the listeners

[avristy]

hello everyone.....plzz help me out...

while i was studying walter de la mare's wonderful poetic transcript 'the listeners',i got totally confused of the poem's theme...
plzz enlighten me of this poem

[Kafka's Crow]

The Listeners

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Walter de la Mare

I read this poem 18 years ago as a part of my BA course. Teacher taught it as an episode of a travelers inability to be heard (literal meanings). Just came back to the poem as a response to the thread-starter and it simply amazed me. The first thing that struck me was the 'unreality' of the situation, the moon-light, the empty house, the passive listeners who would not come forth and the traveler from 'the world of men.' I have a strong feeling that this poem is about the poet's inability to bring forth the phantoms of his imagination, the inability to write poetry in spite of his tries. The poet's imagination is like an empty house. He knows that there is a lot there which could be written about but he can not do so. Simply put, the poem is about the phenomenon called 'writer's block' (couldn't make it more prosaic). Would love to hear other people opinion about it.

An afterthought: I hope I haven't just done your homework for you!

[avristy]

quite appreciable view...thanx a lot fr reply...

ur view sounds much like coleridge's kubla khan....where in spite of many dominant interpreatations,,,the inefficiency of the perfect poetic collaboration of imagiantion and language stands out as a strong reading....the shadow that falls between conception and creation...

could the term writer's block (as used in the above post) be used as the romantic agony???the inabilty to write all poetry in a short poem......

[Kafka's Crow]

That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.

T S Eliot (East Coker)

Then there is the 'shadow' in 'Hollow Men' as well but de la Mare's poem touches this issue at a more basic level. It seems to be simply about the inability of imagination. There is a world to be depicted but it would not come forth. On another level it can be depicted as a 'voice in the wilderness', the Cassandra-syndrome where no one would listen to the prophetic words of a poet and move towards destruction unheeding of the warning. Both interpretations could be right still I am more partial towards the first one as the imagery strongly suggests an imaginative world inhabited by phantoms of one's imagination who are not co-operative and would not come to the poet so that he could depict them.