0:00:04 > 0:00:11This is a series about great poems, inspired by particular places or aspects of the British landscape.
0:00:11 > 0:00:15One of the things that all of the poems in this series share,
0:00:15 > 0:00:19is a sense of the powerful impact the landscape can have
0:00:19 > 0:00:22on the psychological state of an individual.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29In 1851, a young man visited Dover.
0:00:29 > 0:00:37While he was here, the sound of the sea, as it washed over these stones, inspired him to write what,
0:00:37 > 0:00:40for my money is probably one of the greatest poems of the English language.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44It's a beautiful poem that is also truly shocking,
0:00:44 > 0:00:48and that still somehow manages to feel remarkably modern.
0:00:48 > 0:00:50In the poem, the poet manages to capture
0:00:50 > 0:00:54not just the essence of himself, but also the spirit of his age.
0:00:56 > 0:01:00The poem is called simply, Dover Beach.
0:01:00 > 0:01:02The poet was Matthew Arnold.
0:01:05 > 0:01:11There are places that speak, telling the stories of us and them.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15A village asleep loaded with dream.
0:01:15 > 0:01:19An ocean flicking its pages over the sand.
0:01:19 > 0:01:21Eventually we reply.
0:01:21 > 0:01:26A conversation of place and page over time. Inscribing the map.
0:01:26 > 0:01:28So that each in turn
0:01:28 > 0:01:30might hold the line.
0:01:43 > 0:01:48If there's one type of landscape that we've got loads of in Britain then it's coastline.
0:01:48 > 0:01:54And it's such an evocative landscape, a place of transitions and endings and changes.
0:01:54 > 0:01:57And it's because of this, I think, together with
0:01:57 > 0:01:59the massive scale of the sea itself
0:01:59 > 0:02:02that we tend to think and feel very differently at the coast.
0:02:02 > 0:02:08It often strikes a strong note in us of having to face up to the big stuff in life.
0:02:08 > 0:02:15It's these associations that Matthew Arnold is drawing upon in his poem Dover Beach.
0:02:15 > 0:02:20Over 37 lines, this poem captures a soul-shaking moment of reflection.
0:02:20 > 0:02:23Inspired by the sight and sound of the sea.
0:02:23 > 0:02:28It's a wonderfully written poem, but its reputation also comes from its historical importance.
0:02:28 > 0:02:33As the poem moves to its climax, the poet unleashes an uncompromising
0:02:33 > 0:02:36vision of an uncertain world where we are alone.
0:02:38 > 0:02:42This bald confession of a loss of faith is so unprecedented,
0:02:42 > 0:02:44so unlikely in a Victorian poem
0:02:44 > 0:02:48that Dover Beach has come to be seen by many as a turning point.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51As a poem of transition into the modern age.
0:02:54 > 0:02:59For me, what's also fascinating is that Arnold began to write this
0:02:59 > 0:03:03unflinching and revolutionary poem one night while on his honeymoon.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11The sea is calm to-night.
0:03:11 > 0:03:13The tide is full, the moon lies fair
0:03:13 > 0:03:16Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
0:03:16 > 0:03:19Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
0:03:19 > 0:03:22Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
0:03:24 > 0:03:29Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
0:03:29 > 0:03:32Only, from the long line of spray
0:03:32 > 0:03:36Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
0:03:36 > 0:03:38Listen! you hear the grating roar
0:03:38 > 0:03:42Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
0:03:42 > 0:03:45At their return, up the high strand,
0:03:45 > 0:03:48Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
0:03:48 > 0:03:52With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
0:03:52 > 0:03:54The eternal note of sadness in.
0:03:59 > 0:04:04If you were to take Matthew Arnold just from his pictures it would be perfectly understandable to think
0:04:04 > 0:04:09that here is just another very fusty, rather stiff Victorian gentleman.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13But underneath those stern portraits there lies a fascinating man for me,
0:04:13 > 0:04:18an incredibly modern man who was self-questioning in
0:04:18 > 0:04:21his life, as he was in his writing.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25And a man really whose questions and personal doubts
0:04:25 > 0:04:28came to represent the questions and personal doubts of his age.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33Matthew Arnold was born in 1822
0:04:33 > 0:04:37and became an eminent figure in the Victorian cultural establishment.
