The Art in Dying
Sarah Sanders
As
I have followed the massive number of posts from myself and classmates over the
course of the semester I saw many wonderful labels and posts to choose from. It
was a challenge at first, but I ultimately decided to show the way poets
reflect feelings toward dying in their works. Everyone knows dying is messy,
and everyone knows art is messy. It should be no surprise to humans that dying
is a form of art. Of course, we are blessed with the gift of life just as often
as we encounter death, but why is it that we do not seem to often cherish life
until it has passed over us? Poets seem to be of another breed, bringing their
words, realities and fears into perfect harmony into their works, allowing the
reader to slow down and contemplate life and death for yourself.
The
OED defines art as many things, namely as a “skill in doing something, esp. as
the result of knowledge or practice.” Yet, in most cases – we do not practice
dying, and somehow, we are preparing for this moment for our entire lives. We
long for days where we feel alive, but each morning regret the day before us,
battling between desiring more of ourselves, and the fear of change. Some fall
into death with ease, and some with a fight. Some of us fight the urge to mourn
over our lost loved ones, and some mourn for too long. The viscous circle
claims to know no individual, but dying covers a range of emotions, and art
stems from these emotions.
Louis
MacNeice‘s “Sunlight on the Garden” published
in 1937 is a great example to the inevitable force that greets us each from the
moment we become a part of this world.
“The
sunlight on the garden
Hardens
and grows cold,
We
cannot cage the minute
Within
its nets of gold,
When
all is told
We
cannot beg for pardon."
The sunlight on the
garden could be the outlook to which one has on the world, beautiful and
welcoming each morning, and leaving with emptiness into the night. “No matter
how many days we think we have, how many memories, photographs and videos we
make to capture a moment, time has each of us a sentence, a sentence we cannot
defy. Life goes forward, even when we do not, and that’s part of the beauty of
this cycle of life. MacNeice starts this poem feeling mad, or afraid of death,
and slowly moves forward to accept that it's going to happen to everyone.”
MacNeice like many other poets has thought about dying, but seems to understand
that even by the end of his life, the world continues to thrive on and remain
beautiful, this is heavily reflected in the line “We cannot cage the minute.” The
form does not seem to have any particular rhyme scheme, despite the many words
which rhyme. The English language tends to have a more melodic quality to it,
which shows the difficulty that may accompany this poem and whether the feet
are iambic or trochaic, which can be confusing. Despite its messy disposition,
it still rolls freely off the tip of a reader’s tongue.
His
view on dying is lighthearted by his imagery, while William Blake’s simple
three stanza poem The Garden of Love
published in 1794, tells a tale of the darker side to this reality. Although
these poems differ slightly in length, they both have an easy tune to follow,
despite differences in rhyme and meter. The first two quatrains are made from ABCB
rhyme scheme, with the final stanza shifting the rhyme to ABCD. The lack of
rhyme in the last stanza, which also has the two longest lines, (11-12) helps
to emphasize the death and decay that surrounds the speaker’s former memories
of his romping grounds.
“And
I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers
should be:
And Priests in black gowns were
walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and
desires.”
Once
again we are face to face with images of dying, but in comparison to MacNeice,
Blake’s work is very pessimistic. The flowers he speaks of seem to be the long
lost loves of his childhood days, replaced by gravestones and priests marching
through. Blake really struggles with frustration toward the religious side of
things throughout this work, and perhaps even associated with death. He longs
for the freedom he felt as a child when religion was not a materialistic way of
life for him. Even with these loved ones in the grave, he is preoccupied by the
marching priests who take away his freedom to mourn his childhood memories as
he desires, just as dying took away his “flowers”. Throughout the sands of time
everyone identifies with this feeling at one point or another, and poetry
allows you the freedom to paint your own image of the reality the poet speaks
of. Below I’ve attached an image that is
similar to his last two lines.
Shakespeare’s
Sonnet 15 first published in 1609, speaks
heavily on the theme of youth fading over time – once again preparing you for
death, but with class.
“Where
wasteful time *debateth with decay
To
change your day of youth to *sullied night,”
What a romantic way to
say “You are growing up, and one day you will die.” Everything that grows must
also cease to exist one day. Everything beautiful will one day transform into
something dull. Shakespeare has a history of having a flair for the dramatic,
like many other well-known artists, and these is seen in MacNeice’s work as
well. MacNeice uses a line from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra to show the
emphasis on dying in his own work –
By utilizing this line
in his work MacNeice is more able to paint that dark picture of dying, just before
his optimistic closure to his poem.
“But
glad to have sat under
Thunder
and rain with you,
And
grateful too
For
sunlight on the garden.”
MacNeice uses
Shakespeare’s words as a means to not only add emphasis to his own work, but work
also as a tool to keep Shakespeare alive. Art never dies, it can be changed and
molded anew, but it never ceases to exist. Death is a touchy subject for many,
but it’s a part of the reality we endure. I think it is foolish to live like we
will never die, because at one point or another, our hearts will stop, but just
like MacNeice lets Shakespeare live on through this work, each of us will live
on in the hearts of our loved ones. Similarly, in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 15, Shakespeare
is recognizing the beauty of the young man before him in the moment of the
sonnet, and taking this moment to let it be known that even though time does
not stop, this person will remain with him, and of high importance to him, just
as he is in this particular moment of time. No matter the aging of the young
man, Shakespeare allows him to be forever young in his eyes.
I
think art will never be defined in black and white. Art is as free flowing as
the soul itself, and should be respected as such. I believe each life walk is a
form of art, and in turn is dying. Some experience art with color and light,
and others experience art in seas of words that take us under just long enough
to keep our thoughts at bay, some experience art before day breaks and the
nightingale sings it’s tale of hello, and some experience art in the middle of
the day in between classes as a bird dips down below the treetops and you snap
a candid to remind you of the beautiful day. Art is all around us, in everything
we experience, and death is no pardoned medium.
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/179/the-sonnets/3254/sonnet-15/
Shakespeare Sonnet Reading
http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2103/view/Entry/47850?rskey=sulVEv&result=8#
Closest OED definition for “debateth”.
http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2103/view/Entry/193791?redirectedFrom=sullied#eid
Sullied OED definition.
I found it interesting
to compare MacNeice and Blake’s childhood’s because I would think Blake would
have had the worse of the two childhood’s because of the way he writes “The Garden of Love”, while in all actuality
it seems his childhood was the happier of the two, which strikes me as
interesting because MacNeice’s work seems to have a lighter ending.
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