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What the hell does this mean?

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GoonSquad
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25 Sep 2012, 12:42 am

So, Delmore Schwartz is one of my favorite modern poets and (read because :roll: ) I usually get his stuff and it makes me feel smart...

Poems like "Calmly We Walk Thorough This April's Day" and "Baudelaire" are easy!

But I just cannot figure this one out....



Quote:
Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers
By Delmore Schwartz


Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers.
Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child,
Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog,
The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils,
Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister,
The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night,
As if she understood the wind and rain,
The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert.
—O I am sad when I see dogs or children!
For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean.

Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children
Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions?
And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly
Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature?
The dog in humble inquiry along the ground,
The child who credits dreams and fears the dark,
Know more and less than you: they know full well
Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well:
You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean.

Regard the child, regard the animal,
Welcome strangers, but study daily things,
Knowing that heaven and hell surround us,
But this, this which we say before we’re sorry,
This which we live behind our unseen faces,
Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither
Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,
For we are incomplete and know no future,
And we are howling or dancing out our souls
In beating syllables before the curtain:
We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.


I love the language and images here... but the meaning is.... slippery.


I need your explication, please.


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again_with_this
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25 Sep 2012, 12:54 am

Schwartz was reading a lot of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Freud when he wrote this. It was kind of like his current special interests of sorts.

Stranger just means blissfully unaware, uncorrupted by the BS of life. Shakespearean means glorious. He was trying to say he sees glory in the simplicity of dogs and the unawareness of children, wherein adults are corrupted and perverted with life. We see dogs and children as simple, and yet, in their ignorance of life's BS, they are blissfully unaware, uninhibited, natural.

Freud is the corrupted adult, trying to make sense of why adults are corrupted, so the poet is asking him, the "know it all adult" why there is so much beauty found in the simplicity of dogs and children. Wordsworth was also interested in what shapes the thoughts of the minds of men. Why is it that children are so innocent then grow into us? Why do we see dogs as simple, and yet love their companionship?



singularity
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25 Sep 2012, 7:51 am

Children and dogs are wiser than the rest of us.



naturalplastic
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25 Sep 2012, 8:36 am

"Stranger" does not mean 'innocent' per se.
It means, what it usually means, which is 'outsider' or 'foreigner'.

Dogs and children are foriegners to us adults-perhaps because in part because they are innocent, or lacking self awareness, or guileless.

Yet he ends the poem with the line 'we' are strangers, and 'we' are shakesperean.

So.. perhaps he is saying that we adults are foriegn to ourselves.



GoonSquad
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25 Sep 2012, 5:51 pm

^^^
Interesting ideas here...

I think it certainly has to do with innocence as a more perfect ideal, with that whole "Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog," line. But I wonder about the "Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child," line. Is he comparing or contrasting?

Dogs remain that pure ideal, but children are doomed to grow into us...

I don't know.... yet. That's why I like poetry. :D


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alpineglow
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25 Sep 2012, 8:11 pm

It would take me longer than a few minutes to analyze this - but this jumps out at me:

"in beating syllables before the curtain"

beating syllables : words we rather desperately and in our extreme loneliness exchange with one another?, before the curtain: before we die?



alpineglow
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25 Sep 2012, 8:12 pm

GoonSquad wrote:
^^^
Interesting ideas here...

I think it certainly has to do with innocence as a more perfect ideal, with that whole "Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog," line. But I wonder about the "Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child," line. Is he comparing or contrasting?

Dogs remain that pure ideal, but children are doomed to grow into us...

I don't know.... yet. That's why I like poetry. :D


Freud and Wordsworth definitely contrast.