Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

Though Arnold is sometimes counted among the last of the great Victorian poets, in many of his themes he is ahead of his time and prefigures modernity. Chief among these prescient themes is Arnold’s frank exploration of the self. His poems capture his sense of anxiety with a directness which is distinctly modern and would go on to influence poets from T.S. Eliot to Sylvia Plath. In “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” the speaker’s awareness of self enters the text abruptly with the lines “And what am I, that I am here?” (Line 66). Up to this point, the outer landscape reflected the speaker’s inner turmoil; now, he addresses his inner confusion directly. It is notable that the poem’s first reference to the first-person “I” is a self-directed question. Thus, the poet immediately establishes that whatever the self (or “I”) might be, it is still unknown, divided, and indeterminate. Moreover, the poet makes clear that he will examine this “I” with the same scrutiny he has shown the monks, their library, and their garden. The subsequent admission that “rigorous teachers seized my youth, / And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,/ Show'd me the high, white star of Truth” (Lines 67-69) bursts out of the speaker with the power of a confession, as if he were revealing a long-suppressed secret. The urgency of the speaker’s voice is typical of the hidden self’s desire to assert itself. The “rigorous teachers” could reference the poet’s father, who emphasized liberal and secular values. A sense of irony underlines the phrase “high, white star of Truth”: The truth is cold and unapproachable, and the very idea that there is one Truth is debatable.

In Lines 86-88, the poet describes himself as “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, / The other powerless to be born, / With nowhere yet to rest my head” (Lines 85-87). This reference to a double (or divided) existence is a recurring motif in the poem, with the poet torn between the ruthless scrutiny of his intellect and nostalgia for an imagined, wholesome past. Arnold does not attempt to reconcile these contradictions; by the end of the poem, he accepts that he and his generation are stuck in inertia, unable to participate in the wholesomeness of past and future. The poet’s acceptance of his weakness and indecisiveness reveal a willingness to engage with the imperfection of the self and the psyche. Romantic poets explored the evolving self as well, but generally found redemption in nature. Arnold’s speaker affords himself no such luxury. The speaker longs to “hide” (Line 91) and be silent to escape his self-doubt; yet, he courageously examines that very same crushing inner conflict. Thus, the poem subtly acknowledges that the self is a work in progress. It is subject to many outside forces, including social expectations (e.g., the speaker feels the admonitory voices of his teachers chide him for his presence in the monastery, Lines 73-78), the weight of the past, one’s upbringing and experience, and individual temperament.