0:04:37 > 0:04:40An academic, an educationalist and a social commentator.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44In his age he was considered one of the major poets,
0:04:44 > 0:04:46the equal of Browning and Tennyson.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49I think it's fair to say that maybe today that reputation has
0:04:49 > 0:04:55slipped somewhat, but there are still plenty of poems worth reading from amongst his prolific output.
0:04:55 > 0:05:01The young Arnold, during the time he wrote many of those poems, seems to have been searching for an identity.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04An identity that is other than the one
0:05:04 > 0:05:06he was so firmly handed at birth.
0:05:06 > 0:05:11Matthew Arnold was the son of Dr Thomas Arnold of Rugby, perhaps the
0:05:11 > 0:05:14most famous headmaster of all time,
0:05:14 > 0:05:18and a highly influential public figure of the Victorian age.
0:05:18 > 0:05:22Dr Arnold is probably best known through the thinly veiled account
0:05:22 > 0:05:24of his regime in Tom Brown's schooldays.
0:05:24 > 0:05:28He was credited with injecting a new sense of moral purpose and
0:05:28 > 0:05:31Christian values into Rugby school,
0:05:31 > 0:05:35and through his leadership inspired widespread educational reform.
0:05:35 > 0:05:42Rugby's head today, Patrick Derham, has a keen interest in his legendary predecessor.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45ORGAN PLAYS AND CHOIR SINGS
0:05:47 > 0:05:53For me, as a 19th century historian it's fascinating, the different layers of Dr Arnold.
0:05:53 > 0:05:59There's no doubt at all that he transformed the school, though perhaps it has been exaggerated,
0:05:59 > 0:06:05the school wasn't quite as grim as many people portrayed it when he came in 1828.
0:06:08 > 0:06:14It what was exactly do you think Thomas Arnold inspired the boys, specifically? I mean,
0:06:14 > 0:06:21it seems to me that the sermons that he gave were the main foundation of that inspiration, were they?
0:06:21 > 0:06:27Yeah, very much so, and I think for us, in what is an increasingly secular age sort of underestimate
0:06:27 > 0:06:30the power and the importance of religion,
0:06:30 > 0:06:34which was the touch stone, keystone, of life at that time.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37And what took place in chapel was hugely important,
0:06:37 > 0:06:41and of course Arnold was unusual as headmaster and chaplain.
0:06:44 > 0:06:49At the age of 14, Matthew Arnold was enrolled at Rugby.
0:06:49 > 0:06:52Academically he was something of a disappointment to his father.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56But he was already showing promise as a writer.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59At the age of 17 he won the school poetry prize.
0:07:02 > 0:07:07Matthew was the eldest son, the second child of the Arnold family, and I think throughout his life,
0:07:07 > 0:07:13he was struggling to come to terms with his father and his expectations of him.
0:07:13 > 0:07:17And I think he probably always felt while his father was alive
0:07:17 > 0:07:20that he hadn't quite succeeded in pleasing him.
0:07:25 > 0:07:29When Matthew eventually won a scholarship to Balliol college
0:07:29 > 0:07:33in Oxford in 1841, his father wrote, "I had not the least expectation
0:07:33 > 0:07:38of his being successful, and the news actually filled me with astonishment."
0:07:38 > 0:07:45For Matthew, Oxford was his first opportunity to escape from under his high-minded father's watchful eye,
0:07:45 > 0:07:48and he quickly developed a reputation,
0:07:48 > 0:07:51not so much for his academic work, or even the poems he wrote there,
0:07:51 > 0:07:56but more for his flashy dress sense and appetite for fun.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06Nevertheless, Arnold's two years were critical in leading him to the
0:08:06 > 0:08:11intellectual and spiritual cliff from which he wrote Dover Beach.
0:08:11 > 0:08:16In the early 1840s, Oxford was caught up in a seismic
0:08:16 > 0:08:21religious debate, provoked by a priest called John Henry Newman.
0:08:21 > 0:08:28Newman was arguing for a return to a kind of religious orthodoxy, but he had many vociferous critics
0:08:28 > 0:08:33who thought he was trying to destroy the broad tradition of the Church of England.
0:08:33 > 0:08:40Those critics were led by none other than Matthew's father, Dr Arnold.
0:08:40 > 0:08:44Newman was the rector of the university church of St Mary's,
0:08:44 > 0:08:49and his weekly sermons drew large crowds of enraptured students.
