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A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold |
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Description:
Matthew Arnold, who wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of the Victorian period, with lyrics that are peculiarly appropriate to the alienated longeurs of modern existence, should, it seems, enjoy a higher reputation today. Yet he distrusted his own poetic genius and effectively stifled it after its early blossoming. He devoted his maturity instead to writing worthy but unexciting prose criticism. His motives, and the extraordinary tension between passion and repression in the poetry he did write, are both excellently explored in Ian Hamilton's critical biography. The title of the study comes from W.H. Auden's assessment of Arnold's career: "He thrust his gift in prison till it died." Hamilton outlines that prison--the Victorian upbringing, the unhappy love affair that was beyond the pale of 19th-century convention and was thus abandoned, and the painful retreat from poetry--the one thing Arnold did best, deftly and wittily. Read Arnold's "To Marguerite--Continued" (surely the bleakest and most beautiful statement of hopeless love in the language); then read this book for its expertly sketched account of the life behind the poetry. --Adam Roberts
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