Uncovering Writing

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this collection of Matthew Arnold’s critical essays more than his poetry. This volume wasn’t as good as his lectures on translating Homer, but I enjoyed my time. In each essay covering a particular writer, he first dissects the praise directed at them, trying to show that they are great writers but maybe not for the reasons they have been praised in the past. He takes on Milton, Thomas Gray (a favorite of mine), Keats, Wordsworth, Byron, Percy Shelley, Tolstoy and Amiel.

He praises Milton and he is very fond of Gray, who wrote too little poetry. He praises who Keats could have become, seeing in him a love of beauty. I can’t agree as to Keats potential as I’m just not a fan of his, preferring the storytelling and arrangements of Byron or the political force of Shelley. Interestingly enough, Arnold says something I’ve often said about Byron, that while he isn’t the greatest or most engaged poet, and certainly one who doesn’t develop his characters in any major way, you viscerally experience his works. You feel like you were there and the scene just washed over you. I was pleased to see that Byron had the same effect on Arnold as he has on me. Arnold loves Wordsworth, who I liked at my first meeting, but haven’t enjoyed as much upon revisiting. At least Arnold notes that Wordsworth’s best work was between 1798 (Lyrical Ballads released) and 1808. Much that came before or after was just not up to snuff.

I feel Arnold misses much about Shelley, focusing more on the man and his relationships with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and William Godwin rather than Shelley’s poetry. In Shelley, I see a revolutionary, a man who cares deeply about people and ideas and who makes strong political points with his writing. Unfortunately, his writing isn’t the greatest and I think his points can get lost by those who aren’t held by the words long enough for the ideas to take seed in their minds.

The Tolstoy part was primarily on Anna Karenina and closes with Tolstoy’s religious writings. I skimmed through this chapter. But, I was interested a bit in the work on Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic whom I’d never heard of before. I was taken by a statement he made about America in the 19th c. that is still spot on today in 2017:

For the Americans, life means devouring, incessant activity. They must win gold, predominance, power; they must crush rivals, subdue nature. They have their heart set on the means, and never for an instant think of the end … They are restless, eager, positive, because they are superficial. To what end all this stir, noise, greed, struggle? It is all a mere being stunned and deafened!” (p. 328).