Marrysong

Analysis : Marrysong ( Themes of Marriage and Relationships)

10Nov

Explore how the poet of Marrysong expresses the varying shades of marriage and love.

‘Marrysong’ by Dennis Scott, is about a husband who is struggling to understand his wife: an abstruse, unpredictable woman whom he compares to territory. He tries to demarcate the lines of her, trying to find out what pleases her, but in this he fails and ends up being “lost in the walled anger of her quarried hurt”, or adversely “see cool water laughing where the day before there were stones in his voice.” Her anger and happiness are both short-lived and perplexing to the speaker. “Walled” implies restrictions and limits, a sense of confinement. This is exactly what he finds in his wife’s company. In contrast “cool water laughing” implies that water, flowing freely and without any limits delights him, just the way his wife does when she is in one of her better moods.
“Quarried hurt” relates to the “stones in her voice”; when quarrying implies digging and blasting out stones from a quarry, stones imply hardness, pain, and discomfort which are everything the speaker experiences.
The poem is an extended metaphor of “that territory” which “shifted under his eye” and no matter how hard he tried “The map was never true.” This sense of being lost, literally and metaphorically, is further emphasized when he says the “roads disappeared”. Roads and maps are associated with guidance, direction, purpose and all this the speaker is deprived of.
“Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea-”, the wind and sea both are metaphors of his wife and we see how in essential they are to the speaker, yet how deceiving they can be as they constantly change. She tastes like seawater, which implies bitterness, saltiness and unpleasantness, hard to digest for the human body. This in turn implies the pain she has caused the speaker. And all at once she can “suddenly” “change” to “faultlessly calm”.
The structure of Marrysong is designed in a manner that it attracts the reader’s attention till the very end with slow and heavy sounds and a particularly alluring rhyme and rhythm.
He tries to explore his spouse, in order to understand and predict her, but that too is rendered useless. She takes him by surprise each time when everything about her is “each day new”, this implying that although his wife, he “year after year” miserably fails in getting her. She changes each time to him, making “wilderness again”. The “shadows of her love shortened or grew” depicting how constant this process was and how helpless he is to try and grasp these shadows eternally.
This feeling of uncertainty and continuous thwarting at his plans leads to a despairing and complaining attitude. She, being a woman, is alluring and intriguing in the way that her whole persona changes over varying periods of time; it could be an hour or years.
“Year after year” the man’s struggle to understand his better half’s, his wife’s, complex mind is carried out. Eventually he accepts “that geography, constantly strange” as who his wife is. Thus although “he never learned her, quite”, his love for her is so strong that he “stayed at home increasingly to find his way among the landscapes of her mind”, accepting her unquestioningly, and here “home” implies familiarity, comfort, calmness for once.
Thus Marrysong is a touching portrayal of man’s vulnerability towards the woman whom he loves. He can never wholly understand her, this showing he can never wholly possess her. He can only surrender, accept defeat with understanding that the journey through the wilderness of marriage is a difficult one, only to be trekked upon by the willing.

Ayesha Nasir

Class of 2011

Generation’s School

Dover Beach 2

Analysis on ‘Dover Beach’

