“Hallow’d Mold”: Collins’s “Ode, Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746” (“How Sleep the Brave”)

IF 0.2 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE
Joseph P. Jordan
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Once celebrated as one of the great lyric poems of the eighteenth century, Collins’s “Ode, Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746” (“How Sleep the Brave”) is rarely encountered by students or non-specialist readers anymore.1 Its subject matter—the celebration of war dead—is unfashionable, maybe even offensive. The poem also seems to embody the tendency toward superficial adornment and prettification that we associate with 18th-century verse and that seems so far removed from what the Romantics have trained us to believe a poem should be. The one supposed problem compounds the other, as Collins treats his grim subject ornamentally. Here I acknowledge this conflict but argue that “How Sleep the Brave” harnesses it to complex effect: indeed, it enables readers to subsume the seeming contradiction.2 The poem both extolls the soldiers’ sacrifice in abstract terms and forces us, repeatedly, to remember the hopeless reality of it. In the dimension of form, it delivers its contradictory message via organizations that advertise themselves as such and cloak layer upon layer of imperceptible complexity. In both respects, the poem enables readers to apprehend more than what we might otherwise be capable of. “How Sleep the Brave” was originally published in Collins’s one major volume, Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746), and has remained an anthology piece ever since.
“Hallow'd Mold”:柯林斯的《1746年初的颂歌》(《勇敢者如何入睡》)
柯林斯的《咏》曾被誉为18世纪最伟大的抒情诗之一,《咏》写于1746年初(《勇者如何安眠》),如今已很少被学生或非专业读者读到它的主题——纪念阵亡将士——是不合时宜的,甚至可能是无礼的。这首诗似乎也体现了一种肤浅的装饰和美化的倾向,我们把它与18世纪的诗歌联系在一起,这似乎与浪漫主义者训练我们相信的诗歌应该是什么相去甚远。这一假定的问题使另一个问题复杂化,因为柯林斯把他冷酷的主题装饰化了。在这里,我承认这种矛盾,但我认为《勇者如何入睡》把它运用到了复杂的效果上:的确,它使读者能够接受表面上的矛盾这首诗既以抽象的方式颂扬了士兵们的牺牲,又一再迫使我们记住它绝望的现实。在形式的维度上,它通过宣传自己的组织来传递矛盾的信息,并掩盖了一层又一层难以察觉的复杂性。在这两方面,这首诗使读者能够理解的比我们所能理解的更多。《勇者如何入睡》最初发表在柯林斯的一部主要作品《若干描写和寓言主题的颂歌》(1746)中,此后一直是一部选集。
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来源期刊
EXPLICATOR
EXPLICATOR LITERATURE-
CiteScore
0.10
自引率
0.00%
发文量
17
期刊介绍: Concentrating on works that are frequently anthologized and studied in college classrooms, The Explicator, with its yearly index of titles, is a must for college and university libraries and teachers of literature. Text-based criticism thrives in The Explicator. One of few in its class, the journal publishes concise notes on passages of prose and poetry. Each issue contains between 25 and 30 notes on works of literature, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman times to our own, from throughout the world. Students rely on The Explicator for insight into works they are studying.
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