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(2018
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2018 #2a: Short Essay (Passage) (index) |
LITR 4328 |
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Natalie Womble
Leaving no Moment Untouched: An Analysis of Scientific Reach in Poe’s
Poetry
For
my short essay, I chose to analyze Edgar Allan Poe’s “Sonnet – To Science.” When
mentioning Romantic authors, it is impossible to overlook Poe. His unique style
and melodic poetry are certainly enough to captivate any reader. But in “Sonnet
– To Science,” Poe’s style and melody are only partly culpable for the poem’s
charm. Additionally, the poem employs an essence of mystery, nostalgic
glorifying of memory, and an adamant belief in the search for life’s meaning to
inspire a mystical range of emotions.
“Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art! / Who alterest all things
with thy peering eyes. / Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart? / Vulture,
whose wings are dull realities” (1-4)? Poe cries out to science and asks of it
where its motive lies in stripping life of glamour. His frustrations with beauty
being dulled by science are illustrated in the first four lines and echoed in
the subsequent sentences in which the poem asks how it might be able to find
wisdom through science whenever the sheer majesty of a starry sky is alone
completely spellbinding.
The poem then transitions into themes of nostalgia in which ancient myths
are revisited and their integrity questioned upon the introduction of science.
Poe questions why science has stripped mythological parables of their meaning in
its quest to simplify what was once supernatural. “Hast thou not dragged Diana
from her car? / And driven the Hamadryad from the wood / To seek a shelter in
some happier star? / Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood / the Elfin
from the green grass” (9-13). The struggle with scientific truth robbing life of
its ethereal beauty is clarified through Poe’s mention of each myth losing their
meaning; the goddess Diana left without her chariot, the tree and water nymphs
without forest or stream, dreams with no vision or home.
Poe concludes his sonnet by taking all of what he questions of science
and applying it on a personal, introspective level. He wonders, if all the
beautiful things in myths can be destroyed, why should he believe that his own
memories are safe from science’s cold sting? “and from me, / the summer dream
beneath the tamarind tree” (13-14)? Can our own dreams be dampened, and our
memories victimized by an enlightened explanation of things seemingly surreal?
Ending on such a personal question emphasizes the power scientific truths have
that they might be strong enough to steal the magic from even our own memories,
leaving the reader both searching to validate experiences that felt otherworldly
and fearful that exploring memories of those experiences might yield a loss of
its supernatural qualities. Ironically, Poe’s sonnet of mourning the phenomenal
elements lost to facts and data inspires a reverence and active search for the
phenomenal in future texts, inciting a deep appreciation for life’s magic
wherever one can find it.