0:08:49 > 0:08:53Despite his father's condemnation of all that Newman stood for,
0:08:53 > 0:08:57Matthew Arnold couldn't resist going along to see for himself.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04When Matthew Arnold came here to St Mary's to listen to Newman's sermons,
0:09:04 > 0:09:09he was never particularly drawn towards Newman's arguments,
0:09:09 > 0:09:14but he was obviously very impressed by the aesthetic quality of the experience.
0:09:14 > 0:09:19When he wrote about listening to the sermons, he gives us a very strong
0:09:19 > 0:09:22sense of the nature of Newman's magnetism.
0:09:22 > 0:09:26"Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition,"
0:09:26 > 0:09:30"gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St Mary's?
0:09:30 > 0:09:35"And rising into the pulpit and then, in the most entrancing of voices,
0:09:35 > 0:09:40"breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44"Subtle, sweet, mournful."
0:09:45 > 0:09:49The current Archbishop of Canterbury is not only a historian
0:09:49 > 0:09:52and a theologian, but also a published poet.
0:09:52 > 0:09:58So who better to talk to about Arnold, Newman, and the crisis of faith in Oxford in the 1840s?
0:09:58 > 0:10:01I must admit that I have been very struck by how
0:10:01 > 0:10:05attractive Newman appeared to be to so many students at that time.
0:10:05 > 0:10:10Even Matthew Arnold himself whose father was one of the main figures of opposition, he writes
0:10:10 > 0:10:15about going to hear him speak, and he does seem to be completely enthralled by him.
0:10:15 > 0:10:20What do you think was the nature of that attraction in Newman?
0:10:20 > 0:10:23Newman had, obviously, a really charismatic presence.
0:10:23 > 0:10:26And reading his sermons on the page now it's quite hard
0:10:26 > 0:10:29to understand, they seem very much of their age.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33Dense, difficult, sophisticated.
0:10:33 > 0:10:36But clearly there's an emotional undercurrent there,
0:10:36 > 0:10:39and Newman tapped into something profound
0:10:39 > 0:10:41in the emotions of a generation.
0:10:41 > 0:10:48He tapped into a kind of nostalgia for the great Christian past.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52He tapped into the sense that you could make something of your confused
0:10:52 > 0:10:58emotional life by directing its rather turbulent streams into faith.
0:10:58 > 0:11:01He held up ideals of asceticism and self-denial,
0:11:01 > 0:11:05and I would guess that for a lot of
0:11:05 > 0:11:09confused, conscientious perhaps sexually rather troubled young people
0:11:09 > 0:11:14in the '40s in Oxford, this was just paradise opened.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17And yet, for some of those students it seemed to send them down
0:11:17 > 0:11:21somewhat a darker path perhaps I suppose, a complete crisis of faith.
0:11:21 > 0:11:26I think it's more that among the literary classes, the intellectual groups,
0:11:26 > 0:11:30Newman is part of a move which encourages you
0:11:30 > 0:11:33to make your faith the subject of a lot of introspection.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37And that introspection doesn't always deliver full faith fought on trial
0:11:37 > 0:11:41or certitude, at the end of the day it can deliver quite the opposite.
0:11:41 > 0:11:46The more you look at your inner turnings and shadows and ambiguities,
0:11:46 > 0:11:49maybe the more you do go down that path of doubting.
0:11:54 > 0:11:59There was certainly a growing sense of religious doubt among the 1840s' generation.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03And when, ten years later, Matthew Arnold came to write Dover Beach,
0:12:03 > 0:12:09it's clear that this generational religious crisis had left a profound impression on his own beliefs.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full,
0:12:14 > 0:12:16And round earth's shore
0:12:16 > 0:12:20Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
0:12:20 > 0:12:22But now I only hear
0:12:22 > 0:12:25Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30When Arnold is writing about the melancholy,
0:12:30 > 0:12:37long withdrawing roar, do you think he is actually pinpointing a society-wide ebbing of faith?
0:12:37 > 0:12:42The crisis of faith was not so much people becoming aware of facts
0:12:42 > 0:12:44they hadn't known before,
0:12:44 > 0:12:47kind of the crude version of the impact of Darwin...
0:12:47 > 0:12:51Oh, all of a sudden people realise it was evolution not creation or whatever.
0:12:51 > 0:12:54It's not that at all, it's much more
0:12:54 > 0:12:57a felt thing, it's...
