Dover Beach
A careful critical study of Arnold's Dover Beach makes the readers
realize that it is an impressive and memorable poetic expression of not only
2 mood, but the characteristic mood of the poet regarding life and the values
and feelings pertaining to it. Though the lyric begins with the descriptive
image of seascape, Arnold's main theme is not idealization of nature's
beauty; it is the evocation of the eternal note of sadness' in human life. Its
dominant tone is melancholy and even tragic. The allusion to Sophocles and
his study of the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery in his world
tragedies like Oedipus, the King, rings in the key-note of the poem
The poet is in a deploring mood as he meditates on the central thesis
"The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."
Analysing the metaphors of the two contrasted images delineated here, it is
evident that the poet is not only in a regretful state for the change in the
outlook of the world from what it was, and the consequent moral
degeneration, but also horrified by the prospect of utter emptiness and, to
use Carlyle's phrase, Everlasting Nay.
In Dover Beach the criticism of life forms the centre of the theme. He diagnoses the malady and
disease of the Victorian life and finds faithlessness as the root cause. Lack of religious faith has
brought in its train all sorts of distrust, callousness to morality, irresponsible attitude to
relationships
between human beings. There is no firm ground under the feet of man. He is
constantly plagued by uncertainty and fear. In Arnold's critical view the
world has turned into a deceptive planet where appearances cannot
trusted. It looks like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new but
probed deeply it reveals a horrifying hollowness, such as Eliot sketches in the
Preludes and later elaborates so memorably in The Waste Land. Under
Arnold's critical scrutiny, the world
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.
Nor certitude nor peace, nor help for pain.
Not only that, he compares the world to a dark nocturnal battlefield
where a maddening alarm rings continually and men are struggling and
running for the fear of life, ironically even from a friend by mistaking him
for a foe. The criticism thus contains a big dose of pity and irony.
Like the 'moon-blanch'd sand of the sea-coast, Arnold's spirit is
melancholy-blanched. He is frightened in the anticipation of a total copy
of order and harmony which controls life and keeps it beautiful and
meaningful. He started by saying 'The sea is calm to-night", but the calm and
poise which he so admires and deems as essential, is fast disappearing from
life, where an alarming ebbing away of faith is leaving exposed for ever the
ugly, material and utilitarian motives. In this mood of evil anticipation, he
has a prophetic vision of the world as a dark battle-field on which everyone
is fighting uncertainty without knowing how to distinguish between a friend and a foe.
"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
The entire experience is that of a worst nightmare. The various sounds
indicative of fierce and desperate actions of attacking and shouting in pain
and fear, and of directionless endeavour to escape, all produce a chaotic and
infernal effect.
The noise of waves on a sea-shore on a moonlit night with its tremulous
cadence slow' bringing in the eternal note of sadness' is more entrancing
and significant for our having read Arnold's Dover Beach. He can illuminate
human experience, like a true poet, with complete understanding. It is this
poetically critical faculty that creates a phrase like 'the turbid ebb and flow/
Of human misery. Life is capricious, treating one man
generously, another
for no apparent reason, with persistent cruelty. For the man to whom life is
Miction, to read and absorb, to bathe in the melancholy waters of poems
Dover Beach, Isolation and The Grand Chartreuse, must be a sovereign
alve like unburdening the heart to a wise and sympathetic confessor.
The restraint in Arnold's criticism is an essential part of his classical
temperament and it lends a touch of soft pathos to his critical discovery of
life's lacuna. Instead of revolt, he seeks for an anchor in love:
"Ah, love; let us be true
To one another..."
and this love, definitely includes poetry as much as a loved lady.
But, obviously, it sounds rather faint in the shadow of the overwhelming
darkness and chaos that rules human situations, and because even the surface
attractiveness of life is liable to prove treacherous. Despair is definitely
dominant over hope in Dover Beach. The feeble proposal of the poet to his
beloved fails to produce a mood of cheerful conviction. He appeals, but does
not know sincerely how far his partner would reciprocate it; the fear of 'if
seems to have cast its shadow over the hope of last resort in love.
