„Bóg nie może być wszędzie, dlatego wynalazł matkę.“
— Matthew Arnold
Źródło: Leksykon złotych myśli, wyboru dokonał Krzysztof Nowak, Warszawa 1998.
Matthew Arnold cytaty
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Matthew Arnold
Data urodzenia: 24. Grudzień 1822
Data zgonu: 15. Kwiecień 1888
Reklama
Matthew Arnold – angielski poeta i krytyk kulturalny; pracował jako inspektor szkolny. Jego ojcem był historyk i pedagog Thomas Arnold.
Absolwent Oksfordu. Najlepsze dzieła stworzył przed czterdziestym rokiem życia, kiedy to zwrócił się bardziej w stronę krytyki literackiej i kulturalnej. W jego poezji widać wpływy Williama Wordswortha, czego zresztą sam Arnold nie ukrywał. W latach 1867-1869 napisał ogólnokrytyczne dzieło Culture and Anarchy, w którym po raz pierwszy określił część wiktoriańskiego społeczeństwa mianem "filistrów" w sensie ludzi pogardzających intelektem, sztuką i pięknem na rzecz materialnie wyrażonego dobrobytu i kiczu.
Poeta rozpoczął swoją karierę literacką jeszcze w szkole, zdobywając nagrodę za poemat Alaric at Rome. Do najbardziej znanych wierszy Arnolda należy poemat epicki Sohrab i Rustum, opublikowany w 1853.
Cytaty Matthew Arnold
Reklama
„Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way!
St. 1
„The what you have to say depends on your age.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Had Shakespeare and Milton lived in the atmosphere of modern feeling, had they had the multitude of new thoughts and feelings to deal with a modern has, I think it likely the style of each would have been far less curious and exquisite. For in a man style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age. In the 17th century it was a smaller harvest than now, and sooner to be reaped; and therefore to its reaper was left time to stow it more finely and curiously. Still more was this the case in the ancient world. The poet's matter being the hitherto experience of the world, and his own, increases with every century.
Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (December 1847/early 1848)
„Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way!
St. 1
„For both were faiths, and both are gone.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd —
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth; Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone —
For both were faiths, and both are gone.
Reklama
„I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!
"[http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/buriedlife.html The Buried Life]" (1852), st. 2
„And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for 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.
St. 4
„Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!
"[http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/buriedlife.html The Buried Life]" (1852), st. 2
„Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;
I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train; —
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again.
St. 14
Reklama
„Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill’d;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?
St. 18
„Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd —
I come not here to be your foe!“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd —
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth; Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone —
For both were faiths, and both are gone.
„Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day and wish’t were done.
Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.
"Morality" (1852), lines 7-12
„It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the word ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion, they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day, they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers, they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayam's words: "Let us make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them, in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.
Wordsworth, originally published as "Preface to the Poems of Wordsworth" in Macmillan's Magazine (July 1879)
