More specifically, I associate English class with warm, itchy, sweaty, swollen toes against fabric that feels like sandpaper due to all of those things. There was A Tale of Two Cities, which a teacher believed would be less painful read on tape than by us. Gerunds and participles. Dover Beach, which our teacher (and principal) tested us on in our first week in Grade 12. Our marks hovered around 50 per cent and her temperature around 50 degrees Celsius. Because clearly we were all the problem.
I remember my toes, that I was sitting next to a window and heater, which only made things worse, staring at a single piece of photocopied paper, wondering if I was the only one who couldn't see the connection between a stupid beach and whatever she was talking about.
I have never liked poetry about nature: yes, thank you, clouds are fluffy, the sea is azure and birds flap around without ever once thinking about how interesting it is they are there, right then, when they could be not there any time, which is true the rest of the time, when it's not there. "The sea is calm tonight"? Keen observation. I'm pretty sure that's not intentional, unless we all clapped our hands and Mother Nature sprang into being and asked us to call her Tinkerbell before she calmed the raging seas.
"Listen! you hear the grating sounds of pebbles..." I don't like beaches and seas (or dams or lakes or, especially, reservoirs and ships), mostly because there is a lot of water and a little bit of me, so the odds seem stacked in the ocean's favour. I don't gamble. There is also a lot of water, and carnivorous and just creepy things hiding under the water, that I can't see while flapping like a seal and where I can't breath. But many beaches I have visited have broken up seashells that cut the underside of your feet and don't grate, or at least, I couldn't hear it over the crashing waves filled with jellyfish.
True story, I also once saw a Mako shark beach itself, from about 20 metres away.
You're nodding as you read this post, I know. English poems are deceptively short and magnificently tedious. If Mr Matthew Arnold had just written "The sea is calm but the tide is high against the cliffs of Dover", I might have understand because the three things are juxtaposed (one mark), in a row, in one sentence, using conjunctions and other parts of speech. There is some conflict between the "calmness" and "fullness", and the bloody cliffs (one mark).
When you get the end of the poem, thinking it's about a beach, the poet changes the topic: "Ah, love, let us be true". Sorry, what now? Wait, it gets worse, the poem's not even about love, or so They allege. On the upside, the poem rhymes, which is more than you can expect these days.
Five years later, I am sitting in a lecture room, reading this poem again. My toes are cold and then warm and all the other stuff, but I am wearing socks and not stockings. I know I have read this before, because the mention of Dover makes me think of the white cliffs of Dover. (Or is that the horse?) But I cannot remember what our teacher alleged it was about. My heart sinks because I have learnt that teachers usually choose the more boring (and conventional and safe) pieces of literature.
Except this time when I finish the poem, I think I understand it, and don't really care what my lecturer says it is about, because I am learning how to read metaphor not regurgitate allegations. See, this is what my Grade 12 teacher should have said:
Way back when, the illiteracy rates were 99 per cent or close enough, because the church didn't want anyone to read and know they were con artists stealing what money people had away and calling it donations. Along came Martin Luther (the German one) and tacked a piece of paper (he could read) to a door. This piece of paper said everyone should have access to the Holy Writ. Or at least the pictures.
They killed him but these ideas made sense, even to people who couldn't read. There are revolutions all over Europe, and although people keep getting slaughtered, they pass on the spirit of rebellion until it finally sticks like the fur of a cat brushing up against the walls. In particular, the rights and responsibilities of humankind, and the right to education.
While people are getting slaughtered for the right to read, other people are making things from metal and steel, and sending plumes of environmentally irresponsible toxins into the air, and still others are lining up to work in factories for those people. The Industrial Revolution is slaughtering the craftsman and the sense of community, and the working man's spirit.
But, see, now people have the right to education (mostly, there's still some spirit to pass on) and they worship at the altar of said metal, steel and carbon monoxide - oh and money. That's basically Chaucer through to the Brontes, just much more quickly.
As one might expect, disillusion sets in. Some writers start writing poems about clouds (Wordsworth), horses (Hughes) and assorted birds (all and sundry), reminiscing about simpler days or suggesting that living like animals is preferable to hot water or that at least one deity has possessed the countryside. They do not like cities and these are complicated days and the plumes of smoke are the breaths of a devil but at least they have hot water. It sets in and then settles in, in the form of Modernism.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we get the point!
I've said before (and I'll overlook those who don't remember) that I have the nature of a Modernist but the cynicism of a Post-modernist. This explains a lot, I know. The Modernists have had belief stripped from them, but they refuse to believe it. Every time they look at the world, they see evidence of tragedy, lit by an ill-defined transcendence. And tragedy lit by transcendence makes for wonderfully depressing but thought-provoking poetry.
Read verses 2 and 5, and you will understand the poem. Nature represents the newly discovered truth of life: that it is meaningless, but if we find love, maybe we can pretend it isn't so awful. Existence has always been this awful, but even so, isn't this a lovely view. Juxtaposition tells us what the poet isn't saying: that there is some kind of meaning to be had in beauty and time passing, even though there isn't, technically.
Even at 18 I would have understood the conflict of belief and meaninglessness, because after the Modernists came us, and we lost the plot or found it depending on your point of view. Anyway, melancholia is cathartic, except when you have some of it weighing you down. According to the movies, we all look at the ocean and are dismayed by the vastness of it, even if we don't hear the pebbles grating. Or we look and see possibility, but that is not very interesting, unless it is a made-for-TV movie staring the Olsons.
"We are here as on a darkling plain..."
That comes close to how I felt that day, reading the poem. If only I had known... And not only because I was bored and probably doodling (usually dragons seen from above, because it's easier than from the side, any side), and because I thought it was another useless poem saying things that needn't be said, but also because my toes ached and the only way I could stop them aching was to place one heel over the other set of toes and press, so I felt very sorry for myself. It would have helped to know that someone else felt worse than me.
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