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Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"In Memoriam A. H. H." by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850)
Another Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “In Memoriam A.H.H.” over a period of seventeen years, from 1833 to 1850. In 133 cantos, he eulogizes his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. Filled with a deep, personal grief, the poem also explores the wider theme of how to grieve in a world where the bedrock of belief is shifting. Tennyson’s poem has a resolutely more religious outlook than Arnold’s “Stanzas,” but Tennyson does capture the Victorian anxiety about the onset of doubt in line such as “Strong Son of God, immortal Love, / Whom we, that have not seen thy face, / By faith, and faith alone, embrace, / Believing where we cannot prove […]” (Lines 1-4).
"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold (1867)
Published in 1867 in the poetry collection New Poems, “Dover Beach” may have been written as early as 1851. One of the best-known of Arnold’s poems, it shares thematic concerns with “Stanzas from a Grande Chartreuse.” Additionally, it illustrates Arnold’s typical technique of transforming a narrative description of a real landscape into a scene of great symbolic value. Looking out on the sea from the shore of Dover on the English Channel, the poet compares the retreat of the waves to the retreat of religion, which has left the world’s “naked shingles” exposed. Compared with “Stanzas,” “Dover Beach” is more pessimistic and melancholy. In the latter, the speaker is alone, symbolizing the alienation of modern man. Both “Stanzas” and “Dover Beach” are also notable for Arnold’s use of auditory imagery and auditory literary devices.
"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot (1925)
Writing nearly three-quarters of a century after the publication of “Stanzas,” T.S. Eliot shares Arnold’s frustration at an inauthentic and passive life in his poem “The Hollow Men”. In this nightmarish universe, Eliot describes a wasteland filled with people whose lives lack meaning and purpose. The speaker often describes the hollow men as dead; they inhabit “death’s twilight kingdom” (Line 14), which resembles the purgatorial states of “Stanzas.” While Arnold’s poem sees hope in the future, Eliot’s composition is almost bereft of redemptive possibility. More pessimistic in outlook, it is the intellectual heir of the ennui (or dissatisfaction) predicted by Arnold’s works.
Further Literary Resources
"The Study of Poetry" by Matthew Arnold (1880)
One of Arnold’s most famous literary essays, “The Study of Poetry” articulates ideas the poet initially developed in his poetic works. Arnold argues that, as science and reason are unable to provide meaning in isolation, people must turn to poetry for emotional and spiritual succor. Therefore, it is important to establish a “high standard” that enables people to separate the wheat of good poetry from the chaff of mediocre works.
The Letters of Matthew Arnold, edited by Cecil Y. Lang (2006)
Published by the University of Virginia Press and edited by Victorian literature expert Cecil Y. Lang, this collection of Arnold’s personal correspondence includes nearly 4,000 letters. It is especially useful for exploring Arnold’s views on his own poetry and the development of his poetic sensibility.
"Faith and Dejection: Arnold’s “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” and Hopkins’s Wreck of the Deutschland" by Gerald Roberts (2016)
Writing for victorianweb.org, noted literary scholar Gerald Roberts presents a fascinating comparison of poems by Matthew Arnold and his younger contemporary, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Roberts contrasts the poets’ different ideas of faith, arguing that there was not one uniform “Victorian” artistic sensibility.
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By Matthew Arnold
