(Hardy/Eliot) Death

Created by: NHow02
Created on: 19-03-19 14:13

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Death
- Burial of the Dead
  - 'Those are pearls that were his eyes'
    - Eyes are seen as 'windows to the soul'
      - Jewels can be colourless or precious (rich or devastating)
    - Eliot adamantly believed his friend, Verdenal had died at sea
      - During the Gallipoli Campaign of WW1 (one example of a wasted death)
    - Shakespeare's Tempest, spoken by Ariel the lying spirit
    - 'That corpse you planted last year in your garden'
      - Fields of war will constantly be a part of society (hidden skeletons)
        PTSD
      - 'Planted' creates a domestic, peaceful effect (but futile due to lack of water)
      - Eliot insists that poetry must be written with impersonal intent (not as himself)
        'mon semblable - mon frere!'
        French for 'doppelgänger' (evil twin - acknowledg-ing axis/foe)
        Edmund Wilson: Eliot's poems are based on 'empathy and condolence'
        Eliot also uses the literary past to draw 'heat he could not derive from life'
        
        Fragments are a modernist aspect, inspired by symbolist poet Laforgue
- The Comet at Yell'ham
  - 'bends' vs. 'stand and regard'
    - Nature adapts/ survives while humanity is stuck/ motionless
      - Darwin's 'origin of the species in 1858 led Hardy to question his faith
    - 1st Stanza has no enjambment slowing the pace (just observers)
    - 'bends' contrasts to 'fall'
      - Nature surpasses humanity (Comet will return after mankind is dead)
        Hynes: 'stoic regret of the irrevocable passage of time'
        
        Romanticism (artistic/ literary movement which developed a deep love for nature & the supernatural)
  - 'strange swift shine'
    - Sibilance creates a rapid flow (time slipping away or speed of the comet)
    - Enjambment is 2nd stanza creates an irregular effect (change in attitude)
      - Nature is ongoing (humanity is alienated as it is 'strange')
- The Hollow Men
  - 'tumid river'/ 'multi foliate rose'
    - Alludes to Dante's Paradiso (positivity/ salvation in death)
    - Contrasts to 'the crowd flowed over London Bridge'
    - Dante's Inferno: river Acheron (damned must cross to enter the land of the dead)
      - Swollen river suggests the underworld is drowning in the great number of deaths
  - Paradoxical effect of 'hollow' + 'stuffed' (souls cannot be reformed)
    - Not blessed to enter Dante's Paradiso
    - Society is not a blank slate (beyond a mental breakdown)
      - Repetition of 'Between' (trapped in an intermittent state/ purgatory)
    - Repetitive use of 'we' pronouns creates an inclusive effect
- In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'
  - 'a maid and her wight'
    - Innocent/ real idea (unaware of previous suffering)
      - ABAB rhyme scheme emphasises cycle of life (Insignificant yet important)
    - Hardy was in his mid-70's during WW1 (impact of war at home)
    - Archaic word represents societal recuperation (past returns)
      - However, 'wight' suggests a temporary affair (loss of position in society)
      - Hynes: 'stoic regret of the irrevocable passage of time'
  - 'thin smoke without flame'
    - 'without flame' suggests soldiers are fighting without hope/light
      - 'will go onward' was a typical WW1 attitude (using soldiers as canon-fodder)
    - Smoke of no-man's land (clearing, end of the aftermath)
    - Smoke screen creates a lost effect (soldiers didn't know what they were fighting for)
      - 'thin' suggests lack of shield OR weakened soldiers (no substance left)
      - Written during the 1st World War. Hardy predicts how war will end
        War stanza in the middle of the poem (wordly event that we will recover from)

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(Hardy/Eliot) Death

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