18 March 2008¶ Poetry Tuesdays: Lycidas

John Milton, Lycidas

I thought I’d try to record my reading of a poem out loud, but it turns out that I make a lot of mistakes when I read out loud and my voice sounds awful and I get the “poetry voice.” I hate poetry voice, but dang, it’s tough to avoid when you’re trying to read something like Milton’s “Lycidas” with enthusiasm and intention. Finally, I realize I have no idea how to pronounce most of the classical names in the poem: Damoetas? Hippotades? Which syllable gets the accent? I just sorta mumbled through them and pretended that I had it right. It’s a ten-minute deal straight through. I did it twice: once where I stop about once a stanza to breathe, and once where I read straight through without stopping, even when I screw up. You can download (about 10MB each) and listen if you want, but I only want gentle feedback if you dare feedback at all. I wouldn’t mind if no one listened, but since I went to the effort of recording them I though I might as well put them online.

Reading aloud has many advantages, however. When I read out loud — I mean read to someone, not just mumble the words with the vocal equivalent of my silent reading — I pay attention to emphasis and try to figure out Milton’s sometimes tough sentence structure. Nothing in Lycidas is really that tough in terms of sentence construction, not like Paradise Lost at least, but it’s not as straight forward as, say, Robert Frost.

The last stanza of the poem is such a let down. When the focus changes from Lycidas to the shepherd-poet, whatever solemnity Milton has constructed evaporates. Lauren Shohet describes the final stanza as a “purification,” in that it represents “the swain quite unrecognizably as a transcendent, autonomous speaker (like St. Peter, like Paradise Regained‘s Jesus, like the canonical Milton)”1. I suppose this alternative perspective in the final lines fits into the larger scheme of the poem, where the reader has to deal with “coexistences of the mythic and the real, the past and the present”2. I can see that: the poem is classical, it’s biblical, it’s elegiac.

If nothing else, however, the final stanza does turn our attention away from the dead Lycidas and onto … where, exactly? While it might be the unknown speaker, there’s not enough there there to warrant our attention, I think we wander, attention-wise. Having our focus thrown up-for-grabs I find a convenient holding place in the headnote, where Milton promises that the poem will foretell “the ruin of our corrupted clergy.” That’s where the fireworks are, anyway.

Look at all those great lines: “Blind mouths!” and “scrannel pipes” — I love that word, “scrannel!” — “swollen with wind” and the famous “two-handed engine.” A two-handed engine? I want me one of them! What is it, again? Rumrich calls it “The single most disputed phrase in Milton”3. Oh really, Mr. Rumrich? Hot diggety.

There’s also something in “Lycidas” that appeals to me historically, too. I want to someday use the opportunity to talk about a dead acquaintance to turn into a major editorial and, in the end, shift all focus from my friend and onto myself. There’s something nice and gutsy in that. I appreciate gutsy.

That, and sporting with Amaryllis and playing with Neaera’s hair. Hello, ladies.

——

1 Shohet, Lauren. “Subjects and Objects in Lycidas.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 47, no. 2 (2005): 108.

2 Kermode, Lloyd Edward. “To the Shores of Life: Textual Recovery in Lycidas.” Milton Quarterly 31, no. 1 (1997): 11.

3 Rumrich, John Peter, and Gregory Chaplin. Seventeenth-Century British Poetry, 1603-1660 : Authoritative Texts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006: 402.

Comment

  1. okay. i’ve now linked to this blog from mine. but you seem not to be doing the “writing every day” thing (she gently chides).

    — renaissance girl · Mar 21, 02:32 PM · #

  2. It’s a good try, but I think that you read far to fast and don’t pay the metre necessary attention. I would then like a more conservative reading.

    — A.W. · Jul 4, 09:27 AM · #

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