This week till May 22nd we will be reading poems and essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as stories of Ruskin Bond. Birthday month for these fabulous, legendary writers as well as many more authors. Keep checking back in! Happy reading!
Poem by Emerson, first published in The Dial (1841) and collected in his Poems (1847).
Sectioned in 17 stanzas of two quatrains with irregular two- and three lines, the poem is a meeting of the poet with the statue of the Sphinx and pondering of the nature of man and of the meaning of life in the world. Emerson paraphrased the poem in his notebook as: “The perception of identity unites all things and explains one by another…. But if the mind live only in particulars … then the world addresses to this mind a question it cannot answer.”
“Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply”
Emerson questions the ultimate truth of the world through the poem. There is a wonder as to the divine nature of the creation of the world and human nature desecrating it with his vile habits.
Questions posed by the poem are -
- What is the ultimate truth of the world?
- Where did man go wrong?
- What are the true beliefs of the world?
Referring to Greek mythology and the witch culture of ancient times, the poem also talks about how witches used to change shape and cause a lie out of a situation or change a living thing into a frog for example. Thus Sphinx being a symbol of a civilisation that believes in the supernatural , is here in the poem a symbol of a world which is untrustworthy and ever changing. Maybe it is not a surprise then that the beliefs of man also change and then ultimately he becomes something else, without caring for morals and ethics?
Emerson questions the ultimate truth of the world through the poem. There is a wonder as to the divine nature of the creation of the world and human nature desecrating it with his vile habits.
Questions posed by the poem are -
- What is the ultimate truth of the world?
- Where did man go wrong?
- What are the true beliefs of the world?
Referring to Greek mythology and the witch culture of ancient times, the poem also talks about how witches used to change shape and cause a lie out of a situation or change a living thing into a frog for example. Thus Sphinx being a symbol of a civilisation that believes in the supernatural , is here in the poem a symbol of a world which is untrustworthy and ever changing. Maybe it is not a surprise then that the beliefs of man also change and then ultimately he becomes something else, without caring for morals and ethics?
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