"But Clear As Words Can Make Revealing? Arnold's Language and the Struggle for Transparency Dan S. Kline Department of English Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Faculty of Graduate Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario August 1997 @ Dan S. Kline 1997 (*m National Library Bibliothèque nationale ofCanada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliograohiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Ottawa ON K 1A ON4 Canaûa Canada Your Çk, Votie reierenw Our fi& Noire retarence The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permehant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sel1 reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fih, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in ths thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be p ~ t e odr otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract In the 1853 "PrefaceN to the Poems, Matthew Arnold argues that the poet should adopt the "grand style" to assist in the production of a type of poetry that is content-driven. The precise nature and meaning of the "grand style" remains one of the more elusive problems in Arnold scholarship. Despite Arnold's conviction that the idea escapes definition, 1 argue, in this thesis, that the ambiguous and unstable concept of the "grand style" is involved with Arnold's belief in an ideal language characterized by transparency. The poetry of Matthew Arnold is, in many ways, a record of his struggle with this transparent linguistic ideal. Arnold's realization of the need for greater transparency in language and his attempts to achieve it are inf ormed by the work of John Locke in An Essay concerning Human Understanding and Of the Conduct of the Understanding respectively. Locke's sceptical attitude towards language as an effective medium of communication parallels Arnold's discovery of the human, arbitrary, and opaque nature of language in his first volume of poetry, The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. However, Arnold's later exposure to Locke's heavily qualified endorsement of particular tropes in Of the Conduct of the Understanding has important implications and consequences for an understanding of the varied use of the simile in Arnold's poetry from the 1850s and 1860s. key words: Matthew Arnold, language, John Locke, simile iii Acknow ledgements I wish to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor, Professor Donald S. Hair. Dr. Hair's patience, erudition, and guidance provided continual assistance and consLant reassurance at every stage of this thesis. It has been a privilege to study with such a mode1 teacher-scholar. Also, 1 am deeply indebted to Professor J. Douglas Kneale, the second reader of this thesis, for his remarkably efficient and helpful editorial advice, as well as his thought provoking questions and suggestions. Finally, 1 am immeasurably grateful to my family for their love and unflagging support and encouragement. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Certificate of Examination Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents Introduction Chapter One: Arnold, Locke, and Language Chapter Two: Fragments Cnapter Three: Tensions Chapter Four: Strategies Chapter Five: '1Thyrsis19 Conclusion Notes Works Cited Vita Introduction The year 1850 is the annus mirabilis for nineteenth- century literature. The appearance of The Prelude and In Memoriam offers readers the seminal poems of the Romantic and Victorian periods respectively. In June of that same year Fraser's Magazine printed a poem entitled t'Mernorial Verses: April 1850t1 by the author of a small, largely unnoticed, volume of poetry published the previous year. The volume was The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems and its author, the semi-anonymous of the title page, was in the midst of V I t consolidating an embryonic collection of ideas into a coherent and controversial poetics. 1850 is also a critical year for Matthew Arnold in ways 1 shall demonstrate in the next chapter. tlMemor~aVle rsest'd oes not share the reputation of poems such as IfThe Forsaken Merman," l'The Scholar Gip~y,~or' ItDover Beach,ttb ut it is an important text nevertheless because of Arnold's own comments about it. In a letter to Clough prior to the poem'ç appearance, Arnold mentions that frustratingly elusive and unstable concept which lies at the very centre of his theories of poetry and language: "1 have at Quillinants sollicitation [sic] dirged W. W. in the grand style & need thy rapture therewithu (Lang 172). The "grand style'' remains one of the more ambiguous of Arnold's ideas, a fact which Arnold hirnself acknowledges in On Translating Homer: 2 Alas! the grand style is the last matter in the world for verbal definitionto deal with adequately. One may Say of it as is said of faith: 'One must feel it in ordex to kriow what it is. ' (Super 1: 188)' David Riede has noted the rhetorical inqenuity with which Arnold shifts his own feelings of guiit and responsibility ont0 the reader (22), and even when Arnold does resort to definition the result is unsatisfactory: "1 think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted treats with simplicity or with . severity a serious subject'l (Super 1: 