Wednesday, April 3, 2013
A forsaken love
Matthew Arnold's Forsaken Merman has a lot going on. It reminds me of an ocean itself. On the surface there's a story of a merman falling in love with a human woman and her birthing his children then leaving him on Easter. What?? But if you look deeper you see the confliction between love and religion. The merman becomes increasingly depressing as the poem goes on yet still loves this woman. She, on the other hand, doesn't quite reveal her motives as to why she leaves the land for a merman and then decides to return due to hearing the church bells. Was religion that important to her? Or did she never love him at all? Or maybe the sea was too much of a difference from the civilization on land? All of these questions played in my head. Another thing that struck me was the influence of music in this poem. The children's voices, the Murmansk repetition of down, down, down and dear children and the church bells are all very influential to the melancholy atmosphere the poem draws on.
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I was also faced with many questions as I was reading this poem. There are a lot of things that are left unclear and it kind of leaves the readers with the freedom to interpret the poem as they wish. It has a very dark and pessimist tone and the fact that the speaker of the poem is unclear doesn't help us decipher this poem much. To me, however, the poem seemed to imply that the church indirectly forces people to choose between happiness and having a soul. The woman was faced with a decision of whether she should stay with the merman she loves and her children, or go back to land to regain her soul. The fact that the poem is set on the seashore also makes things interesting because it contributes to the poem's lack of clarity and it kind of sets it in a place that it neutral.
ReplyDeleteI was also really confused when reading this poem. And then was even more confused once we started to discuss it in class. There is so many interpretations and I feel that muddles the true meaning of it. The true meaning is still lost on me (probably because of the multiple interpretations.) I found the poem to be interesting through and really enjoyed all the religious imagery. I mean, who doesn't. Even though the meaning wasn't clear, Im really enjoyed it, and wish I knew the answers to all the questions you asked.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this poem, despite being fairly confused. I agree that religion plays a huge part in this poem. In the footnotes, we find that humans believed they would lose their soul if they went to live with the soulless mermen. If this is the case, and the woman has lived with the merman in the past, wouldn't she have already lost her soul? If she has had children with him, it's safe to say that she has been living with him for quite some time, and it's possible that her return to land is a failed attempt at regaining her lost soul. While she is focused on the bible when the merman and children call to her, she seems to feel regret when she looks at the ocean. Are her attempts to regain her soul futile?
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