Matthew Arnold’s poem, The Scholar Gipsy,
which is taken from a 17th century Oxford story found in Joseph Glanvill’s The
Vanity of Dogmatizing(1661). It has, on many occasions, been called one of the
finest and most popular of Arnold’s poems. It tells the story of a poor Oxford
scholar who left Oxford to join the gypsies. He
became so friendly with them that they told him
all their secrets. Later on he was recognized
amidst the gypsies by two of his former fellow students. The poem has many
descriptions of the beautiful countryside and romantic dream visions, elegiac arguments
and finally an epic simile.
Characters
Matthew Arnold's poem "The
Scholar-Gipsy" is based on Joseph Glanvil's The Vanity of Dogmatizing. It
has three main characters and a group of unnamed minor characters.
Joseph Glanvil Joseph Glanvil is in the preface to the poem. He was a real-life English
philosopher and clergyman in the 1600s who argued for rationalism, tolerance,
and science. But he also argued for the existence of witches and evil spirits,
and his writings were used to justify witch hunts.
The Speaker
The poem's speaker, usually considered to be
Arnold himself, introduces, tells, and comments upon the story of the wandering
scholar as he sits on a hill above Oxford with Glanvil's book.
The Scholar-Gipsy
The scholar-gipsy of the title is a poor
Oxford student who joins a wandering band of "gipsies," or Romani
people. (The term "gypsy" is usually considered derogatory today.)
The scholar realized Romani have their own forms of learning. Once he has
learned all he can from them, he will share it with the rest of the world. In
the twentieth century, scholar Marjorie Hope Nicholson identified the scholar
as based on Francis Mercury van Helmont, an alchemist, diplomat, pioneering
early chemist, and believer in an esoteric school of thought called Kabbalah.
The Scholar's Colleagues
Two colleagues of the scholar-gipsy from Oxford
also make a brief appearance in the poem, sharing what they know of the
"gipsies."
The "Gipsies"
The unnamed members of the band of Romani people, "gipsies," share their knowledge as well. Romani people are believed to have originally come from India, making their way across the Middle East and North Africa, eventually to Europe and then the rest of the world. In Europe, they faced strong stigmas and much persecution and violence, even pogroms and genocide during the Holocaust alongside Jews. They were often accused of or associated with thievery or deception. In many stories they are portrayed as fortune-tellers or practitioners of magic, including the casting of curses said to bring bad luck or misfortune.
Stanzas I & II
Arnold begins "The Scholar Gipsy" in a pastoral mode, invoking a shepherd and describing the beauties of a rural scene, with Oxford in the distance. The speaker asks his fellow shepherds to take the flock and not leave them unattended. While the others take the sheep for grazing, the poet will sit in one corner where the reapers have begun their work. They have begun harvesting the crop and once cut, they bind the sheaves [cut grain tied together] and in the afternoon return to store the harvested crop. Here in this corner he will sit and wait for the others and while he waits, he will be able to hear the distant sounds of the sheep bleating and the murmurs of the reapers as they cut the corn-the work of a summer’s day.
Stanzas III & IV
He will be sheltered from the summer sun in this corner and will remain there till sunset. This is followed by a description of the pastoral scene. He can see the fields of corn and the poppies and can see the green roots and the yellow stalks. The breeze carries their sweet smell far and also causes the petals to fall down like a shower or all over the place where he sits. The flowers, the crops and the trees form a kind of bower—a covered place which shelters him from the August sun. And from this sheltered and restful place he can see the tower of Oxford .Glanvill’s book is beside him and he recounts the story. The story is about an Oxford scholar who, one fine day, just left his studies and went to live with the gypsies, to know their secrets. He roamed around the world with them but did not return to Oxford again.
Stanzas V & VI
Many years later, two of his former college friends met him and asked him what he was doing. Then he told them of his gypsy life and their art and secrets which he wanted to learn. Once he knew their secrets, he would return to normal life and let the world know of their secrets. Since that day, he returned no more to the life he knew but there were many rumours of how he was seen wandering about in the countryside. He was seen dressed as a gypsy; quiet and thoughtful in manner and away from the hustle and bustle of city life. He was seen in different places –in Hurst and in Berkshire moors.
Stanzas VII & VIII
The poet here says that he, himself has seen him often enough in the countryside; boys scaring the birds in the fields had seen him and also in the grassy meadows filled with sunshine in the Cumner Hills. People returning from Oxford had seen him crossing river Thames in a ferry (a small boat), trailing his fingers in the river water or leaning back in a thoughtful way, with a bunch of flowers in his lap which he had plucked in the bowers of Wychwood.
Stanzas IX & X
Then again he was not seen for some time. Girls from far off villages, who danced around the elm tree in May, had seen him in the darkened fields at night or crossing the common road, and very often he had given them flowers he had collected from the fields-the anemones and bluebells, drenched with the dew of summer evenings; and also purple flowers with spotted leaves. But he spoke to none of them .He was always pensive and thoughtful. He was also seen above Godstow Bridge in hay time in June. Men who worked the field when the breeze blew and the swallow hovered above the waters of the Thames, which glittered in the sun; saw him sitting on the river banks. They noticed his dress and look—his dress was wild, his figure thin and his eyes vague and dark. He had a vague and dreamy look about him. He vanished from there soon enough because by the time they returned after bathing after a day’s hard work, he was no longer there.
Stanzas XI & XII
The housewife darning something outside her house in the Cumner Hills too had seen him. He was hanging over the gate, watching the threshers working the corn. Even children who looked for cresses (water plants) in the stream, morning and evening, had seen him wander around in the April mornings and also at night when the stars are out in the skies. They had seen him walk through the dewy grass. In Bagley Wood where the gypsies camped for some time and in the forest of Thessaly, he was seen. The black bird looking for food had seen him and was not afraid of him because he was a common sight, lost in his own thoughts, wandering through the forest with a dry stick in his hand, twirling it.