0:12:57 > 0:13:00and this is of course so powerfully captured in the poem,
0:13:00 > 0:13:02feeling something's literally slipping away
0:13:02 > 0:13:11and the melancholy, long withdrawing roar is a kind of hugely potent image for that feeling that inexorably
0:13:11 > 0:13:14a whole world is just going out of reach,
0:13:14 > 0:13:18and even if you want to hang onto it, you can't.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22Now, there are many other ways of reading the 19th century,
0:13:22 > 0:13:26and the history of faith in the 19th century, but that was a very powerful part of it.
0:13:29 > 0:13:33Undoubtedly the great religious debate stood up by Newman
0:13:33 > 0:13:36played a big part in unsettling Arnold's faith.
0:13:36 > 0:13:40But the certainties in his life received an even greater knock,
0:13:40 > 0:13:42when in 1842 at the end of Matthew's
0:13:42 > 0:13:45first year at university, his father died.
0:13:47 > 0:13:51Matthew said the soul of his knowledge had gone, and that's very revealing in its own sense.
0:13:51 > 0:13:58That's something that all of us as sons and fathers can empathise with, the clash between generations.
0:14:00 > 0:14:03In the wake of his father's death,
0:14:03 > 0:14:05Arnold seems to have been cut adrift.
0:14:05 > 0:14:07And when he completed his degree
0:14:07 > 0:14:09he was left not just asking what he would do,
0:14:09 > 0:14:12but also who he really was.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16He wrote in a letter to a friend,
0:14:16 > 0:14:20"What it is to be listless when you should be on fire!
0:14:20 > 0:14:24"To be raining, when you had been better thundering."
0:14:24 > 0:14:28His poetry was important to him, but he was struggling to find
0:14:28 > 0:14:31both a voice and a real purpose for his writing.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39In 1848, Arnold came on holiday to the Alps,
0:14:39 > 0:14:42following in the footsteps of the many Romantic poets
0:14:42 > 0:14:45who'd been awed and inspired by this dramatic landscape.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48But it wasn't the alpine scenery
0:14:48 > 0:14:51that made the biggest impression on Arnold.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00It might sound a bit strange, but I'm not sure that Matthew Arnold
0:15:00 > 0:15:04would have written Dover Beach, his great poem
0:15:04 > 0:15:07set in a quintessentially English landscape,
0:15:07 > 0:15:12had he not first encountered a young woman, here in the Swiss Alps.
0:15:14 > 0:15:16Her name was Marguerite,
0:15:16 > 0:15:19and they met in a hotel in the Swiss resort town of Thun
0:15:19 > 0:15:23we know very little about their relationship, apart from what we can
0:15:23 > 0:15:26glean from nine impassioned poems,
0:15:26 > 0:15:29which Arnold wrote about their affair.
0:15:29 > 0:15:35What is clear is that meeting Marguerite had been a significant experience for the 27-year-old.
0:15:35 > 0:15:40So much so that he arranged to meet her back in Thun one year later.
0:15:41 > 0:15:49Matthew Arnold wrote a sequence of poems about that return visit to the Hotel Bellevue here in Thun.
0:15:49 > 0:15:57They tell the rather sad story of a reunion which obviously failed to live up to its expectations.
0:15:57 > 0:16:02At first, the two young lovers are obviously overjoyed to see each other again.
0:16:02 > 0:16:10"Locked in each others arms we stood," Arnold writes, "in tears, with hearts too full to speak."
0:16:10 > 0:16:14But, if the poems are to be believed, that passion was soon
0:16:14 > 0:16:18fading, and Arnold begins to sense his lover withdrawing from him.
0:16:18 > 0:16:23"Ah, soon I could discern a trouble in thy altered air.
0:16:23 > 0:16:26"Thy hand lay languidly in mine,
0:16:26 > 0:16:30"thy cheek was grave, thy speech grew rare."
0:16:31 > 0:16:34The ardour of Matthew and Marguerite's reunion
0:16:34 > 0:16:36quickly evaporated for good.
0:16:36 > 0:16:40But the profound sense of loss which followed seems to have inspired him
0:16:40 > 0:16:42to write more freely,
0:16:42 > 0:16:46more directly from the heart, than at any time before.
0:16:46 > 0:16:48Yes!
0:16:48 > 0:16:50In the sea of life enisled,
0:16:50 > 0:16:52With echoing straits between us thrown,
0:16:52 > 0:16:56Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
0:16:56 > 0:16:59We mortal millions live alone.
