so so well done so engaging This elegy echoes in a very endearing british way psalm 39, Each man;s life is but a breath, as a shadow he goes to and fro, he bustles about in vain
Thank you so much for your sharing knowledge with others. I just finished reading Thomas Hardy’s “Far from madding crowd “ and found out that the title came from Thomas Gray’s poem. So I looked it up and here’s this poem! I wanted to learn more about this poem and with good fortune I found your wonderful channel. I learned so much thanks to you and am very grateful. English is not my first language,so I always have to make an extra effort to try to comprehend well. I do enjoy reading and any help I can get I do appreciate it. Thanks again and continue on your great work .
I stumbled across this as I was preparing to teach the poem in my high school Brit Lit class. Wonderfully structured and presented! I especially appreciate the sensitivity to textual details.
Perhaps another genius can FINALLY do a modern translation without any loss to the exquisite fusion of sound and sense. Perhaps there is ALREADY an incredible translation of this matchless poem in a another language, maybe bengali armenian georgian ukrainian uzbek swahili hindi or even zulu I can only imagine this poem in russian in turkish in spanish , some of the most mellifluous of languages. As you said this poem clearly is Gray's gift to the world , How poor the poetry addict who can only thrill to the beauties of one language alone. Anyone who has thrilled to the Psalms in Hebrew, or Lorca in Spanish or especially Pushkin in Russian will fully understand my sympathy for all monolingual lovers of great literature,
I’ve started to watch this and hope it is as good as your recent episode on Milton (even though Milton tends to leave me cold, or lukewarm at best). I’m going to have to finish this one at the weekend. These longer episodes are great, but I do need to set aside time to read the poems beforehand and then watch them properly.
I heard Rowan Williams, who besides being the former Archbishop of Canterbury is a first class poet and poetry critic, describe good poetry as ‘slowing the metabolism of language’, which I thought was a wonderful phrase. Certainly it is applicable here. Another enlightening Close reading. And a rather more enjoyable poem (for me) than Lycidas.
On another note, I'm wondering whether Gray, despite his obssessive allusiveness(which Romantics don't care for very much), can be regarded as a precursor of Romanticism. His glorfication of the rurual and the common people seems to have a lot in common with what Wordsworth/Coleridge claim in their preface to Lyrical Ballads.
He is considered as a pre-Romantic poet,While he wasn't a perfect representation of the Romantic sense, his emphasis on common people, nature/countryside, and most importantly emotions over a rational representation especially during the enlightenment period makes him a precursor of Romanticism. Of course the periods overlap with each other, while most consider the french revolution and the publication of lyrical ballads as the official start of Romanticism in literature it started and evolved times ago, especially with the works of Blake or even Horace Walpole with his Gothic works.
How likely is it that this celebrated and analysed poem would be so celebrated and analysed had Thomas Gray not gone to Eton and Cambridge, or been friends with the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister. Given the content of this poem, it is a paradox that while Gray so strongly championed the unsung, humble villager, he himself was, de facto, one of the privileged rich and famous.
In the era of ephemeral attention-spans, people would doomscroll through RUclips Shorts and Instagram reels, but won't engage with enriching, top-tier literary content of the sort you produce. It's pathetic that the professors who teach poetry at my university don't come close to your expertise in imparting knowledge, even if they may possess it themselves. A great scholar is not a great teacher by default.
so so well done so engaging This elegy echoes in a very endearing british way psalm 39, Each man;s life is but a breath, as a shadow he goes to and fro, he bustles about in vain
Thank you so much for your sharing knowledge with others.
I just finished reading Thomas Hardy’s “Far from madding crowd “ and found out that the title came from Thomas Gray’s poem.
So I looked it up and here’s this poem! I wanted to learn more about this poem and with good fortune I found your wonderful channel.
I learned so much thanks to you and am very grateful.
English is not my first language,so I always have to make an extra effort to try to comprehend well.
I do enjoy reading and any help I can get I do appreciate it.
Thanks again and continue on your great work .
My new favourite channel.
I stumbled across this as I was preparing to teach the poem in my high school Brit Lit class. Wonderfully structured and presented! I especially appreciate the sensitivity to textual details.
Perhaps another genius can FINALLY do a modern translation without any loss to the exquisite fusion of sound and sense. Perhaps there is ALREADY an incredible translation of this matchless poem in a another language, maybe bengali armenian georgian ukrainian uzbek swahili hindi or even zulu I can only imagine this poem in russian in turkish in spanish , some of the most mellifluous of languages. As you said this poem clearly is Gray's gift to the world , How poor the poetry addict who can only thrill to the beauties of one language alone. Anyone who has thrilled to the Psalms in Hebrew, or Lorca in Spanish or especially Pushkin in Russian will fully understand my sympathy for all monolingual
lovers of great literature,
I’ve started to watch this and hope it is as good as your recent episode on Milton (even though Milton tends to leave me cold, or lukewarm at best). I’m going to have to finish this one at the weekend. These longer episodes are great, but I do need to set aside time to read the poems beforehand and then watch them properly.
I heard Rowan Williams, who besides being the former Archbishop of Canterbury is a first class poet and poetry critic, describe good poetry as ‘slowing the metabolism of language’, which I thought was a wonderful phrase. Certainly it is applicable here. Another enlightening Close reading. And a rather more enjoyable poem (for me) than Lycidas.
On another note, I'm wondering whether Gray, despite his obssessive allusiveness(which Romantics don't care for very much), can be regarded as a precursor of Romanticism. His glorfication of the rurual and the common people seems to have a lot in common with what Wordsworth/Coleridge claim in their preface to Lyrical Ballads.
He is considered as a pre-Romantic poet,While he wasn't a perfect representation of the Romantic sense, his emphasis on common people, nature/countryside, and most importantly emotions over a rational representation especially during the enlightenment period makes him a precursor of Romanticism. Of course the periods overlap with each other, while most consider the french revolution and the publication of lyrical ballads as the official start of Romanticism in literature it started and evolved times ago, especially with the works of Blake or even Horace Walpole with his Gothic works.
@@1kram3 Thanks for your kind reply.
Very insightful interpretation! I wonder whether it's possible for Adam to recommend some articles or books on this poem.
How likely is it that this celebrated and analysed poem would be so celebrated and analysed had Thomas Gray not gone to Eton and Cambridge, or been friends with the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister. Given the content of this poem, it is a paradox that while Gray so strongly championed the unsung, humble villager, he himself was, de facto, one of the privileged rich and famous.
In this sense, is Thomas Gray performing that universally common practice among humanity, namely, is he ‘a fake’ posing as ‘true’?
could you spell , is it John Gillery who consider the poems as unoriginal.
In the era of ephemeral attention-spans, people would doomscroll through RUclips Shorts and Instagram reels, but won't engage with enriching, top-tier literary content of the sort you produce. It's pathetic that the professors who teach poetry at my university don't come close to your expertise in imparting knowledge, even if they may possess it themselves. A great scholar is not a great teacher by default.
I fully agree
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❤❤❤❤🎉