Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In Geoffrey Hill's "Lachrimae: 5. Pavana Dolorosa," the speaker explores the complexities of love, passion, and art within the framework of human longing and impermanence. From its opening line, "Loves I allow and passions I approve," the poem presents a nuanced stance on love, permitting its expression yet maintaining a critical gaze.

The term "Ash-Wednesday feasts" juxtaposes religious austerity with hedonism, and "ascetic opulence" builds on this theme, encapsulating the tension between restraint and excess. These paradoxes reflect love's contradictory nature, at once corporeal and spiritual, joyous and sorrowful. This duality is further mirrored in the "wincing lute," which is described as "so real in its pretence," suggesting that even artifice can express authentic emotion. In describing the lute as "a passion amorous of love," Hill points to the self-referential and perhaps even narcissistic quality of love, and by extension, art.

The second stanza delves into the concept of "Self-wounding martyrdom," exploring the sufferings one willingly endures in the pursuit of love or art. This is depicted as "true-torn among this fictive consonance," implying that genuine suffering can exist even within the context of artifice. The idea of "music's creation of the moveless dance" suggests that even in the absence of physical movement, emotional and intellectual experiences can create a dance of their own.

In the lines, "the decreation to which all must move," Hill seems to reflect on the inevitable nature of decay or demise, perhaps as a counterpoint to the eternities promised or implied by passionate love and high art. It's as if all forms of creation are shadowed by the ultimate reality of 'decreation,' or an unraveling back into nothingness.

The poem closes with the speaker acknowledging his unquenchable desires: "I founder in desire for things unfound." This line encapsulates the endless human quest for satisfaction, whether in love, art, or understanding. The final line, "I stay amid the things that will not stay," serves as a poignant meditation on the transient nature of life. While the speaker remains static, everything around him is in flux, reinforcing the tension between the ephemeral and the eternal that pervades the entire poem.

Overall, "Lachrimae: 5. Pavana Dolorosa" serves as a complex exploration of love's multifaceted nature, its ability to evoke both pleasure and pain, and its place within the broader human condition of impermanence and unfulfilled desire. Hill deftly weaves in religious and aesthetic motifs, offering a rich tapestry of intellectual and emotional textures that invite the reader to ponder love's contradictions and its unsettling power to both elevate and devastate.

POEM TEXT:

Loves I allow and passions I approve:
Ash-Wednesday feasts, ascetic opulence,
the wincing lute, so real in its pretence,
itself a passion amorous of love.

Self-wounding martyrdom, what joys you have,
true-torn among this fictive consonance,
music's creation of the moveless dance,
the decreation to which all must move.

Self-seeking hunter of forms, there is no end
to such pursuits. None can revoke your cry.
Your silence is an ecstasy of sound

and your nocturnals blaze upon the day.
I founder in desire for things unfound.
I stay amid the things that will not stay

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