Importance of the work
First published in 1829,it was written while Poe was in the Army. This is considered the best of his early poems written in the Army. It is symbolic of an important transformation in Poe's style and attitude. It's sonnet form shows Poe's poetic maturity and discipline. The subject matter reveals that Poe was entering the world of science, which he would later master. Before, his education and attention had been in classics and history. Structure
The first quatrain,condemns Science as a “true daughter of Old Time”and as a “Vulture” that “preyst . . . upon the poet’s heart”
The second quatrain, poses rhetorical questions asking how a poet could like, respect, or join science .
The third quatrain, accuses Science of spoiling some beautiful myths, such as that of Diana and the Hamadryad.
Finally, the concluding couplet reveals the reason for the persona’s lament; here, with the poem’s only first-person pronoun, the persona focuses attention on himself, accusing Science of depriving him of his reverie. Theme
Poe expresses nontraditional accusations of science. It is spoken through the vision of a passionate man mourning the slaughter of mythology, fantasy, art by its alleged arch enemy, Science. Science is portrayed as evil and words like \and \
Poe does not see science and scientific development as a good thing , rather he feels that science \
He implores Science as to why “she” must impose her “dull realities” on the hearts of poets like himself, squelching their wandering minds. He questions the desertion of imagination by the objective force of science.
He is inclined to avoid logic in his argument, although the classic sonnet structure implies his own attempt to rationalize his own thoughts. Perhaps the structure contrasted with such feelings further insinuates humanity's paradoxical need for organization in every field of thought.
“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? “
He calls science, a true daughter of Old Time who changes all things by looking at them with peering eyes and inflicts emotional damage upon the vulnerable poet and a vulture, focused on dull reality.
Here Poe compares science to a “true daughter of Old Time” and a “Vulture.” Both comparisons help make a case against science and cast it in a negative light. The reference to time reminds the reader of death and decay, both of which come with time. Without time, after all, there would be no reason to worry about deadlines and responsibilities, and one could devote oneself completely to reverie. The reference to a vulture, similarly, conjures up the connotations of death and
decay while completing the image in the previous line of science devouring the heart of the poet.
? “How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?”
He questions that why should a poet love Science and the reason why he should think of it as wise when it does not permit him to indulge in imagination, even though he, the poet, perseveres it with undaunted courage.
This image of the poor brave poet with his heart being preyed upon as he is simply trying to enjoy the beauty of the stars presents a victimized character to the reader.
“Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?”
In Roman mythology, Diana was the hunting goddess, and an emblem of chastity. Here car indicates Diana’s chariot.Now science has vanquished the hunt, leaving Diana aimless and lost.
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood .To seek a shelter in some happier star?”
Hamadryad: Greek & Roman Mythology
-A wood nymph who lives only as long as the tree, of which she is the spirit,lives. Now with the advent of science, The Hamadryad does not tend to the old forests; but science explains the cycle of photosynthesis. ? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood”
In Greek mythology, the Naiads were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks.Now instead of the Naiad, nymph of fresh water, being the source of the flood, science can come up with dreary explanations involving weather patterns. The Elfin from the green grass, and from me.
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?”
The term \ uses it here as a noun.
Science has brought about the termination of the poet’s “summer dream”; readers have no choice but to understand that there are immense differences in the meanings of the words he meticulously chooses.
The wood nymph Hamadryad, the water nymph Naiad, and Diana, goddess of wild animals, all conjure up notions of magic,beauty, and imagination.
Science’s crime of destroying these beautiful myths is made all the worse by the poem’s harsh language. The vulture has not just nudged the mythical figures out of the picture, but has “dragged Diana from her car” and “torn the Naiad from her flood.”
Thusthrough its sonnet structure, metaphor, allusions, diction,and alliteration, “Sonnet: To Science” laments the effects of science on poetry and imagination.
Alliteration plays a role here, as well. While some of the poem’s alliteration—the repetition of g’s in “green grass” and of t’s in “tamarind tree”, for example—may serve only to create pleasing aural effects or to unify lines, others provide an aural complement to a violent image. The repetition of p’s in “preyest” and “poets” , for
instance, suggests the thumping one might expect to hear from a vulture pecking at a carcass, and the repetition of d’s in “dragged Diana” mimics the thrashing of a woman being pulled from a carriage against her will.
Poe was a fascinating man of imagination. Poe was sensitive enough to feel the pressure of a world where science and reason reign supreme, where “there is neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help from pain.”
Analysis:
In particular, \advances of the Industrial Revolution and the nature-oriented tendencies of the Romantic era. Romanticism had appeared as a counterargument to the Enlightenment philosophy of embracing and celebrating progress. Members of this movement sought to return to a purer, more innocent state of nature because they felt that society had corrupted man's innate goodness. Poe was a member of the American Romantic movement, and the poet of Poe's sonnet accordingly explores the inevitable clash between the Romantic outlook on life and the comparative thoughtlessness of industrialism.
The poet of Poe's sonnet worries about and rejects scientific dogmatism because he regards it as too unimaginative and stagnating. For him, science is a predator or, like a vulture, a carrion-eater, and it has damagingly crippled his imagination with \realities.\In his apostrophe to science, he alludes to characters from Greek and Roman mythology, such as the Hamadryad and Naiad nymphs and Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, describing their forced banishment as evidence that humanity is too willing to discard its creative soul. To reinforce the value of the past over the value of the thoughtless future, Poe uses a traditional English sonnet form to arrange his thoughts. A sonnet consists of fourteen lines, which in the Shakespearean form can be divided into three heroic quatrains and one heroic couplet, where the overall rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The lines are heroic because they use iambic pentameter, or a series of five iambs, where each iamb is an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. The sonnet form has existed for centuries, and when combined with the archaic diction, the narrator tries to show the beauty of old forms as a structural contrast to the ugliness of scientific realities.
Despite the apparent message of the sonnet, some details of \Science\could serve to undermine the poet's words. He ironically personifies science in the first line, which may suggest that he unconsciously recognizes some humanity even in what he perceives as the stultifying influence of science. On the other hand, his personification may highlight his fundamental incompatibility with science, since he cannot help but poeticize the mundane. In addition, the use of a rigid sonnet form may also indicate that poetry is itself not as free-formed as the poet characterizes it to be, or alternatively it may suggest that some constraints do not necessarily indicate the strangulation of the imagination.
I think that the ‘force’ of science operates on at least two interrelated levels. The first is mediated through the technology it brings, whereby new types of clocks and watches reconstructed our sense of time and narrative. The second is at the level of ‘world-view’; our philosophical and even practical, sense of what it means to be human. Lawlor examines the influence of scientific discourse across a number of areas and themes。Lawlor updates previous studies of poetry and science by stressing the relationship between sensibility and the new theory of the nerves, the role of popular culture, women in science, and the complexity of science’s entanglement with politics and political poetry.
sonnet to science allan poe
