 |
|
Olin Levi Warner Imagination
(1896), (1844–1896).
Photographed in 2007 by Carol Highsmith (1946- ) Library of Congress,
Prints &
|
To Imagination
When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,
While then canst speak with such a tone!
So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.
What matters it, that all around
Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?
Reason, indeed, may oft complain
For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain
Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:
But thou art ever there, to bring
The hovering vision back, and breathe
New glories o'er the blighted spring,
And call a lovelier Life from Death.
And whisper, with a voice divine,
Of real worlds, as bright as thine.
I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour,
With never-failing thankfulness,
I welcome thee, Benignant Power;
Sure solacer of human cares,
And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!
by Emily Brontë published under her nom de plume 'Ellis Bell'.
Source:
Bronte, A., Bronte, C., and Bronte, E. (1846).
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. London, England: Aylott and Jones.
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. London, England: Aylott and Jones.
I rediscovered the poem ‘To Imagination’ while
reflecting on inner resources
in existential situations. What could be the
source of consolation or even joyful thoughts? The poem outlines a strategy of coping with a
difficult life, with pain and hopelessness.
For its author, Emily Brontë, pain must have
been a constant companion from early childhood. When she was 3 years old, her
mother died. A few years later her older sisters, who had partly filled the gap
left by her mother, followed her. Their brother, who was unable to live up to
his father´s expectations, turned into an alcoholic and died in his early 30s.
His escapades must have been a nagging worry to his family. Emily herself was
in frail health. She fell ill and died at the age of 30.
With Emily Brontë´s biographical experience in
mind I find the poem´s line of reasoning remarkable. Of course, I do not intend
to suggest that it is expressive of a purely personal and individual
experience. In fact, the author relied heavily on literary conventions. With
the apostrophe ‘Oh, my true friend!’ imagination is personified and the
allegorical mode initiated.[1]
The final three lines of the first stanza can be seen as an invocation of a
muse.[2]
The poem´s line of reasoning is a variation of the Renaissance topos of the
corruption of the world and the vanity of human effort with the only true value
lying in the soul and real life located in the afterworld. In the course of the poem
‘Imagination’, ‘Reason’, ‘Truth’, ‘Fancy’, ‘Nature’ and ‘Liberty’ appear as
allegorical figures, and Reason and Truth compete with Imagination for
dominance of the soul. Their dispute is narrated as a part of the speaker´s
praise of Imagination which is reminiscent of an ode. All these elements of
composition underline the literary origin and character of the speaker´s argumentation.
Nevertheless, the first and final stanzas seem
to root the speaker´s reflections firmly in personal experience. The point of
departure is the speaker´s exhaustion at the end of a long day, which Emily
undoubtedly knew as she was in charge of managing the household in the
parsonage at Haworth, especially during her sister Charlotte´s absence. It is skilfully entwined with the invocation
of Imagination as her muse.
In stanzas 2-5 the author juxtaposes the
negative experience of the outer world and an inner world whose beauty is
visualised with the help of nature imagery. The speaker-I, Imagination and
Liberty are the forces that shape it. Although the speaker´s reflections are
based on the topos of the vanity of human effort, the inner world lacks a
religious dimension. It is merely hinted at in the 5th stanza with
‘a lovelier Life from Death’ and only the voice of Imagination is given the
attribute ‘divine’. It can be concluded that the speaker who is certainly in
part an impersonation of the author, does not turn to religion for help but
relies on Imagination, which in her allegorical form appears as an outside
force, but is actually projection of a power dwelling inside her, a power (she
conceives as) endowed with divine qualities.[3]
When the speaker distances herself from her
previous enthusiasm in first line of the 6th stanza the poem returns
to the level of personal experience. She is aware that although imagination can
give consolation by displacing the bleaker vision which surfaces when ‘Reason’
and ‘Truth’ predominate, it is ultimately a delusion. To me this move conjures
up an individual with a strong sense of reality who faces her fate with a great
deal of courage. The conversational tone with which she addresses Imagination
as a friend in stanzas 1 and 6 at eye level confirms this impression.
[1] Cp. Tambling
(2009), 5: '[...]I will, in order to
present personification, assume throughout that it is an allegorical mode,
providing concrete forms for complex, abstract ideas which it makes
recognizable.' And p. 14: All types of language use incline towards allegory,
whose existence indicates the impossibility of keeping an abstract conception,
or construction abstract. Thinking, which happens within figures of speech becomes
allegorical, giving a visual or linguistic shape to the abstract, which is
perceived as personified and personifying, allegorical, creating allegory, and
effacing the difference between the abstract and its embodiment as a figure.
(14)
[2] Medieval
allegories such as Piers Plowman or Chaucer´s The House of Fame
and The Parlement of Fowles ‘leave the world of everyday realism behind,
by beginning with the narrator falling asleep and dreaming. In the dream world,
all identities become allegorical.’ (Tambling (2009), 35). The invocation of
‘Imagination’ in the poem also reminds me of the beginning of La Cité de Dames
when the personifications ‘Raison’, ‘Droiture’ and ‘Justice’ appear before the
narrator who is in a troubled state of mind.
[3] Fletcher drawing
on C.S. Lewis, 1936:75-76 and ultimately Freud, 1975: 321-11 explains the
emergence of allegory as a projection of conflicting emotions each onto a
separate figure. The conflict can be acted out as a physical battle as in Psychomachia by Prudentius (early 5th
century AD) or as a debate as in Owl and
Nightingale (12th or 13th century) (Fletcher, 157-8).
Bibliography:
Fletcher, Angus, 1964. Allegory: The Theory of
a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
Freud, Sigmund, 1976. The Interpretation of Dreams: The Penguin Freud
vol. 4. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lewis, C.S., 1936. The Allegory of
Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Pizan, Christine de, 1405, La Cité
des Dames, Stock/Moyen Age, 2000.
Tambling, Jeremy, 2009. Allegory.
London [u.a.]: Routledge.
On Emily Brontë:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-bronte
or (more extensively)
Barker, Juliet (1994, 2000) The Brontës. London: Abacus.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen