A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold - Hardcover

Critically acclaimed biographer Ian Hamilton explores the early life of Matthew Arnold. A book of rare originality and significance that explores the origins of Arnolds creativity and the reasons for its strangulation. . English poet Matthew Arnold had two lives. In his youth, he was an impassioned lyric poet. In his later years, he was Victorian Englands best-known social prophet, educational reformer and literary critic. For about twenty years, however, Arnold made efforts to resist his destiny as a social moralist, and this book is the story of that losing battle. It is a story of Victorian repression, typical, perhaps, but also individual nonetheless, and one that suffocated Arnolds creative mind. Hamilton leads the reader through some intricate and beautiful considerations on the nature of creativity and its silencing. English poet Matthew Arnold had two lives. In his youth, he was an impassioned lyric poet. In his later years, he was Victorian Englands best-known social prophet, educational reformer, and literary critic. Arnolds poetic life that gave us Dover Beach, The Scholar-Gipsy, and Empedocles on Etna was effectively over by the age of forty, when he began to devote all his energies to purposeful prose composition. As Auden said, he thrust his gift in prison till it died. From the very start, though, Arnold had viewed his poetry-writing self as irresponsible, delinquent. As the eldest son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, the great shaper of Victorian morality, his destinyhe knewwas inescapable. He had been born to make a difference to the age in which he lived. For about twenty years, however, Matthew Arnold made efforts to resist his destiny as a social moralist, and this book is the story of that losing battle. As a biographical narrative, A Gift Imprisoned confronts a number of intriguing puzzles. Chief among these, of course, is the much-pondered Marguerite. Who was she: a dream-girl, an invention born of too much exposure to the novels of George Sand, or a real person met in Switzerland in 1848? Then there is Dr. Arnold himself: a devitalizing ogre or an inspiration? And, overarchingly, there is the matter of Arnolds attitude to his own gifts as a poet: Why did he so early on abandon the poetic life and settle for three decades of drudgery as an inspector of elementary schools? Was it really a fierce love of duty that took him down this pathor was it, rather, that he all along had insufficient faith in his own talent? And this leads to the question that matters most of all: How much faith do we and should we have in his talent?In this compelling study, Ian Hamilton brings his own formidable gifts and his lifelong passion for his subject to bear on one of the most mysterious literary figures of the last centuryand a figure who still fascinates today. The result is a biography of rare originality and significance.