188) 1 would suggest that the most effective way of approaching the "grand style" is through the alembic of Arncld's interest in lanquage. Arnold s connection with some of the leading linguistic l theorists and philoloqists of the day is amply demonstrated by his letters which refer to figures such as F.D. Maurice and Trench and indicate a persona1 acquaintance with Furnivall. Julius Hare was a frequent visitor to Dr. Arnold's widow at Fox How, and Arnold himself cultivated a friendship and correspondence with the German Sanskrit scholar Max Mueller. There are many places in the Arnoldian canon where one might initiate an investiqation into Arnold's language and its relationship to his poetics and the "grand style." David Riede, for example, begins his study of Arnold's language with a close, but not exclusive, analysis of the later religious 3 prose pieces as qlArnold'sm ost rigorous, rational, systematic . thought about languagel' (21 ) Riede argues, parsuasively, that Arnold's wdeconstruction of Biblical language makes explicit a distrust of his medium that had undermined his poetry even early in his career" (12). As an alternative to Riede's retrospective approach, 1 prefer to begin in medias res, as it were, throuqh an examination of Arnold's letters and early critical prose. The key texts are the I1Preface1't o the 1853 edition of the Poems, the often passionate polemic about poetry and language he carried on with Clough through their correspondence, and On Translating Honier. 1 think that initiating an investigation of Arnold's lancjuage frorn the early 1850s is im2ortant for many reasons. In the remaininy pages of this Introduction and the chapter that follows 1 hope to demonstrate that the ideas of the 1853 "Preface" and the somewhat later advice of the Homer lectures assume an important place within a particular contour of Arnold's eclectic thought, namely British empiricism and, particularly, the philosophy of John Locke. Additionally, 1 want to emphasize that this particular contour was by no means stable and was itself underqoing a major shift in these years. The usefulness of beginning at precisely the moment of this shift in Arnold's thinking is that it encourages us to look, with a degrce of flexibility, back to the earlier poetry of the 1840s and forward to some of Arnold's greatest poetic triumphs and failures in the next two decades. This particular shift is 4 itself part of a larger turn in both Arnold's poetics (which is inaugurated by the "Preface'?) and biography.' On the eve of the publication of Culture and Anarchy (1869) Arnold wrote to his mother: My poems represent the main movement of mind of the last quarter century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it (Russell 2: 9). It is certainly possible to reduce this "rnovement of mindl to Arnold's career itself by dividing it into periods of poetry and various types of prose. We can even chart certain movements within Arnold's poetry. The publication of The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems in 1349 primarily collected Arnold's lyrics from the previous decade while the next ten years would witness al1 of his major works in dramatic and narrative poetry, including Empedocles on Etna, Tristram and Iseult, Sohrab and Rustum, Balder Dead, and Merope. In the 1860s Arnold would again concentrate on the lyric mode. These generic and chronological divisions are noteworthy but far from absolute. Indeed, the transitions within this tripartite structure are often characterized by a nebulosity, and some of Arnold's greatest lyric accomplishments, such as "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, "Dover Beach, and IlThe Scholar Gipsy," appear concurrently with the longer works in other genres. The llPrefaceMt o the Poems and On Translating Homer are situated in the midst of Arnold's Ifmovement of mind, and it l1 is dif f icult to know how to read them. Should they be read as apologias or manifestos or both?' The ftPrefacelofp ens with an indication that Arnold is moving in a different direction as a poet, as he defends his decision to exclude Empedocles on Etna from the 1853 edition. For Arnold, as the "Prefaceft elucidates, poetry is driven, primarily but not solely, by its contents--ideas and actions that 'lare the eternal objects of poetryf' (Super 1: 3). As Edward Alexander has argued, Arnold sought to avoid the excesses of romantic expressionism and vulgar utilitarian didacticism (153). The contents of poetry are historically determined and are something not completely under the poetfs control. Arnold once remarked to Clough: 'The what you have to Say depends on your age" (Lang 78). The attempt by a poet, when confronted with the multitudinousness of Victorian life, to resort (like Arnold) to ancient subjects alleviates but does not completely solve this dilemma. What the poet did have control over was the Ifway" in which the contents were organized in language. Arnold's theory of the poet is predicated on the assumption that he/she must perform multiple functions: "It is not enough that the poet should add to the knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he should add to their happinessw (Super 1: 2). This idea appears in the letter to Clough four years earlier which