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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
That being said, ktd, I've been quite surprised while catching up to the happenings on this thread to see you so vehemently suggesting that history has no place in this poem, and I can see how such a suggestion might open you up to charges of being overly pedantic. A poem is not only form but content, and the content of this particular poem explicitly relies on some understanding of the historical contexts described. I don't really want to re-open a bitter debate, but remain puzzled as to why you are so invested in taking an absolute stance against admitting any kind of historical knowledge from outside the poem. If there's some way we could agree to discuss this issue in a respectful fashion, I would be interested to hear your response.
To a degee...I don't want to be blinded by it.
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I'd like to take your analysis of the rhyme scheme as a starting point to my questions. You've nicely outlined how it works--half the lines rhyming in each stanza and half not, with an increasing use of slant rhyme as the poem progresses. I would agree with you that I think this connects with your earlier points about an increasing lack of ritual. What you've got here is how the poet is going after a certain effect, and what that general effect is. What you need is to connect this with why he is going to the trouble to create this effect. On the most basic level isn't it to draw a comparison between two moments in history? And wouldn't it then be helpful to know at least a little something about the two periods described? How else are we supposed to come away with anything from this poem? I don't see how you can actually leave history out of it altogether. I think you're also right to connect this shift in both ritual and rhyme to the "light" mentioned in the poem. Could you understand this mention of "light" without any special outside knowledge? Of course you could. Since it's an old metaphor for truth, knowledge, faith, and generally good things, almost any reader could probably appreciate that the light is fading to darkness in this poem--becoming (like the slant rhyme?) increasingly distorted and then extinguished. All the same, if you happen to know that the poem's title comes from Goethe's dying words, doesn't that add a dimension to the poem, and to the understanding of what the poet is about? Doesn't it add an extra layer of irony to the setting of the second scene at Weimar? It also gives us a hint that the poet is not only using the metaphor of light in its most general sense (though I think that's one level of meaning at play), but has taken pains to set up that light as a specific allusion to humanism--surely both a word and a concept that are deeply important in thinking about the way humanity is portrayed in this poem.
A little, yes. And I'm sure I discussed my views on the two rituals in earlier discussions. About Goeth, not really, the comparison between the title 