Posted on March 25, 2011by Julia Mayer

Explore how Matthew Arnold uses language to give us insights into the life of modern man in ‘Dover Beach’.
The life of modern mankind is presented very negatively and ignorantly by Matthew Arnold in the poem Dover Beach by the fact that religious faith evanesce with the Industrial Revolution. Arnold creates the image of the dark future for the people without unwavering faith or religion.
Modern men are bastardised with the thought that new the Industrial Revolution will give them advantage over nature. This thought of gaining superiority made humans arrogant by which this appearance is broken by the reality of nature’s dominance. People also seem ignorant with the wishful thought. These pebbles which ‘the waves draw back, and fling’ are completely powerless and are thrown around by the waves that move these “pebbles” at ease. Arnold uses pebbles as a metaphor for humans to show the inferiority in comparison to nature. The ignorance of humans is emphasised by the historical allusion to Peloponnesian War. In the dark, soldiers could not differentiate between their own army and the opponents; and so they killed their own soldiers. This is used by the poet to show the stupidity of modern man throwing away the religion which was everything to people before the Industrial Revolution; something to believe and rely on when people prayed. However, this old belief is thrown away and Arnold sees it as a very naïve decision.
The Industrial Revolution gave the source of arrogance and confidence which took place among the Western countries. This revolution was revolutionary itself; humans could mass produce, with improved quality, and at ease. These machineries became the limbs of human society. What came with the industrial revolution was the idea of realism. People could nearly produce goods to near-original standards, all thanks to improved technologies and science, and hence began to doubt the existence of God and supernatural beings. Realism contrasts the theology which is all about belief without questioning that God exists; and people believed it before the times of the machineries. It gave people hope and modesty under the mighty existence of God. However both hope and modesty disappeared with the Industrial Revolution which Arnold laments for. Bitterness is suggested when Arnold exclaims ‘Ah, love’ to show that in this changing world, one can only rely on the partner, and be trustful and true. Sarcasm is used to describe the modern world as a ‘land of dreams’ as there is no more hope for the world, as there is no more faith.
As the poem proceeds, the transition of mood is noticeable as the grief of the loss of faith extends to a sense of resignation towards the end and having a sarcastic, sour approach to the issue. The ‘tremulous cadence slow’ helps to convey the gradual process of the wane of doctrine which adds to the idea that the change of people’s lives is almost unnoticeable. This gradual process hurts Arnold because people are caught unaware of the changes taking place and so do not think it is particularly wrong and sinful. Arnold presents his sorrow with the historical allusion to Sophocles who, was a Greek playwright, had heard the sound of waves crashing as the ‘eternal note of sadness’. The ‘sadness’ of the mankind turning away from religious beliefs is a parallel to the ‘melancholy… withdrawing roar…retreating’ of the waves. Before the development of science and technology, people had truly believed in the religion and thought that they were in total control of god. The metaphor ‘Sea of Faith’ which presents the religious faith people have, used to be ‘full and round Earth’s shore’ but now is ‘retreating… down the vast edges’ which shows the decreasing religious beliefs. Arnold points out that, without faith, humans are ‘naked’ and have no protection and defence which reflects the vulnerability of man and their lives.
With carefully chosen words, Arnold presents the uncertainty of the future of humans. The new industrialised world seems “so various, so beautiful, so new” but it is again a mere appearance. The reality is that this mechanic, stiff world will have “neither joy, nor love, nor light” because this mechanics cannot feel love, hence no joy, and no vision as humans need love and the warm characteristics of humanity. It is thus deducible that the future will have no “certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain” which are the essentialities of humans. Humans can only survive the harsh world when everybody believes and trusts each other, and this will be broken with the introduction of industrialisation. This change of the world will bring “confused alarms on struggle and flight” which creates an imagery of a “darkling plain”; a dark vision for humans. Furthermore, the “turbid” ebb and flow shows the cloudy, uncertain future of ‘ebb and flow’ which is the repetitive cycles of nature. Can humans only survive when they make harmony with the nature, and to go against the natural cycles can only mean extinction of humans. The ‘cliffs’ of England ‘gleams’ and ‘glimmers’; gleams and glimmers have a sense of shakiness, precariousness and unknown which echoes the uncertain modern man. Also the alliteration of ‘g’ and ‘m’ creates a stuttering tone which adds to the idea of uncertainty. This imagery portrays the withering away of cliffs as a decline of religious beliefs and whatsmore, deterioration of the Earth itself as humans exploit resources out of the Earth which the modern development enabled men to do.
The flaws of modernism and realism are expressed in this poem. The flow of the poem is cut off by uses of caesura which is a parallel to the imperfect modern world. Arnold gives a hint that modernization of the world will have some flaws which will inevitably bring loss of faith and result in loss of equilibrium. In science, there is no hope; everything is measured out and exact. Hence in the modern world reality there can be no hope as it looks vain. Again, Arnold sympathises with the loss of hope in reality. In a different sense, the calm, naturalistic description of a beach at night in the first stanza is the appearance which contrasts to the reality that is sad, unhopeful, ‘retreating’ and ‘tremulous’.
Human beings are inferior over nature and the spiritual beliefs as to an extent that people cannot control anything. The abandonment of the doctrine of religion with the help of the Industrial Revolution is only a vain act against the power-overwhelming nature. Religion and faith should remain in humanity and ignoring it should result in the uncertainty and vulnerability of modern man.

Hurlingham’s square

Its real name is Ravenscroft, and it is found in Hurlingham, Buenos Aires. It is a square in the downtown Hurlingham and attracts a large number of people during the week and even more during weekends. It has among its features, a monument to women or the tree at Gral Roca corner and O'Brien. On Sunday an art and craft fair takes place where a lot of people go to. As well as families that like to pass its weekend at the square. At noon people use to change the square into a running circuit.Some bands use to play on weekends where the people enjoy some music.
On its surroundings, we found an ice-cream parlor, a church, a tennis court and a kinder garden.

Lucia López Fuentes & Barbara Geoghegan

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote "Dover Beach" during or shortly after a visit he and his wife made to the Dover region of southeastern England, the setting of the poem, in 1851. They had married in June of that year. A draft of the first two stanzas of the poem appears on a sheet of paper he used to write notes for another another work, "Empedocles on Etna," published in 1852. The town of Dover is closer to France than any other port city in England. The body of water separating the coastline of the town from the coast of France is the Strait of Dover, north of the English Channel and south of the North Sea.

