„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
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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.
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„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!
" The Buried Life http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/buriedlife.html" (1852), st. 2
„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)
„Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
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„Silent — the best are silent now.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: But — if you cannot give us ease —
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent — the best are silent now. Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb,
Silent they are though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.
„The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again.“
— 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
„We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
"Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann"" (1852), st. 34
„It is not in my nature, some of my critics would rather say, not in my power, to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: It is not in my nature, some of my critics would rather say, not in my power, to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately. To try and approach truth on one side after another, not to strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on any one side, with violence and self-will, — it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall never see except in outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his own, one, favourite, particular line, is inevitably destined to run his head into the folds of the black robe in which she is wrapped.
Preface to the Second Edition (1869)
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„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.“
— 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)
„For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Introduction to Ward's English Poets (1880)
„Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!“
— 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
„What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.
"Preface to Poems" (1853)
