A Post About My Poem

I would first off like to apologize for having almost nothing to say about my poem in class. I had a bit of a stressful morning and wasn't expecting to give my presentation. Anyway here's what I have to say about:

Of Heaven Considered As a Tomb

What word have you, interpreters, of men

Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,

The darkend ghosts of our old comedy?

Do they believe they range the gusty cold,

With lanterns borne aloft to light the way,

Freeman of death, about and still about

To find whatever it is they seek? Or does

That burial, pillared up each day as porte

And spiritous passage into nothingness,

Fortell the night the one abysmal night,

When the host shall no more wander, nor the light

Of stedfast lanterns creep accross the dark?

Make hue among the darkk comedians,

Halloo them from the topmost distances

For answer from their icy Elysee.

My first thought about this poem is that in no part of it does it make reference to the paradise of heaven. It instead talks about comedians, lanterns and the night. Here were some of the things that I found useful in my interpretation.

Tomb- A burial or receptacle for human remains. A monument erected to enclose the body and preserve the name and memory of the dead.

I found that the word memory was an important part for how I read this poem. Death and consequent placement in a tomb smybolizes not only a departure from the physical world but the creation of a memory.

The afterlife is more of a rememberance than a passage into paradise.

Lanterns and light- symbols of knowledge.

Old comedy- We talked about this in Shakespeare. It is the comedy of the earth the comedy of rebirth.

Pillared-

Pillar

Pillars of Ashoka- colums dispersed throughout the North Indian subcontinent reflecting Buddhist teachings.

Porte- Ottoman court in Constantinople. Synonym for the government of the Ottoman empire.

passage- a voyage, a carrying of a person from one place to another

Nothingness- the state of nonexistance. Lack of anything

Abysmal- so deep as to be unmeasurable, unfathomable, very profound.

Host- An animal that nourised support for a parasite.

Dark comedy- Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well," "Troilus and Cressida," and "Measure for Measure" are all dark comedy. Comedy having gloomy or disturbing elements.

Elysee- a major ave in Paris. The French president lives here.

My conclusion:

Heaven is only a memory we hold of those who came before us. They carry the lanterns of their knowledge that we then explore our own travels through our own dark imaginations. Death is a freedom, a rebirth into another form, that of knowledge that even in death still seeks what it sought in life. Soon we will all succumb to our own mortality and will no longer serve as a host for the ideas of those come before. We must call to the knowledge and thoughts of those past, ask them for answers from their icy tombs.

As a final thought here's a picture of the tomb where both the body and the memory of Jules Verne lay.