0:16:59 > 0:17:02Who ordered that their longing's fire
0:17:02 > 0:17:04Should be as soon as kindled, cooled?
0:17:04 > 0:17:07Who renders vain their deep desire?
0:17:09 > 0:17:12A God, a God their severance ruled.
0:17:12 > 0:17:16And bade betwixt their shores to be
0:17:16 > 0:17:19The unplumb'd salt, estranging sea.
0:17:23 > 0:17:24In the loss of his lover,
0:17:24 > 0:17:29Arnold seems to find the vocabulary for what would become Dover Beach.
0:17:29 > 0:17:32That incredibly powerful sea imagery.
0:17:32 > 0:17:36The bleak, cry from the heart, "We mortal millions live alone."
0:17:36 > 0:17:40And then that surprising pointing of a finger at God,
0:17:40 > 0:17:42"A God, a God their severance ruled!"
0:17:42 > 0:17:46These poems, written in response to the failure of his relationship with
0:17:46 > 0:17:51Marguerite, sowed many of the seeds for what would become Dover Beach.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55And that's why I think the time that Arnold spent her beside the lake
0:17:55 > 0:17:57in Switzerland, and his great poem,
0:17:57 > 0:18:02beside the sea on the coast of England, are so crucially connected.
0:18:06 > 0:18:09When Arnold wrote a poem about the ferry crossing
0:18:09 > 0:18:12that brought him home from Switzerland,
0:18:12 > 0:18:14he summarised the frustration he felt.
0:18:14 > 0:18:20Weary of myself and sick of asking what I am and what I ought to be.
0:18:20 > 0:18:25At this vessel's prow I stand which bears me forwards,
0:18:25 > 0:18:28forwards o',er the starlit sea.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34He closes this poem with the conclusion,
0:18:34 > 0:18:38"Know that he who finds himself, loses his misery."
0:18:39 > 0:18:43But who exactly was he? This was still the question facing Arnold.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47And what did forwards mean at this stage of his life anyway?
0:18:47 > 0:18:51It's such a common recognisable story for someone in their mid-20s...
0:18:51 > 0:18:56We've all been there. Here he was, returned from Switzerland to London,
0:18:56 > 0:18:59unfocused, and knowing it was time to grow up.
0:18:59 > 0:19:02But how exactly was he going to make that happen?
0:19:04 > 0:19:09The answer lay in the arms of another, and a very different woman.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12Francis Lucy Whiteman was the daughter of Judge Whiteman,
0:19:12 > 0:19:15a prominent Tory, a high church admirer of Newman,
0:19:15 > 0:19:18and the antithesis of everything Dr Arnold had stood for.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21The Whitemans lived in the grandeur of Belgravia,
0:19:21 > 0:19:25and when Judge Whiteman discovered Matthew Arnold's attentions towards
0:19:25 > 0:19:30his daughter, and his complete lack of money and prospects,
0:19:30 > 0:19:33he firmly showed him the door.
0:19:33 > 0:19:37To catch a glimpse of the girl to whom he was clearly besotted,
0:19:37 > 0:19:43Matthew was reduced to standing on the street, watching for her to appear at her bedroom window.
0:19:43 > 0:19:47In the end, he was forced into an uncomfortable decision.
0:19:47 > 0:19:51To win Francis Lucy as his own, Arnold realised he'd have to put
0:19:51 > 0:19:56his shoulder to the wheel, and as he wrote, "yield and be like the other men I see."
0:19:56 > 0:19:58In other words, find a job.
0:20:01 > 0:20:06In 1850 he took the plunge, and was taken on as a government school
0:20:06 > 0:20:11inspector, a demanding job which he held for the rest of his life.
0:20:11 > 0:20:17In April of the following year, at the age of 30, Matthew Arnold the fop, the ditherer,
0:20:17 > 0:20:23the struggling romantic poet, became a respectable married man.
0:20:24 > 0:20:28It was while he was on his honeymoon with Francis Lucy,
0:20:28 > 0:20:31staying in a hotel in the port town of Dover,
0:20:31 > 0:20:32that Arnold appears to have
0:20:32 > 0:20:36experienced a moment of profound and troubled reflection.
0:20:41 > 0:20:44The sea is calm to-night.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46The tide is full, the moon lies fair
0:20:46 > 0:20:50Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
0:20:50 > 0:20:54Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
0:20:54 > 0:20:57Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00Come to the window,
0:21:00 > 0:21:01sweet is the night-air!
