-
阿诺德
Dover
Beach
的解析
Time and
Place
Matthew Arnold
(1822-1888) wrote
made to the Dover
region of southeastern England, the setting of the
poem, in 1851. They had
married in June
of that year. A draft of the first two stanzas of
the poem appears on a sheet of
paper he
used to write notes for another another work,
1852. The town of Dover is closer to
France than any other port city in England. The
body of
water separating the coastline
of the town from the coast of France is the Strait
of Dover, north
of the English Channel
and south of the North Sea.
Point of View
The poet/persona uses first-, second-,
and third-person point of view in the poem.
Generally,
the poem presents the
observations of the author/persona in
third
-person point of view but
shifts to second person when he
addresses his beloved, as in Line 6
(
Come
), Line 9
(
Listen!
you
),
and Line 29 (
let
). Then he
shifts to first-person point of view when he
includes his
beloved and the reader as
co-observers, as in Line 18
(
we
), Line 29
(
us
), Line 31
(
us
), and
Line 35
(
we
). He also uses first-
person point of view to declare that at least one
observation is
his alone, and not
necessarily that of his co-observers. This
instance occurs in Line 24:
But
now I only hear
. This line
means
But now I alone hear
.
Who Is the Listener?
(Line 29)
The
person addressed in the
poem
—
Lines 6, 9, and
29
—
is Matthew Arnold's wife,
Frances
Lucy Wightman. However, since
the poem expresses a universal message, one may
say that
she can be any woman listening
to the observations of any man. Arnold and his
wife visited
Dover Beach twice in 1851,
the year they were married and the year Arnold was
believed to
have written
position he held until 1886.
Theme
Arnold’
s central message is
this: Challenges to the validity of long-standing
theological and
moral precepts have
shaken the faith of people in God and
religion
. In Arnold’s world of the
mid-1800's, the pillar of faith
supporting society was perceived as crumbling
under the weight
of scientific
postulates, such as the evolutionary theory of
English physician Erasmus Darwin
and
French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Consequently, the existence of God and the
whole Christian scheme of things was
cast in doubt. Arnold, who was deeply religious,
lamented the dying of the light of
faith, as symbolized by the light he sees in
“Dover Beach” on
the coast of France,
which gleams one moment and is gone the next. He
remained a believer
in God and
religion, although he was open
to
—
and
advocated
—
an overhaul of
traditional
religious thinking. In
God and the Bible
, he wrote:
the Christian religion must
surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head.
One is, that men
cannot do without it;
the other, that they cannot do with it as it
is.
Type of Work
“Dover Beach” is a poem
with the mournful tone of an
elegy
and the personal
intensity of a
dramatic
monologue
. Because the meter and rhyme
vary from line to line, the poem is said to
be in free verse--that is, it is
unencumbered by the strictures of traditional
versification.
However, there is
cadence in the poem, achieved through the
following:
Alliteration
Examples:
t
o-nigh
t
,
t
ide;
f
ull,
f
air;
g
leams,
g
one;
c
oast,
c
liff (Stanza 1)
Parallel Structure Example:
The tide is full, the moon lies
fair
(Stanza 1);
So various,
so
beautiful, so new
(Stanza
4);
Hath really neither joy, nor love,
nor light
/
Nor
certitude, nor
peace, nor help for pain
(Stanza 4)
Rhyming Words
Examples:
to-night, light; fair,
night-air; stand, land; bay, spray; fling, bring;
begin, in
(Stanza
1)
Words Suggesting Rhythm
Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cease,
then begin again
(Stanza 1); turbid ebb
and flow (Stanza 2)
Year of
Publication
Although
Matthew Arnold completed
published
until 1867. It appeared in a collection entitled
New Poems
, published in
London.
.
.
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold
1
The sea is
calm to-night.
The tide is
full, the
moon lies fair
Upon the straits
; on the
French coast the
light
Gleams and is gone
; the
cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast
, out in
the tranquil bay.
Come to
the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the
moon-blanched
land,
Listen! you hear the
grating roar
Of
pebbles
which the waves draw back, and
fling,
At their return, up
the high
strand
,
Begin, and cease, and then again
begin,
With tremulous
cadence slow, and bring
The
eternal note of sadness in.
............
.........................
14
Notes, Stanza 1
moon . . . straits
: The
water reflects the image of the moon.
A
strait is a narrow body of water that connects two
larger
bodies of water. In this poem,
straits
refers to the Strait
of
Dover (French:
Pas de
Calais
), which connects the English
Channel on the south to the North Sea
on the north. The
distance between the
port cities of Dover, England, and
Calais, France, is about 21 miles via
the Strait of Dover.
light
. . . gone
: This clause establishes a
sense of rhythm in
that the light
blinks on and off. In addition, the clause
foreshadows the message of later lines
--that the light of faith
in God and
religion, once strong, now flickers. Whether an
observer at Dover can actually see a
light at Calais depends
on the height
of the lighthouse and the altitude at which the
observer sees the light (because of the
curvature of the
earth), on the
brightness of the light, and on the weather
conditions.
cliffs . . . vast
: These are
white cliffs, composed of chalk, a
limestone that easily erodes. Like the
light from France, they
glimmer,
further developing the theme of a weakening of the
light of faith. The fact that they
easily erode supports this
theme.
moon-
blanched
: whitened by the light of the
moon.
grating . . .
.pebbles
: Here,
grating
(meaning
rasping,
grinding
, or
scraping
) introduces
conflict between the sea
and the land
and, symbolically, between long-held religious
beliefs and the challenges against
them. However, it may be
an
exaggeration that that pebbles cause a
grating roar
.
strand
: shoreline
2
Sophocles long ago
Heard
it
on the
Aegean
, and it brought
Into his mind the
turbid
ebb and
flow
Of human misery;
we
Find also in the sound a
thought
,
Hearing
it by this distant northern sea.
.......
....................
20
Notes, Stanza 1