In class today we discussed some of features of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard that make it difficult for readers in 2011: its latinate sentence structure, its depiction of an unfamiliar landscape feature (country churchyards), its resistance to the interpretive tools we have honed in reading C19/C20 literature, its inability to enter fully into the lives of the laborers that it depicts. We might have also added its arcane vocabulary to the list.
These features of the poem are not necessarily deal-breakers, particularly for those of us who are making a study of the period. They only justify our continued neglect of the poem (I would argue) if the poem has no compensating pleasures.
Does it?
Identify the lines, images, sentiments, ideas, expressive passages that strike you as particularly worthwhile in this poem.
OR feel free to take issue with my framework for evaluating this poem.
Or offer here any reflections that you did not have the opportunity to voice in class today.
Deadline: Friday (1/28), 1pm.
8 comments:
One line that I enjoyed was l 36: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." It got me thinking about a few things. I thought of the honor that is placed on a man who is buried within the church. His name is engraved in stone, and his body is kept safe from weather and stored in a place of worship. But other than a name and a description, what was his legacy? A working man, though, will most likely have a wife and children. His children will not just remember him for his career (as the men in the church are remembered), but they will remember his character and what made him unique. In this way, when his body dies, his memory will live on. Glory leads to death as a man who puts his career first is not well-known by his children. But a man who puts his family before himself will live for years after his own death.
I can definitely agree with Jillian; line 36, and the two preceding it ("And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, / Awaits alike th'inevitable hour. / The paths of glory lead but to the grave.")were the ones that stood out to me most in Gray's poem. I thought them to be the most eerily beautiful, the most powerful, and the ones to provoke the most thought (so much so actually [and I'm admitting my supreme nerdiness here] that I shared them on Facebook).
To me, these lines summarized the poem as a whole. I read them right away as saying exactly what the poem meant, even before I knew that's actually how we were supposed to read it. It is quite a frightening thought to know that everything familiar to us, the money and the material so essential to our lives, our accomplishments, conquests, glories, our potential fame will ultimately fade; frightening to know that no matter what paths we choose, we're all headed towards the same inevitable fate.
And yet, that's not to say that Gray means to imply that none of it matters. As I think Jillian very nicely pointed out, it does matter, quite a bit. Hence his belief that those buried in the churchyard deserve a voice. For while it doesn't matter if one is from simple, humble means or hails from all-powerful fame and fortune, the type of person one chooses to be, does.
I would definitely have to say that the vocabulary made reading and interpreting this poem very difficult for me. There were some lines that had me confused as to what was going on or what was being said simply because one of the words had me puzzled. Some of the words were: jocund, glebe, rill, and dirges. So, in order to understand the poem better, I had to do some research on these words so that I could translate the rest of the line. I think that this is part of the reason why literature of this time period was not the number one choice for fun reading. When you have to stop at every other line to translate a word, it can take all of the excitement out of reading the poem and make it more of a research project.
I really connected with stanza fourteen because I could relate to it on a personal level:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
This stanza is basically saying that because these people in the Church Yard were poor, they missed out on a lot of things in life and their true beauty and talent went unnoticed. Their gifts were wasted simply because they were either too poor or lacked advantages that prevented their "gem" from being presented to the world. I related to this stanza because I have missed opportunities in life and have had hard work go down the drain because I have more of a financial burden than my friends. Although my experience will be more rewarding in the end because I worked harder to achieve things; still other things will be "born to blush unseen."
I agree that the language and sentence structure of the poem make it somewhat inaccessible at first read through; it's not something that you can read in one sitting and grasp the meaning of, but rather as readers we have to really work through the poem to get to the meaning, which may discourage many people from wanting to read it. However, despite our distance as 2011 readers, the general message that every person—no matter how important, powerful, or wealthy—ends up the same (dead) is still very applicable to us, which is why I agree Jillian and SMR that I found the lines 33-36 to be very central to the meaning of the poem.
However, I also found lines 53-56 to be very moving just for the sentiment behind them, and I found the way Gray's meaning was expressed to be quite beautiful. I think that comparing the dead in the churchyard to undiscovered gems and flowers is a great way for Gray to honor them and explain the unknown potential of their lives. Just because these countrymen weren't known for something famous doesn't mean their lives weren't great in their own right, and I think Gray's message comes across wonderfully in this stanza.
When reading Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard I immediately began to read thinking that everything must have a meaning deeper than what is actually presented. I whole heartedly blame my way of thinking on different classes I have taken where the main focus was on dissecting the language and structure in order to come to another conclusion. By doing this the result was a failure. I was not able to derive an underlying message and I found it difficult to read. Once in class and we discussed how Gray's writing and a lot of 18th century writers wrote was they meant and did not hide what they were trying to convey behind their words. I found this interesting and once we re-read in class I had a better understanding by not putting to much into the poem. After reading Gray's poem and taking it as is; it has made me realize that when critics dissect certain literary works that could be making an observation that is not there and saying something about a work that the author did not intend for. Overall reading Gray's work has allowed me to take a step back and think about how I approach a literary work before I read it.
I'm not comfortable with accepting the idea that, just because many authors at the time did not write poetry in a fashion that invited deep analysis in order to interpret the poem, the same analysis is less useful than it would be for a poem in a different time.
Is it impossible for someone to write something and for that writing to contain hidden meanings that are ripe for analysis without that person intending to do so? Absolutely not. The best analysis, I think, requires us to look at the implications of the words on the page, independent of what the author may have been thinking when he wrote it. Ideally, we look at what the author says instead of the author may have been trying to say.
That's not to say that I'm not comfortable with the idea of taking the poem at surface value; it's a terrific poem filled with great imagery that should be part of the canon. I definitely sometimes think that some classrooms spend too much time carving and dissecting and mutilating poetry to produce a handful of thesis statements and not enough time appreciating the beauty of a well-written poem (and the brilliance required in order to write these things). I just think that it would be better to ignore the intentional fallacy and recognize that, even though the author may not have intended to include hidden meaning in the text, the act of writing can still produce those meanings.
I found it fascinating that there could exist a poet in England at this time who so eloquently challenged class conventions by examining the value of earthly deeds when a person dies. I feel like the epitaph, particularly where it states, "No farther seek his merits to disclose, / Or draw his frailties from their dread abode / (There they alike in trembling hope repose), / The bosom of his father and his God" (Gray 125-128) does an excellent job of appraising one's earthly actions through indifferent, celestial eyes. After having read some of the works one would expect to encounter in various British literature courses, it is refreshing to see someone take this approach to examining the prevailing values of the time.
It is a relief to know that I was not the only one that had struggles to unpack the poem. Funny that I am not supposed to "unpack" the poem too much. I am impressed with RS's comment that a poem intended to be read for its "surface value" doesn't necessarily have to be the only way. I was surprised to learn this in class, and I am open to taking that approach. However, I believe the poet has to be generating some inner emotions or ideas as he writes the poem.
Actually, the stanzas that Kirstin picked out for us to respond on, I did not like at first but they ended sticking out in memory after discussion. I particularly liked line 63-4: "To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes". One of the biggest messages the class got from the poem was obviously the poet was sympathizing with the less fortunate and believing they deserve respect. I think the message really shines through those two lines because I interpret it as other people may not care, but natural world does. The land is smiling as the people that belong to this earth are “scattered”. Each person’s “hist’ry” has a part in the nation’s history whether the more fortunate like it or not. The nation and/or the natural world doesn’t care (otherwise why would it be “smiling”?). I’m not sure if I am analyzing too much, but I think it could be very well tie back to what the poet was thinking but I just happened to give a more detail-orientated description.
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