Monday 11 February 2013

Analysis of D.H Lawrence's - Piano

The rhythm of the poem has a slow, reflective quality, accentuated by the punctuation. He mentions dangerously emotive words such as "heart" and "weeps" without saying that this is what he is doing at this moment. To those who have happy memories of childhood days at home, he is pulling the heartstrings. This is a word connection he did not, strangely, make with the piano strings - perhaps he was taking a gamble that our inner consciousness would make the subliminal connection.
The similarity of "clamour" and "glamour" is clever, but may not be be all that necessary to the general success of the poem. Lawrence then goes on to outline, that although he has achieved much of what he wanted to achieve as a man, in breaking out from his father's and his mother's bindings, in doing so he has lost something. Something ephemeral, priceless and dear. Most of us feel this. It is a necessary part of true maturity. Yet it hurts all the same.
Lawrence appears to accept that he is looking through rose-tinted spectacles, by his use of the word "glamour" for childish days. Glamour is accepted to be a sort of gloss - something which wears off and does not last. So here he shows that he is being realistic. This avoids sentimentality. Only at the end of the poem does he allow us to guess that, perhaps at some low point of depression or failure or guilt in his life - he may have felt such sorrow as to actually weep tears. Many people have things they wish they had done differently with their parents when growing up. It is only when we are adults ourselves that we realise how hard things may have been for them. He has prepared us for this sorrow by carefully setting the scene.
The question is how to speak of human emotion without slipping into sentimentality ourselves. Learning from Lawrence, we see that sentiment must never be gratuituous. It must be truly felt, simply expressed and speak directly. We can set the scene and evoke atmospheres by careful choice of word and rhythm, but if we indulge in passionate self-pity, sickly supplication and florid description we miss our target as our readers will be switched off.
If Lawrence's poem works, it may be because he speaks directly to our hearts about
a truth which we recognise.

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