Matthew Arnold Diction, Style and Drawbacks

His Diction and Style

Arnold's poetic style and diction have certain positive merits. There are several fine points in his language and style. His gift of invention, his fastidious choice of words, his preference of clear accent and open vowel, impart a rare quality of his art. Cazamian comments: "These short poems come very near to what might be the perfection in philosophical poetry. Their rhythm shows a careful and yet over-elaborate construction, and there is in them a sureness of touch and elegance in style through which runs a modern vein of more intense suggestion." Cazamian further tells about the style of Arnold: "A great part of his work may be classed as only estimable and refined, but slightly artificial; it is that which the scruples of the humanist or the thinker deprived of all warm emotion. Many of the shorter poems of moral analysis are simply dissertation in verse; they have elegance and precision, but their sobriety is brought at the price of a prosaic dryness. The rhythm is too often awkward. More ornate, and attempting at times to reach the sublimity of grand style, are the poems which Arnold conceived and wrote under the exclusive influence of classicism; but these poems are not the best. His humanistic studies offer a source of sincere inspiration, to which can be traced not only his careful discrimination in language, his delicate evocations and all that background of imagery and allusion of so cloquent an appeal to the cultured reader, but also the preference which grew to be instinctive for subjects, comparisons, and a tonality far removed from the immediate facts of everyday life. Passing into this sphere of scholarly art, the need for poetic expression loses its animating force by losing the sense of unadulterated truths; it adapts itself to tricks, and indirect methods of realization. Despite their solid merits, Arnold's epic, tragic or mythological poems have lost the prestige which lately enshrouded them. A spark of genius lights up only from tirne to time the pages of The Strayed Reveller, Empedocles on Etna, Merope, Sohrab and Rustam, The Sick King in Bokhara. A poem, such as Empedocles, the faults of which were only too apparent to Arnold, offers a keener interest of thought, and thus makes up for what it lacks in musical quality." loon sid m

Matthew Arnold's Drawbacks

However, some drawbacks in the poetry of Arnold cannot be ignored. Every great writer obviously has some drawbacks, which need attention. For example, he lacks spontaneity, rapture and emotional flights of imagination. "The urge is there to fly, the desire is there to soar, and the flying and soaring too are there to some extent, but the strength of the wings slackens ere long and the pinions flap in vain endeavour. The poetic aerodrome of Arnold is littered with the ruins of broken propellers and battered planes-frustrated pilgrims of the sky of song." Arnold has an uncertain ear for rhythm. "The rush and sweep, the swell and surge, the profuse strain of unpremeditated art, the race of unbridled joy, the flow of noted in crystal streams, the bursting gladness of harmonious madness, the roll, the rise, the carol-these for ever dear to Apollo, are not there in Arnold's poetry. He has the poet's vision, but not the poet's voice." It is his vision, his philosophy, his outlook of life that is of great significance. His poetry lacks vigour and poetic fire. His poetry has 'no colour, no warmth, no leap, no passion, no rapture, and hence according to some, fit to be read only by those who have crossed the golden threshold of life and entered the courtyard where leaden ey'd despairs and pulseless philosophical consolations sit cheek by jaw engrossed in mutual admiration."