Poetry Reading Group Redux- Nominations

[LitNetIsGreat]

I can send you the poem later.

If anyone is reading the Nichols version it is poem no. VIII "The Evening of the Holy Day". I re-read it last night, it is a good choice, lots of meat on this one...

Edit: sorry it is no.XIII.

[Quark]

it is a good choice, lots of meat on this one...

Yeah, there's quite a bit to talk about. The first thing that caught me is the fact that the speaker pushes the Sunday further and further into the past as the poem goes on. At the start of the poem, we're talking about a Sunday that has recently happened, and is still happening. By the end of the poem we're talking about a distant past that can never be recovered. The poem compares it to fallen Roman empire (it's hard to get more distant and removed than that) and to his own boyhood (long past and unrecoverable). At the start of the poem we're talking about a day that has just past, and one that will eventually return. By the end, though, we're talking about something that's completely gone.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes there is a lot to go on, I'm feeling a bit swamped trying to fit my thoughts together briefly. As I’m out tomorrow and short of time now I’ll just briefly throw a few wide ranging thoughts into the air - bullet point style if that is OK, instead of looking at one aspect more deeply? Of immediate interest to me in this poem are the following points:

1 Life’s brevity
2 lack of religious comfort
3 The smallness of man in relation to the world/universe
4 Youth’s innocence Vs aged wisdom
5 Comfort of death/rest peace
6 The cruelty of nature/love/desire
7 Loneliness as a default emotion
8 Poverty as a common factor

Again for me there are a lot of similar things going off in this poem as were happening in the last poem(s). In particular I think that the quickness of time/life’s brevity is pretty central once again. I mean take this part from lines 28-33:

And cruelly it clutches at my heart
To think the world and all must pass and leave
Scarcely a trace. And now this festival
Is gone, and hard upon its festive heels
The common day must tread; time steels away
All human circumstance.

Here for me we have not just a mourning for his own passing (indeed there is possibly some envy towards the peace of the dead woman) but the mourning for mankind in general. He goes on to comment just after these lines of the loss of the great Roman Empire asking “now where’s the noise of all those ancient peoples?” It is not just for the individual who is nothing to time’s cruel shadow, but “all human circumstance” everything even great civilisations which of course only seeks to highlight an individual’s lack of importance in the grand scheme of things.

2 lack of religious comfort

For me in this poem there is no religious comfort to such bleak (or realistic) ways of viewing life. The fact that the poem is set on a religious day which passes so quickly “And now this festival/Is gone, and hard upon its festive heels/The common day must tread” and the overall lack of religious happening suggests there is no or very little comfort to be found in religion at all. Quickly now bath time awaits...

3 The smallness of man in relation to the world/universe

Partially covered by point one, and similar to it actually, but it is also in the opening of the poem showing the universe looking down upon human life. 1-4:

The night is mild and clear without a wind,
And silent over the roofs and down in gardens
The moonlight pauses, and distantly reveals
In all serenity each height.

For me there is a looking down upon human significance here and elsewhere in the poem.

4 Youth’s innocence Vs aged wisdom

As in the last poem there seems to be a play-off between the innocent of youth and an older more cynical understanding of how the world is.

5 Comfort of death/rest peace

The dead women in the poem, the object of the narrator’s failed love seems to be at peace or he seems to think she is at peace, however there is no peace for the narrator who has to “go on living” to me this suggests that there may be peace in death, but not particularly in a religious context.

My rubber duck is missing me...

6 The cruelty of nature/love/desire
7 Loneliness as a default emotion
8 Poverty as a rule

As shown in his fatal attraction to the female figure and in the lonely song of the poverty stricken worker. Such loneliness is also that of the narrator and possibly that of the dead women in life too, perhaps there is a suggestion of this a sort of default thing? Again poverty features in this poem as it did in the last or at least the poor song of a poor worker.

Again, sorry to bullet point things but I might not be around much tomorrow or possibly much over the next couple of days (apart from at work) so I just wanted to get a few things out there. Of course though there is still more to look at that I am interested in and have had to ignore...

Rock and roll.

[Virgil]

I didn't think this poem was all that interesting. I read it a few times last night. All I got was "woe is me she doesn't love me." I'll give it another shot tonight.

[Quark]

Again for me there are a lot of similar things going off in this poem as were happening in the last poem(s).

The poems do fit well together. Does anyone know how these were published? Is the connection we're seeing something that would have been recognizable to the poems' original readers? In any case, I think the parallels are hard to ignore. The poems share the same timeline (right before Sunday and right after Sunday) and link the same emotional extremes to each end of the timeline. Hope, innocence, and faith warm the feelings of everyone right before Sunday, but soon after the speaker lapses into weariness and doubt. As I said about the last poem, I think the two points in time represent a more dogmatic past and a secular modernity, and I see the same setup here.

Here for me we have not just a mourning for his own passing (indeed there is possibly some envy towards the peace of the dead woman) but the mourning for mankind in general.

Death is certainly not far off in this poem. Is the woman dead, though? I haven't read the entire Canti (so I don't know if she died previous to this poem), but this poem didn't give me the impression she was dead. It does say:

Today was a holy day: your pastimes passed
And laid to rest, you rest; and dream perhaps
Of all you charmed today, and all who charmed
You in their turn

But I took this rather literally to mean that she had a day of activity and retired to sleep.

