Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Our Buried Lives
I really enjoyed reading this poem. I think it touches one of the most basic needs in every person, which is the need to know ourselves and what we are capable of. Some of the lines I appreciated in particular say "But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves-" This spoke to me and the desire I feel for not only myself, but the one my generation has as well, to be an individual. At the same time, to be a TRUE individual, would be the most frightening and lonely existence. There lies the rub. Arnold's poem plays to our fears and desires and in the final stanzas gives us his theory on them. "Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafn'd ear is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd" If we become lost in the sounds of the world and numb from it's regime, it's in the eyes of a loved one that our potential surfaces. Whether it's a lover, friend or family member, they take away the fears the world has burdened you with and make you feel special, unique; individual.
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Fabulous insights--to look for the buried life, out inner most individual core, is a very isolating process, as he describes in lines 55-66. It also never works, according to Arnold--no matter how much "inward striving" we do, we never express the true core. This is why he proposes that we can find it in communion with another person--but this too seems difficult, as he says in the first two stanzas. The question I'm left with: does Arnold actually resolve the problem? What is the relationship between the end of the poem and the beginning? When he sees clear in another person's eyes, he "*thinks* he knows / The hills where his life rose" but does he *really* know, or is this just an illusion?
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