1st stanza: The narrator, an old man, wishes to leave behind "that old country"—that is, the everyday material world obsessed with the flesh. By being caught in "that sensual music" (rhythm of the cycle-birth, maturity, death), we forget the things of the mind ("monuments of unageing intellect" that never grow old, unlike the physical body that does.
2nd stanza: The poet has embarked on a voyage of intellect it seems, to Byzantium. It is important that one knows of Yeats' thoughts on this hold city: he believed that Byzantium marked a golden age when the practical, religious, and aesthetic (appreciation of beauty) were mystically united. The "soul" represents this blissful unification and the "aged man" is a person whose mind has been starved.
3rd stanza: In this stanza, the poet appeals to the wise teachers of the past (the sages) to liberate his soul and spirit from his desire or physical needs, and to help him shed the material and unite himself with the intellect. He wants the sages to consume his heart, the seat of emotion, which is fastened to a dying animal (the material world that is merely temporary). "Perne in a gyre" means spinning in a spiral motion.
4th stanza: Once the poet has cast off the physical world, he wants something artistic and imaginative, something of the fantastical, "a form as Grecian goldsmiths make." Gold here symbolizes the beauty of art and the nature of eternity (gold does not tarnish). We have another fantastical image here: Yeats had read of another story, where artificial birds sang in the Emperor's garden. Nostalgia sets in as the poet wishes to relive the age of Byzantium, to regain that paradise lost. The story centers on Daru's dilemma. Should he do what Balducci would consider his duty, obey order and deliver the prisoner? Or should he follow his own human impulse and give the Arab his freedom? On the one hand, Daru is responsible for the prisoner. He has been given an order; he has signed a receipt. In addition, he is a Frenchman; he will fight against the Arabs if war is declared; for him, as for Balducci, the French are "us" and the Arabs are "they." Moreover, the Arab is a murderer; and Daru, a peaceable man, cannot repress his wrath against all men who wantonly kill, motivated by hate, spite, or blood lust. But on the other hand, the Arab is a human being, and it offends Daru's honor to treat him, however guilty, with anything less than human dignity. Such treatment demands that the Arab be judged by his own people, not by alien French masters. Daru solves his dilemma by taking the Arab on a two hours' journey across the plateau to where two ways divide, by giving him money and food to last for two days, by pointing out the way to a prison, a two-hour walk, and the way to freedom, a day's journey to the pasturelands where the nomads will take him in and shelter him according to their law. When Daru looks back, later, he sees "with heavy heart" the Arab walking slowly on the road to prison. Still later, back in the classroom, he finds clumsily chalked up on the blackboard the words, "You have handed over our brother. You will pay for this." Camus' story is about the difficulty, the agony, the complexity, the necessity, the worth, and the thanklessness of moral choice. It tells us that moral choice may be difficult and complex, with no clear distinction between good and evil, and with both rational and irrational, selfish and unselfish claims justifying each course of conduct. It tells us that moral choice is a burden which man would willingly avoid if he could, but also that it is a part of the human condition which man cannot evade and remain man. It shows us that man defines himself by moral choice, for Daru makes the choice that the reader wants him to make, and establishes his moral worth thereby. But the story also shows that moral decision has no ultimate meaning, for the universe does not reward it. Not only does the Arab fail to take the freedom offered him but, ironically, the Arab's tribesmen misinterpret Daru's actions and threaten revenge.
In large terms, Daru is representative of moral man, and his desert is representative of the world. Daru is essentially alone in the world, which is "cruel to live in," and life has no meaning. In Camus' world man lives alone, makes his moral decisions alone, suffers alone, and dies alone. One of the most influential of the modern poets was Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965). Although born in the United States, T. S. Eliot spent much of his life in England; therefore, both America and England claim him as their own. Some of his poetry seems fragmentary, a characteristic of much of the poetry of the 20th century. The purpose of his major poetry is to depict man as a "living dead" person, a person who is unable to cope with demands of society. Eliot's characters just exist; they can't function in the world because of many reasons, one of which is their inability to communicate effectively.
Eliot gave us such works as "The Hollow Men," "Portrait of a Lady," "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and his masterpiece, "The Waste Land." This poem, as well as much of his poetry, is said to be ahead of its time and was first dismissed as nonsense. Nevertheless, Eliot's work stands as the foundation of modern poetry. his poem, the earliest of Eliot's major works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published until 1915. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man—overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem's speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to "force the moment to its crisis" by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to "dare" an approach to the woman: In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for "presuming" emotional interaction could be possible at all. The poem moves from a series of fairly concrete (for Eliot) physical settings—a cityscape (the famous "patient etherised upon a table") and several interiors (women's arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces)—to a series of vague ocean images conveying Prufrock's emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his second-rate status ("I am not Prince Hamlet'). "Prufrock" is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achieved. 2nd Edition•ISBN: 9780312676506Lawrence Scanlon, Renee H. Shea, Robin Dissin Aufses661 solutions
3rd Edition•ISBN: 9781111260804Darlene Smith-Worthington, Sue Jefferson468 solutions
3rd Edition•ISBN: 9781111445072Darlene Smith-Worthington, Sue Jefferson468 solutions
3rd Edition•ISBN: 9781111786786Darlene Smith-Worthington, Sue Jefferson468 solutions