0:21:04 > 0:21:06Only, from the long line of spray
0:21:06 > 0:21:09Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
0:21:09 > 0:21:11Listen! you hear the grating roar
0:21:11 > 0:21:15Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
0:21:15 > 0:21:17At their return, up the high strand,
0:21:17 > 0:21:21Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
0:21:21 > 0:21:25With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
0:21:25 > 0:21:27The eternal note of sadness in.
0:21:29 > 0:21:30Sophocles long ago
0:21:30 > 0:21:33Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
0:21:33 > 0:21:35Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
0:21:35 > 0:21:36Of human misery; we
0:21:36 > 0:21:39Find also in the sound a thought,
0:21:39 > 0:21:42Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
0:21:44 > 0:21:46The Sea of Faith
0:21:46 > 0:21:49Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
0:21:49 > 0:21:52Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56But now I only hear
0:21:56 > 0:21:59Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
0:21:59 > 0:22:00Retreating, to the breath
0:22:00 > 0:22:03Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
0:22:03 > 0:22:05And naked shingles of the world.
0:22:08 > 0:22:10Ah, love, let us be true
0:22:10 > 0:22:13To one another! for the world, which seems
0:22:13 > 0:22:17To lie before us like a land of dreams,
0:22:17 > 0:22:20So various, so beautiful, so new,
0:22:20 > 0:22:23Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
0:22:23 > 0:22:27Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
0:22:27 > 0:22:30And we are here as on a darkling plain
0:22:30 > 0:22:34Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
0:22:34 > 0:22:37Where ignorant armies clash by night.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45One of the most impressive things about this poem, the thing about it
0:22:45 > 0:22:51which I really admire is that way that it moves, the way that Matthew Arnold manipulates the reader.
0:22:51 > 0:22:56It's a poem about change, and it's also full of changes...
0:22:56 > 0:23:01from the visual scene to the sound of the waves, from the historical to the present.
0:23:01 > 0:23:05From the general idea, into at the close, this very intimate
0:23:05 > 0:23:10and poignant scene where Matthew Arnold says to his wife, "Ah love, let us be true to one another!"
0:23:10 > 0:23:18It's a movement of ebb and flow, almost like the action of waves, and what it sets up for us is that
0:23:18 > 0:23:25moment of surprise after those lines when having set out this world that lies before them, Arnold says,
0:23:25 > 0:23:33"That it hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain."
0:23:33 > 0:23:37And it's such a shocking idea. I mean, Matthew Arnold is probably
0:23:37 > 0:23:43the first person to put into British literature this idea that there isn't anything out there for us.
0:23:43 > 0:23:47And it works so well because of the way the poem has moved,
0:23:47 > 0:23:49because by the time we get there,
0:23:49 > 0:23:53we feel as though we have that grandeur of historical distance,
0:23:53 > 0:24:01we have a very strong setting, but we also feel that we've been pulled into a personal moment of crisis.
0:24:06 > 0:24:11Matthew Arnold didn't publish Dover Beach until 16 years after his honeymoon.
0:24:11 > 0:24:14And its impact was at first only gradual.
0:24:14 > 0:24:17However, over time the poem developed an enormous resonance.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20It became a stalwart of poetry anthologies,
0:24:20 > 0:24:24and has gone on to provide a recurring source of information
0:24:24 > 0:24:26for other artists and writers.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30Not just because of its radical theme, but also for the way it taps
0:24:30 > 0:24:36into our deeply rooted associations with this kind of coastal landscape.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39This is the first time that I've found myself on the cliffs
0:24:39 > 0:24:43themselves, and when you're standing here you really appreciate
0:24:43 > 0:24:46how this is a landscape that is packed with associations of change,
0:24:46 > 0:24:49and not just in these eroding cliffs, but also
0:24:49 > 0:24:50over here, in the port,
0:24:50 > 0:24:54where all you can see is the movement of ferries and lorries.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57And it's partly because of his associations I think,
0:24:57 > 0:25:01that the poem Dover Beach still speaks to us now, so strongly.
0:25:01 > 0:25:05This has always been a place of comings and goings and it still is,
0:25:05 > 0:25:08not just for us who stand here on the cliffs,
0:25:08 > 0:25:10but also for those out there at sea
0:25:10 > 0:25:13who find themselves approaching them.
