The Cultural Production of Matthew Arnold

1. Revolution and Medievalism

1 1 Revolution and Medievalism The need to possess the truth, the fear of doubt and uncertainty. It is the fear from which Arnold fled, in the middle of the nineteenth century—the fear of a democratic conversation moving without benefit of authoritative touchstones.Arnold saw it as the spectrous dialogue of the mind with itself.And he had reason to fear that dialogue, which can be unnerving or even worse. It can overthrow altogether what one takes to be the truth: the soul of the world’s culture suddenly brought face to face with the mask of the god’s anarchy—and a mask appearing, in its most demonic guise, as a polished surface reflecting back the image of one’s self. —Jerome McGann, Black Riders:TheVisible Language of Modernism  Matthew Arnold’s most famous poem, “Dover Beach” (composed ca. 1851),1 concludes with his speaker looking away from the chalk cliffs of England toward continental Europe and lamenting that . . . the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. (lines 30–37) You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. The Cultural Production of Matth ew Arnold 2 The disturbed worldview presented in these famous lines originated with tumultuous historical events that shattered the relative calm of Europe at midcentury, but it refuses to name them directly .A far less well known poem, written perhaps a year or two earlier, was published—unlike “Dover Beach,” which Arnold held onto until 1867—in Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852). “Revolutions,” an important but brief poem, by its title might lead readers to anticipate specific commentary on the upheavals that disrupted European political systems only a few years before its appearance, or to expect a focus on the threat of revolution in England associated with the Chartist movement that had, remarkably , evaporated after the People’s Charter was delivered peacefully to Parliament in April 1848. Arnold’s poem, however, takes neither of these historically specific approaches to its subject. Because of its relative unfamiliarity, I quote the poem in full: Before man parted for this earthly strand, While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood, God put a heap of letters in his hand, And bade him make with them what word he could. And man has turn’d them many times; made Greece, Rome, England, France;—yes, nor in vain essay’d Way after way, changes that never cease! The letters have combined, something was made. But ah! an inextinguishable sense Haunts him that he has not made what he should; That he has still, though old, to recommence, Since he has not yet found the word God would. And empire after empire, at their height Of sway, have felt this boding sense come on; Have felt their huge frames not constructed right, And droop’d, and slowly died upon their throne. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Revolution and Medievalism 3 One day, thou say’st, there will at last appear The word, the order, which God meant should be. —Ah! we shall know that well when it comes near; The band will quit man’s heart, he will breathe free.2 Although the last line in this sequence of simply rhymed iambic pentameter quatrains sounds familiarly Arnoldian, with its aspiration to escape both the pressures of daily life and the burden of human history, other elements of the text are less expected: its imaginative conception of an ostensibly benign God attempting to impel mankind, through trial and error, to understand His purpose by learning the “right” writing of political texts (“empires ”); an apparent acceptance of teleology, a human history “ordered” (in both senses of the word) by God; and formally, the surprise revelation at the opening of the final quatrain, that the poem is a dramatic monologue whose speaker now reveals his auditor’s response to his pessimism.This...