in dover beach arnold heard the melancholy from the withdrawing roar of the sea of faith.
in dover beach arnold heard the melancholy from the withdrawing roar of the sea of faith.
in dover beach arnold hears the melancholy from the withdrawing roar of the sea of?
the sea of faith
the transition, even in their case however, has been to a subjective viewpoint. where the classically inspired poets claimed to draw their idea of order from the landscapes they contemplated, from 'nature', the poets of the 19th century bring their private preoccupations with them into the landscape. this is so even when there is an appeal to the classical past. matthew arnold on "dover beach" calls to mind lines by sophocles on listening to the sound of the sea but goes on to apply a modern religious lesson; it is "the sea of faith" of which "now i only hear/ its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar". the operative emphasis here is on the personal pronoun.
topographical poetry
arnold looks at two aspects of this scene, its soundscape (in the first and second stanzas) and the retreating action of the tide (in the third stanza). he hears the sound of the sea as "the eternal note of sadness". sophocles, a 5th-century bc greek playwright who wrote tragedies on fate and the will of the gods, also heard this sound as he stood upon the shore of the aegean sea. critics differ widely on how to interpret this image of the greek classical age. one sees a difference between sophocles interpreting the "note of sadness" humanistically, while arnold, in the industrial nineteenth century, hears in this sound the retreat of religion and faith. a more recent critic connects the two as artists, sophocles the tragedian, arnold the lyric poet, each attempting to transform this note of sadness into "a higher order of experience".
dover beach