It is not just for the individual who is nothing to time’s cruel shadow, but “all human circumstance” everything even great civilisations which of course only seeks to highlight an individual’s lack of importance in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah, there's a painful letting go of everything in this poem. He has to acknowledge that the woman doesn't care for him, that the past will never come back, and that his own ambitions might turn to nothing. It definitely shows his lack of importance in the grand scheme of things. The individual doesn't have much of a level to control anything outside of himself or herself in this poem. Of course, there's an interesting tension because its topic is the individual. We're focused in on his feelings. How can the poem downplay the individual, then?

For me in this poem there is no religious comfort to such bleak (or realistic) ways of viewing life.

The poem reads that way for me, too.

As shown in his fatal attraction to the female figure and in the lonely song of the poverty stricken worker.

I'm not sure what I make of these two figures, yet. I'll have to give it some thought.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Death is certainly not far off in this poem. Is the woman dead, though? I haven't read the entire Canti (so I don't know if she died previous to this poem), but this poem didn't give me the impression she was dead. It does say:

Today was a holy day: your pastimes passed
And laid to rest, you rest; and dream perhaps
Of all you charmed today, and all who charmed
You in their turn

But I took this rather literally to mean that she had a day of activity and retired to sleep.

Yes it could be read in a literal sense, but I read it to mean her death, when all the other factors are considered in the poem this reading makes more sense to me. I mean with the focus on time's passing and the idea of death in the poem, the death of individual and civilsations - putting these together and the emphasis on the rest "laid to rest, you rest" suggests to me her death. Of course though it could be taken literally as well.

Edit: I mean "laid to rest" does seem a little odd don't you think?


I didn't think this poem was all that interesting. I read it a few times last night. All I got was "woe is me she doesn't love me." I'll give it another shot tonight.

Really? I did more for me than that, though I know you are reading a different translation and it might read differently with the Grennan or it could just be you.

[Quark]

I mean with the focus on time's passing and the idea of death in the poem, the death of individual and civilsations - putting these together and the emphasis on the rest "laid to rest, you rest" suggests to me her death. Of course though it could be taken literally as well.

For the speaker she may as well be dead. I just got the ideas she was still alive because Leopardi write that she will "dream perhaps/ Of all you charmed today, and all who charmed/ You in their turn." It makes it sound like she was socializing just that day. That's the way it came off to me. Of course, I could be completely wrong, as I haven't read the entire sequence of poems. She may have died in a previous poem.

Anyway, I still have to post some stuff on the woman and the poor worker. I probably won't get to it until late tonight, but I'll try to post more.

[Paulclem]

I think this poem is a meditation on time and how elusive it is.

It begins with night when everything has happened already. And so it proceeds. Even hurt is a memory along with the Roman Empire and the Holy day. He's never actually referred to experiencing anything - it has all happened. The only thing that seems to stay is the peace afterwards and the pain - even in memories.

Initial thoughts for now.

[Virgil]

Yes, I think there is more there than my initial reading. I need to study it a bit more.

[Quark]

I haven't forgotten about this thread, but I've been a little busy of late. Work has been difficult recently, since apparently my students have no idea how to do research. There's been much hand holding, and, suffice it to say, there hasn't been much time to post on LitNet.

He's never actually referred to experiencing anything - it has all happened. The only thing that seems to stay is the peace afterwards and the pain - even in memories.

I agree with that, but what do you make of his desires in this poem? He longs for the woman, just as he once longed for the holiday:

In my first age, that age when holy days
Are desperately desired

If the poem is about the past falling away from us, what does that mean for these desires? What are these desires? Are we meant to take them on face value--as desire for a holiday and a woman? Or, is there something deeper? This is the part of the poem that seems elusive.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Ha, students eh?

Yes there is the obvious desire for the women in the first part of the poem and in the lines you quote above. I think I took this desire aspect as a sort of youthful lust for life, which is where I think I was coming from the other day with the youth Vs old age thing. As in the last poem we looked at the narrator had more of a lust for life in youth which faded with the wisdom of older age, wisdom about the way of the world and the full understanding of time's passing etc and here I see the same thing here (though I have not looked at the poem since).

I'll have another look at the poem tomorrow and maybe post something more when I have the time.

[Quark]

Yes there is the obvious desire for the women in the first part of the poem and in the lines you quote above. I think I took this desire aspect as a sort of youthful lust for life, which is where I think I was coming from the other day with the youth Vs old age thing.

True. I think there is a hope or a "lust for life" there, and that the state the speaker finds himself at the end is one of hopeless despair. This poem seems to show the emotional repercussions of the ideas that were latent in "Saturday in the Village." The doubts that enter quietly into the previous poem become the subject of this one, and the speaker recoils emotionally.

[LitNetIsGreat]

New poem?

What about "La ginestra o il fiore del deserto/The Broom or The Flower of the Desert" poem no. XXXIV in the Nichols? I can't remember much about it now but I remember thinking something of it when I first read through the Canti. I think it is quite a dark and meaty one and we are sat back on a mountain which is always fun...

[Paulclem]

Fine with me. We seemed to grind to a halt with the last one. I'm on holiday now, so I should be able to do a bit.

[Virgil]

Ok, I'll get to it tonight. I may still want to comment on that last one. I'm just behind on my reading.