Matthew Arnolds Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems | Page 6

and independence in speech and action. Many of his situations, likewise, are at fault. For instance, one can scarcely conceive of such characters as Ulysses and Circe playing the subordinate roles assigned to them in _The Strayed Reveller_. A true dramatist would hardly have committed so flagrant a blunder. Merope is written in imitation of the Greek tragedians. It has dignity of subject, nobility of sentiment, and a classic brevity of style; but it is frigid and artificial, and fails in the most essential function of drama--to stir the reader's emotions. Empedocles on Etna, a half-autobiographical drama, is in some respects a striking poem. It is replete with brilliant passages, and contains some of Arnold's best lyric verses and most beautiful nature pictures; but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot, such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles, the principal character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold's dramas show that his forte was not in character-drawing nor in dialogue.
=Arnold as a Writer of Epic and Elegy=.--Epic poetry narrates in grand style the achievements of heroes--the poet telling the story as if present. It is simple in construction and uniform in meter, yet it admits of the dialogue and the episode, and though not enforcing a moral it may hold one in solution. Elegiac poetry is plaintive in tone and expresses sorrow or lamentation. Both epic and elegy are inevitably serious in mood, and slow and stately in action. In these two forms of verse Arnold was at his best. Stockton pronounced _Sohrab and Rustum_ the noblest poem in the English language. Another critic has said that "it is the nearest analogue in English to the rapidity of action, plainness of thought, plainness of diction, and nobleness of Homer." Combining, as it does, classic purity of style with romantic ardor of feeling, it stands a direct exemplification of Arnold's poetic theories, as set forth in the preface of his volume of 1853. Especially is it successful in emphasizing his idea of unity of impression; "while the truth of its oriental color, the deep pathos of the situation, the fire and intensity of the action, the strong conception of character, and the full, solemn music of the verse, make it unquestionably the masterpiece of Arnold's longer poems, among which it is the largest in bulk and also the most ambitious in scheme." Balder Dead, a characteristic Arnoldian production, founded upon the Norse legend of Balder, Lok, and Hader, though not so great as Sohrab and Rustum, has much poetic worth and ranks high among its kind; and Tristram and Iseult_, with its infinite tragedy, and The Sick King in Bokhara_, gorgeous in oriental color, are rare examples of the lyrical epic. The Forsaken Merman_ and _Saint Brandan, which are dealt with elsewhere in this volume, are good examples of his shorter narrative poems. In Thyrsis, the beautiful threnody in which he celebrated his dead friend, Clough, Arnold gave to the world one of its greatest elegies. One finds in this poem and its companion piece, The Scholar-Gipsy, the same unity of classic form with romantic feeling present in Sohrab and Rustum. Both are crystal-clear without coldness, and restrained without loss of a full volume of power. Mr. Saintsbury, writing of The Scholar-Gipsy, says: "It has everything--a sufficient scheme, a definite meaning and purpose, a sustained and adequate command of poetical presentation, and passages and phrases of the most exquisite beauty;" and no less praise is due Thyrsis_. Other of his elegiac poems are Heine's Grave, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann," Obermann Once More, Rugby Chapel_, and Memorial Verses, the two last named being included in this volume. In such measures as are used in these poems, in the long, stately, swelling measures, whose graver movements accord with a serious and elevated purpose, Arnold was most at ease.
=Greek Spirit in Arnold=.--But it is not alone in the fact that he selects classic subjects, and writes after the manner of the great masters, that Arnold's affinity with the Greeks is manifested. His poems in spirit, as in form, reflect the moods common to the ancient Hellenes, "One feels the (Greek) quality," writes George E. Woodberry, "not as a source, but as a presence. In Tennyson, Keats, and Shelley there was Greek influence, but in them the result was modern. In Arnold the antiquity remains--remains in mood, just as in Landor it remains in form. The Greek twilight broods over all his poetry. It is pagan in philosophic spirit, not Attic, but of later and stoical time; with the patience, endurance, suffering, not in the Christian types, but as they now seem to a post-Christian imagination, looking back to the past." Even when his poems treat of modern or romantic subjects, one