Stanzas XIII & XIV
In winter on the highway, when it was very cold and foot travellers were going through the flooded fields, the poet says he had seen the scholar gypsy on the wooden bridge, wrapt in his cloak and fighting against the cold and snow. He had climbed the Cumner Hill and turned to watch the lights of the Church while the snowflakes were falling. But maybe all this is a dream as two hundred years have passed since he left Oxford and Glanvill told his tale of flight from Oxford to the gypsy way of life. Hence he must long be dead and buried in some quiet corner in the countryside with his grave covered by tall grass and thorns under a shady yew tree.
Stanzas XV & XVI
Since he is long gone, he has not felt the passing years which make ordinary men grow old.The scholar gypsy is beyond the wear and tear of modern life. In the hustle and bustle of modern life, man is far too busy trying to survive. He passes from shock to shock trying to make the best of life. Man is tired of life and yearns for the peace the scholar gypsy had known. The scholar gypsy knows nothing of the problems of modern life as he has renounced such a life by giving up Oxford and retiring to a quiet life with the gypsies. And therefore he is not subject to ageing or to death. Had he continued with his student life, he would have had to face the problems of life and would have been long since dead. But the scholar gypsy has escaped ageing and death by giving up such a life. Other men die but he is beyond death. He is immortal and beyond age because he had avoided the tension of city life and opted for peace and retirement.
Stanzas XVII & XVIII
Arnold points out the contrast between the life of the scholar gypsy and that of modern man. The scholar gypsy had retired from active life and therefore he had not wasted his powers on unnecessary things. Therefore he did not know fatigue and doubt which other men did-the reference here is to the changes that had taken place in the nineteenth century. England had become more city based and industrialized and people had lost faith in religion as a result of Darwin’s theory of evolution which said that man is descended from the ape. The scholar gypsy knew nothing of this. Hence he had no doubts. When modern man tried to get on in life, he struggled blindly not knowing where he will end. Therefore he is tired and full of doubts because he has to struggle against all odds. Nothing is clear to him. He seems to be waiting endlessly without hope unlike the scholar gypsy who lives his life with hope and a clear aim. Both are waiting- “The Scholar Gypsy” with hope is waiting for the ‘Spark from Heaven’. While modern man is waiting for he knows not what. Modern man is so vague and confused in his thinking that he does not know what he wants. Hence he is constantly striving for success but his goals are not clear. He keeps changing his goals and makes new beginnings which bring about new disappointments because nothing is seen to the end. He gives up his goal in the middle and then sets out on a different path altogether. Thus he wastes away his life, for his goal keeps changing and what progress he makes one day is given up for something else. Both are thus waiting, but one with hope and the other with no clear goal in sight. He does not even know whether he will achieve his goal. All this makes for tension which is a part of modern life.
Stanzas XIX & XX
All men are waiting and all suffer and it is only one among the many who manages to somehow get a little of what he wants. And then he lays bare his soul--of how he suffered and strived; his sad experiences, his misery and his growth and how the little he gained has eased his hurt and pain a bit. The others only long for the misery to end. They have given up all hopes of happiness and try to bear patiently what life has served them. But none of this can be compared to the hopes and desires of the scholar gypsy. He did not give up hope through all kinds of trying situations till all doubts were blown away.
Stanzas XXI & XXII
The scholar gypsy lived in an age when life was pure and uncomplicated and free and clear like the waters of sparkling Thames. It was a time before the strange disease called ‘modern life’ took over. He gives an apt description of modern life—with it’s hustle and bustle and it’s goals which keep changing; where hearts and heads are overburdened by tension, worry and ambition which weakens him. From such a world it is better that the scholar gypsy fly away and plunge deep into the forest which shelters man and keeps him away from the glare of the sun. So also the scholar gypsy should seek the shelter of the woods and his solitude away from modern life. Away from the tension, pressure and worry of modern life, the scholar gypsy can continue with his hope. Through the forest and mild meadows, the flowers and the moonlit landscape, he can rest and go forward as he wishes.
Stanzas XXIII & XXIV
If he were to come into the modern age, he would no longer be the scholar gypsy we know, for his happiness would long be gone and so also the peace and quiet of his life. He would be distracted and confused like all men in the modern world. His goals would no longer be clear and as they kept changing, his hopes would flicker and die and as a result his youth and smiling exterior would soon fade, giving place to age and death. Modern life would have claimed him. Therefore it is better that he run away from all this just as the Tyrian trader did.
Stanza XV
In this last stanza he speaks of the scholar gypsy renouncing the outside world just as the Tyrian merchant did. The seaman did not like the corrupt way of life in Greece so he left for Iberia. He was seen slowly and quietly slipping away from Greece to Iberia because he wanted to escape the corruption in Greece and start a new life in Iberia. And so he sailed away. He took the boat and sailed day and night till he reached Iberia and stopped there and settled down to a life of quiet peace and satisfaction. So also the scholar gypsy left Oxford to live the quiet life of the gypsies. He uses the epic simile here –the scholar gypsy too should flee the modern way of life just as the Tyrian merchant had fled Greece. What the exact meaning is we are not sure. There are different interpretations. Some critics feel it means Eastern spiritual wisdom should be transferred to heal the spiritually sick west. The main point is that you need the right qualities and frame of mind to tide over the problems of loss of faith. May be the Victorians will find peace once they have a strong sense of purpose and devotion to that purpose.
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