Point of View

The poet/persona uses first-, second-, and third-person point of view in the poem. Generally, the poem presents the observations of the author/persona in third-person point of view but shifts to second person when he addresses his beloved, as in line 6 (Come), line 9 (Listen! you), and line 29 (let). Then he shifts to first-person point of view when he includes his beloved and the reader as co-observers, as in Line 18 (we), Line 29 (us), Line 31 (us), and line 35 (we). He also uses first-person point of view to declare that at least one observation is his alone, and not necessarily that of his co-observers. This instance occurs in line 24: But now I only hear. This line means But now I alone hear.

Who Is the Listener? (Line 29)

The person addressed in the poem—lines 6, 9, and 29—is Matthew Arnold's wife, Frances Lucy Wightman. However, since the poem expresses a universal message, one may say that she can be any woman listening to the observations of any man. Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in 1851, the year they were married and the year Arnold was believed to have written "Dover Beach." At that time Arnold was inspector of schools in England, a position he held until 1886.

Theme

Arnold’s central message is this: Challenges to the validity of long-standing theological and moral precepts have shaken the faith of people in God and religion. In Arnold’s world of the mid-1800's, the pillar of faith supporting society was perceived as crumbling under the weight of scientific postulates, such as the evolutionary theory of English physician Erasmus Darwin and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Consequently, the existence of God and the whole Christian scheme of things was cast in doubt. Arnold, who was deeply religious, lamented the dying of the light of faith, as symbolized by the light he sees in “Dover Beach” on the coast of France, which gleams one moment and is gone the next. He remained a believer in God and religion, although he was open to—and advocated—an overhaul of traditional religious thinking. In God and the Bible, he wrote: "At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is."

Type of Work

“Dover Beach” is a poem with the mournful tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a dramatic monologue. Because the meter and rhyme vary from line to line, the poem is said to be in free verse--that is, it is unencumbered by the strictures of traditional versification. However, there is cadence in the poem, achieved through the following:

Alliteration Examples: to-night, tide; full, fair; gleams, gone; coast, cliff (first stanza)
Parallel Structure Example: The tide is full, the moon lies fair (first stanza); So various, so beautiful, so new (fourth stanza); Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (fourth stanza)
Rhyming Words Examples: to-night, light; fair, night-air; stand, land; bay, spray; fling, bring; begin, in (first stanza)
Words Suggesting Rhythm Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cease, then begin again (first stanza); turbid ebb and flow (second stanza)

Year of Publication

Although Matthew Arnold completed "Dover Beach" in 1851 or 1852, the poem was not published until 1867. It appeared in a collection entitled New Poems, published in London.

 

OXIGENO!!

Oxigeno? What is that? We met our friends from St Paul´s College and asked them if they knew a place for partying. It´s a place where most Hurlingham teenagers go to party every Friday! So we entered that fantastic world which everyone talks about.  When we got inside the colours of the lights flashed everywhere, and we could hear the music and how it made everyone in the club shake their bodies.  

We went to Oxigeno´s VIP where we could see the entire disco bar, from the window.

Although the place is big, it is not big enough for all the people that go each Friday.

In the bar you can find a lot of different drinks to help you enjoy your night!

Don´t hesitate to go!

Aldana Saccomanno and Jorge Lin Kang

Herminia

 

Herminia is a tea house located on one of Castelar´s main streets. In spite of this, the owner wanted to create an atmosphere where time stops and people relax. To achieve this, Herminia fuses good music; books; and delicious, exotic and unique flavours. Every piece of furniture, including chairs, cutlery and tableware, is different from the other but they all follow a same style: romantic, antique and baroque. Herminia´s speciality is tea. They offer a large variety of flavours that come from different parts of the world and which are served in leaves, and not it tea bags.

Two years ago, “Herminia Market” opened its doors to the customers. Here, the teas in leaves can be bought as well as different items such as decorating furniture, bouquets and fragrances. The aim of this market was to help the customers to recreate Herminia´s atmosphere in their own homes.

Shake your body

Time to work out! In spite of our distance from gyms full of machines to exercise our body, there is a great space to do so in Parque Leloir (Ituzaingó), where machines are replaced by open spaces. We found out that there is a training circuit, designed by the Ituzaingó City Council with the help of neighbours and NGO´S.  This circuit is usually used by people that live near it or in the vicinity, where you can run, walk and ride your bike or enjoy other physical activities.

The 4.5 km circuit has five different little spaces located around it when you want to take a rest. These spaces can be found at the following streets:

Station 1: Del Cielito y de la Media Caña.
Station 2:  De los Baqueanos y de la Media Caña.
Station 3: Del Candil y De La Doma.
Station 4: Del Prado y Del Candil.Station 5:  De La Vidalita y De la Zamba.

Parque Leloir is declared an environmentally protected zone because it is one of the biggest “Buenos Aires lungs” thanks to the areas full of trees and the vegetation where we can breathe fresh air ourselves in this public space.

P.S: We recommend you go in the morning after 8 am or before 6 pm because of the busy traffic in the main streets such as De Los Reseros. 

Manuela Scatena Bugallo and Martina Izurieta