Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888) was an English poet and critic who wrote avidly about the social, religious, and educational issues of his day.

"Dover Beach" is a short lyric (a category of poetry that expresses subjective thoughts and feelings, often in a songlike style or form) poem by English poet Matthew Arnold.

It was first published in 1867 in the collection New Poems, but surviving notes indicate its composition may have begun as early as 1849.

The most likely date is 1851.

Background:

Location: Where is 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 south-eastern England

The title location and subject of the poem's descriptive opening lines is the shore of the English ferry port of Dover, facing France at the narrowest part of the English Channel, where Arnold honeymooned in 1851.

Location:

The opening stanza of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is a soothing description of what is believed to be Matthew Arnold looking out the window of his honeymoon cottage over a moonlit pebble beach of the Dover area of Southeastern England.

The opening stanza of “Dover Beach” is meant to lull the reader into a peaceful composure, imagining the scene with the entire divine splendor that Arnold was writing with.

Stanza 1:

Arnold begins with a naturalistic and detailed nightscape of the beach at Dover in which auditory imagery plays a significant role.

The beach, however, is bare, with only a hint of humanity in a light that "gleams and is gone”.

Reflecting the traditional notion that the poem was written during Arnold's honeymoon, one critic notes that "the speaker might be talking to his bride.”

Stanza 1:

The first stanza can be divided into two parts. In the first part (line one to line six) the

lyrical I describes the motions of the sea in a very positive way.

The words “to-night” (l. 1), “moon” (l.2) and “night-air” (l.6) indicate the time.

To create a very harmonious mood the poet utilises adjectives such as “fair”, “tranquil” and “calm”.

Stanza 1:

Matthew Arnold uses an anaphora (A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses) (”Gleams” and “Glimmering” l.4/5), to underline the harmonious atmosphere of the first six lines.

The word “only” in line seven can be seen as a caesura (A pause in a line of verse dictated by sense or natural speech rhythm rather than by metrics.) After line seven the harmonious mood of the first lines is changing into a sad mood. The word ‘sea’ is personified by the verb “meets” in line seven.

Stanzas 1 & 2:

The expression “moon-blanched land” create a mystic atmosphere.

With the words of sound “listen”, “hear” and “roar” in line nine Arnold wants to activate the reader’s senses to involve him in his poem.

Also, he involves the readership by using the imperatives “come” and “listen”.

Stanza 2:

The verbs “begin” “cease” and “again begin” show that the pebbles” motions are a never ending movement.

By using the words “sadness” and “tremulous” the pebbles’ motions are illustrated in a woeful and threatening way.

Stanza 2:

The first 2 stanzas can be seen as a description of a present status, whereas the second stanza is a reference to the past.

In the third stanza the poet uses “Sophocles” to show that the people for a long time thought about a comparison between sea and human misery.

Sophocles (495 – 406), the Greek tragedy playwright, is described by Matthew Arnold as hearing the same sound in the Mediterranean when inspired to write his tragedies such as King Oedipus, and Electra.

Stanza 3:

Critics differ widely on how to interpret this image of the Greek Classical age.

One critic sees a difference between Sophocles in the classical age of Greece interpreting the "note of sadness" humanistically, while Arnold in the industrial nineteenth century hears in this sound the retreat of religion and faith.

A more recent critic connects the two as artists, Sophocles the tragedian, Arnold the lyric poet, each attempting through words to transform this note of sadness into "a higher order of experience.”

Sophocles:

Arnold looks at two aspects of this naturalistic scene, its soundscape (in the first and second stanza) and the retreating actions of the tide (in the third stanza).

Arnold hears the sound of the sea as "the eternal note of sadness".

Sophocles, a 5th century BC Greek playwright who wrote tragedies of fate and the will of the gods, also heard this same sound as he stood upon the shore of the Aegean Sea.

Stanza 3:

The fourth stanza abstracts the image of the sea and uses it as a metaphor (”sea of faith”) to show that “once” (l.22) humanity was more religious.

The metaphor of “bright girdle furled” emphasizes that faith was inseparable to earth.

The words “But now” in line 24 are a caesura. The first three lines of the stanza create a

feeling of hope, whereas the last lines sound sad and hopeless.

Stanza 4:

Having examined the soundscape, Arnold turns to the action of the tide itself and sees in its retreat a metaphor for the loss of faith in the modern age once again expressed in an auditory image

"But now I only hear/Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”.

Stanza 4:

The final stanza begins with an appeal to love, then moves on to the famous ending metaphor.

Critics have varied on their interpretation of the first two lines of this stanza; one calls them a "perfunctory gesture...swallowed up by the poem's powerfully dark picture”, while another sees in them "a stand against a world of broken faith”.

Stanza 5:

Midway between these is the interpretation of one of Arnold's biographers who describes being "true/To one another" as "a precarious notion" in a world that has become "a maze of confusion”

Stanza 5:

The last stanza refers to the misery of humanity and can be seen as a conclusion of the preceding stanzas.

The lyrical ‘I’ compares the world to a “land of dreams” which is “various” “beautiful” and “new”.

This means that the world and the people who live on it might be happy and live together in peace.

To underline this mood, the lyrical ‘I’ uses the word “love” at the beginning of the stanza. The verb “seems” shows that it is only a dream or an illusion of the lyrical ‘I’ which can never become reality.

Stanza 5:

In these emotionally charged lines Arnold pleas that they cling to each other against a land that is beautiful as only an exterior to an unfeeling, Godless world.

The beautiful world, the world of the Romantic, is a lie; there is only the callous Modern world, devoid of answered hopes or prayers.

Stanza 5:

The simile with which the poem ends is most likely an allusion to a passage in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War.

Thucydides describes an ancient battle which occurred on a similar beach during the invasion of Sicily by the Athenians.

The battle took place at night; the attacking army became disoriented while fighting in the darkness and many of their soldiers ignorantly killed each other.

Final 3 Lines:

This final image has, also, been variously interpreted by the critics.

The "darkling plain" of the final line has been described as Arnold's "central statement" of the human condition

A more recent critic has seen the final line as "only metaphor" and, thus, susceptible to the "uncertainty" of poetic language.

Final 3 Lines:

What perspective/point of view is used by the poet?