0:25:17 > 0:25:23Contemporary poet Daljit Nagra echoes elements of Dover Beach in his own Dover poem.
0:25:23 > 0:25:29Stowed in the sea to invade the al fresco lash of a diesel breeze
0:25:29 > 0:25:33Ratcheting speed into the tide.
0:25:33 > 0:25:37Brunt with gobfuls of surf Flemmed by cushy,
0:25:37 > 0:25:39come and go tourists.
0:25:39 > 0:25:44Proud on the cruisers Lording the ministered waves.
0:25:44 > 0:25:46Seagull and shoal life
0:25:46 > 0:25:48Vexing their blarneys
0:25:48 > 0:25:51Upon a huddled camouflage
0:25:51 > 0:25:54Past the vast crumble of scummed cliffs
0:25:54 > 0:25:56Scramming our mulch
0:25:56 > 0:26:02As thunder unbladders yobbish rain and wind on our escape
0:26:02 > 0:26:05Hutched in a Bedford van.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09Seasons or years we reap inland
0:26:09 > 0:26:14Unclocked by the national eye Or stabs in the back
0:26:14 > 0:26:18Teemed for breathing sweeps of grass
0:26:18 > 0:26:22Through the whistling asthma of parks.
0:26:22 > 0:26:31Burdened, ennobled, polling sparks across pylon and pylon.
0:26:33 > 0:26:40Daljit Nagra, like Arnold, works in education, teaching literature at a north London comprehensive.
0:26:40 > 0:26:43I talked to him about his take on Dover Beach.
0:26:43 > 0:26:46The sound of your poetry feels incredibly contemporary in that
0:26:46 > 0:26:49you're not only writing in standard English,
0:26:49 > 0:26:53but also Punjabi English I think I'm right in saying.
0:26:53 > 0:26:56I mean, do you think that that is a very...
0:26:56 > 0:27:01a crucial part of poetry, that it needs to keep step with the sound
0:27:01 > 0:27:04of the language that is happening out there, on the streets as well?
0:27:04 > 0:27:06Absolutely, I mean, the thing of keep it new.
0:27:06 > 0:27:10Matthew Arnold does keep it new at that point, he's quite rebellious, isn't he?
0:27:10 > 0:27:16He moves on from, you know, Tennyson and Browning and does something new for a change, new language.
0:27:16 > 0:27:20Hence it resonates to us now for its simple, clear, clean diction.
0:27:20 > 0:27:25And also in a sense, for me I guess, when I was writing my poem I was looking at Matthew Arnold's again,
0:27:25 > 0:27:28and I was, you know, it's quite, quite free, isn't it?
0:27:28 > 0:27:31- Yeah.- I assumed in my head it was pentameters...
0:27:31 > 0:27:34regular pentameters, but when you go back to it, it's free verse.
0:27:34 > 0:27:36- Yeah, it's free verse.- Shocking.
0:27:36 > 0:27:39- So I tried to rein it in a bit. - What are you doing, Matthew Arnold?
0:27:39 > 0:27:42Yeah. He's a teacher, educationalist, what's he playing at?
0:27:42 > 0:27:45Even with the rhyme scheme I was expecting the whole,
0:27:45 > 0:27:48"Oh, I'm sure that that is irregular in some way', but it really isn't."
0:27:48 > 0:27:52And I don't know about you, but I just wish that he'd done some more
0:27:52 > 0:27:58of that, that he'd let himself go a bit more, because it really works.
0:28:01 > 0:28:04In the end, Dover Beach is a stunningly dark poem.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07But there is a crucial glimmer of light...
0:28:07 > 0:28:12in that when Matthew Arnold is faced with the loss of his faith,
0:28:12 > 0:28:15what he reaches for isn't an idea, but a person...
0:28:15 > 0:28:16his wife.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19And that's what really fascinates me about this poem,
0:28:19 > 0:28:23that incredibly modern shift from looking for hope in a religion,
0:28:23 > 0:28:26to looking for help in our individual relationships.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29And perhaps that's why the poem still speaks to us so
0:28:29 > 0:28:32powerfully now, in that, in the end,
0:28:32 > 0:28:37Matthew Arnold's answer to all of his concerns and his fears
0:28:37 > 0:28:40is that fragile hope that we all recognise...
0:28:40 > 0:28:43that promise of a love between two people.
0:28:58 > 0:29:01Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:29:01 > 0:29:04E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk