his view and treats 1985)
human destiny, almost as much as Gray does
in the „Elegy Written in a Country The pathos of the poems on his dead pets lies
Churchyard’. And precisely the same spirit in the sense of their isolation from their
inspires poems which are not elegiac in the human keepers. The great power of nature
sense of being laments for individual men. also suffers from the same loneliness:
„Thyrsis’, the poem on Clough, is scarcely
more elegiac in spirit than „The Scholar The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
Gypsy’. In Both the real theme is the But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams;
condition of modern life; Alone the sun rises, and alone
Spring the great streams” (Walker Hug
With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 1964)
Its heads overtaxed its palsied hearts.” (V
Gopalan Nair 1972)
 MELANCHOLY IN MATTHEW ARNOLD‟S POETRY

Faced with a fate which seems indifferent The story of ambivalent love was a
and even hostile to human needs, men have characteristic one of the 19th century.
traditionally turned for consolation to love, Rousseau‟s „Confessions‟ had led the
either secular or religious, and nature. ground for the understanding of emotional
Wordsworthian though he claimed to be and ambivalence. From Pushkin to Clough, poets
worshipper of natural beauty, especially tell of lovers separated not by difficult
clear rivers, lakes and seas, Arnold had little circumstances but by the inability of the men
faith in the divine beneficent powers of to know the true tendency of his heart. If his
nature. He had Wordsworth‟s charm, but love story was paradoxical no one was more
neither his cheerfulness nor his detachment. aware of it than Arnold himself. He believed
Arnold sometimes betrayed the influence of that his affair had been an emotional failure.
Byronic disenchantment. However he The realization of the general inability of the
substituted a melancholy resignation for human souls to meet was strongly embedded
Byron‟s mode of revolt. in him;

Arnold‟s conclusions regarding human “Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone”.
nature were also not very favourable. Most (Trilling Lionel 1949)
men, for him, live meaningless lives in a
brazen prison, and the few that escape It was only once or twice that he gave love
behave with complete irresponsibility and its true place and explored its significance as
come to wreck. The poet asks: in the poem „The Buried life’ which for all
its melancholy has no self-sufficient
“Is there no life, but these alone? pessimism. It is distressing that Arnold
Madman or slave, must man be one”. (Sen should have lapsed from this fundamental
Gupta 1992) faith, to the extent of denying the very
existence of love even in the very act of
But in „Rugby Chapel’ he is willing to invoking it for himself.
admit that though most men live wasted lives
and die forgotten, some strive after an ideal “Ah, love let us be true
that is fruitful and memorable. But even To one another; for the world, which seems
these would fall by the wayside unless To lie before us like a land of dreams
upheld by strong souls like his father, So various, so beautiful, so new,
through whom he can at least believe that Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.
there were great and good men in the past (Palgrave 1985)
who were servants and sons of god.
The „vague dejection‟ that weighed down But Arnold sought to do more in his poetry
upon his soul was a chronic condition, he than to utter the turmoil of his spirit. To
was a little too cold and much too quote Goodman;
sophisticated to enjoy a first love – affair.
Arnold feels painfully helpless in “Times‟ “Brought up in the classical tradition of
current strong.” In spite of Marguerite‟s English Education, he attempts in narrative
charm, he derived no real happiness from his poetry to reproduce something of the
meetings with her. His most passionate restrained and ordered beauty of the Greeks.
desire was to be alone on the snowy peaks. In „Sohrab and Rustum’; we have the
Arnold therefore had no great faith in the many reminiscences of the Homeric manner;
efficacy of love. but even here the modern romantic
melancholy appears through the classical
form.” (Goodman 1988)
DEVYANI SINGH

Arnold‟s mood had brightened and the age ‘Dover Beach’? Yet there is nothing
itself had grown less disturbing by the time maudlin, nothing unmanly about it, how
he published the „New Poems’ of 1867. The delicate is the pathos in the more fanciful
primary ground for the brighter spirit was his poem „The Forsaken merman’:
entering upon new and exhilarating forms of
activity, with wider recognition. However
Arnold could never achieve a view of life “There dwells a loved one
which may be called optimistic. His But cruel is she;
tendency was to suggest that the best one can She left lonely for ever
hope to reach was a state of calm; The kings of the sea” (V Sachithanandan
1978)
“The General life, which does not cease,
Whose secret is not joy but peace” (Tilak Though the ache was always there at the
1992) heart of Arnold‟s poetry, there was also hope
and cheerfulness. To quote Compton
The lesson he himself drew from the world Reckett-
was resignation. One was the somewhat
ignoble resignation of the cloister, which “No whining with Arnold, no luxury of grief,
seems to be Arnold‟s choice in the „Stanza no sentimental pessimism. Neither is there
from the Grande Chartreuse’. The other any joy, nor any real peace. It is the serenity
was the stoic resignation inspired by a sense of a troubled but brave spirit.” (Compton
of duty not helped by any hope of reward. 1991)
His “rigorous teachers” forbade the surrender
of intellect and enjoined the facing of all Conclusion
difficulties at whatever cost, and even though One cannot be enthusiastic over Arnold‟s
the end were failure. It was Browning who poetry, for the simple reason that he himself
taught that under apparent failure there may lacked enthusiasm. He was however a true
be hidden real success, but the spirit of the reflection of a very real mood of the past
teaching inspires Arnold‟s work. There is a century, the mood of doubt and sorrow.
touch of hope as well as of pity in “A Though, marked by the elemental note of
Summer Night’. It has melancholy, but it sadness, all Arnold‟s poems are
also has a hardly stoicism. distinguished by clearness, simplicity, and
the restrained emotion of his classical
One vital point regarding Arnold‟s models. Finally to sum up in the words of
melancholy is that it is not real because his Legouis and Cazamian:
melancholy is not the melancholy that
dejects and depresses. It is not the “The true tone of Arnold‟s temperament is
melancholy that sucks ones strength and Sadness: a pensive melancholy essentially
spirit, the melancholy that palls with Romantic in origin, which gains sterner tones
pessimism and leaves one with despair, but a from the more definite anxieties of the
wistful feeling that: century, now more sedate and mature. Here
again, as in the case of Clough, we find the
“Resolve to be thyself, and know, that he uneasiness of a soul torn between meditation
Who finds himself, loses his misery”. and strong self–possession on one hand , and
(Trilling Lionel 1949) on the other, the claims of action; but with
Arnold there is above all the feeling of a
What could be more profoundly wound, the loss of cheerful temper which
melancholic than the exquisite poem Clough owed to the possession of a
 MELANCHOLY IN MATTHEW ARNOLD‟S POETRY

satisfying faith. The vague Christianity of Walker Hugh 1964. The Literature of the
Arnold, the moral pantheism to which all the Victorian Era; S.Chand & Co., New Delhi,
philosophical reflection tends, seems to have Pg337, 339
left in his inner self an emptiness a scar
which is revealed only in his poetry . The
loss of all positive belief came as a
momentous experience to him as to many of
his generation, and hopelessly destroyed all
his joy of life” (Legouis and Cazamian
1981).

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