“Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.” (Arnold 59)
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. New York, NY: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1993.
This picture may or may not be fabricated
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“Victorians-or at least Victorian intellectuals-were suspended between the ages of faith (an exploded medieval religion) and the coming age of scientific revelation.” (Riede 205) So when Arnold describes the “Sea of Faith [as a] long, withdrawing roar, retreating” (Arnold 25-26) he is referring to the lack of faith in his culture being pushed out by science. He said that his “poems represent the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century” (Riede 204) and that movement was show how he felt about the evolving culture.
Arnold, Matthew. “Dover Beach”. Legacies. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Riede, David G. Matthew Arnold and the Betrayal of Language. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1988.
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. New York, NY: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1993.
To find the real ground for the very different estimate which serious people with set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive the word curiosity gives us.” (Arnold 58)“Matty A” by Keith Packman
Lyrics:
Matty A, was a man who would critique his world
Matty A, wanted reform for all the boys and girls
Matty A, expressed himself throughout his poems and books
Matty A, wanted to fix it and he had what it took
Matty A, thought that culture was a “study of perfection”
Matty A, and in his works he tried to give direction
Matty A, said it may be an ambiguity
Matty A, but culture’s made through curiosity
In “Dover Beach” we see a glimpse of Matty’s view of culture
A “Sea of Faith…of human misery” man, that’s torture
Science and religion were in a world of feud
The “Sea of Faith” that’s withdrawing he knew his culture was through
What to do? He thought to fix it people’s minds had to flow
But how so? Reason and Question everything that they know
So don’t fight but love
Minds free like a dove
If you think high above
Then it’s culture you’ve won
Yeah, Matty A was a man
A writer with a pen and a plan
He could not understand
Why his culture was fading away
Fading away fading away
He put words to ink
So that minds could think
To save whatever he could so that his culture wouldn’t sink
The man is legendary now
His poems are infamous now
Arnoldian culture is what we call it when we talk it pop n’ lock it
(sorry for my bad annunciation. i’m a tuba player, what do you expect?)
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
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.
What I picture Dover Beach to look like.
He had an awesome beard.
