Analysis of A Lonely Youth
Analysis of A Lonely Youth
Introduction:
In the poem under study, A Lonely Youth, Jawdat Haydar employs different skills and techniques to present his various themes and universal approach to life and Man. A Lonely Youth is a comprehensive poem of all ages; Hayder who stands as proud as the Sannine and Cedar Mountains is motivated by a dedication to comprehend the essence of the "Second Coming", of resurrection, of life after death. He represents a powerful crucible of hope that smelts the local with the global and the universal. This oneness is the theme I have chosen to address in this short paper.
A Lonely Youth represents the vivid reflection of the innate morality of the poet’s noble thoughts and his daring journey to boldly venture into the land of Man throughout ages. The poet also embraces the philosophy of life as a whole; he strives to arrive at the ultimate vision of life flagrant contradictions with an acceptance of fate but still adamantly refuses the ramifications of injustice imposed by the greed of Man, his blind ambition & his insatiate lust for violence and blood. In spite of all of this, our poet, at the same time, maintains his faith in the human race and ceaselessly aspires for a life of morality and virtue.
The title, A Lonely Youth, represents the guest who visits the poet while meditating at home all by himself. Through this symbolic image, the poet highlights his remoteness from human habitation, all alone observing the world around him with deep concern but without giving up hope.
The word "lonely" emphasizes the very first impression of this atmosphere of loneliness in the world of "probity", (complete and confirmed integrity), a word repeated later in the poem, to highlight the contrasting images that shape the world around us. Youth, for the poet, represents the lost virtuous world of chastity and innocence, a world of morality and values long forgotten.
Had the poet lived the events of the 21st Century and the events of the year 2011 in particular, he wouldn’t have written a better poem to describe such ruthless and sad events to shed light on the merciless and painful injustice taking
place on the local, global and universal levels.
The poem:
The poet, at the beginning of his poem, states the time and place of event in a strikingly contrasting image. "A bleak December" with its adverse connotation is also used to describe an astounding metaphoric beauty of Nature; the snow pours down like threads of white string intermingling with the country’s green land, weaving threads of white spots to beautify the whole image of Nature but still carries within a gloomy connotation of what is to come.
Moreover, the ground is "bitterly cold", a coldness that signifies the image of sorrowful and painful bitter death; the mountains are a symbol of mortality greedily swallowing the roads that lead to the deep abyss of the town where the ancestors once lived happily in joy. The whole picture depicted is a contrasting realization of the innocent memory of the old days and the life yet to come. These contrasting images of bitterness and joy, life and death, are but the introduction to the theme of the poem as a whole.
The two images at the beginning of the poem are but contrasting panoramic delineation of the beauty of Nature and the hanging gloomy ghost inevitability of a situation that shall be the major theme of the whole poem; a theme that presents death overwhelmed with a second coming. Romanticism is clearly indicated to illustrate the poet’s belief of the circle of life; "bleak December" is always pursued by its progeny, spring, that resurrects life back from ashes.
A determined youth comes along in a winged chariot of time pulled by the stallions of "will and faith" and driven by the thundering engines of "common sense" cracking whip", moving very quickly into the sphere of fate tainted by the dreadful images of doubt and by the principles of deductive reasoning of Man that lacks a real soul. The whole image is a symbolic scene of the youth, the first born star of magnitude that comes along from the Northern Hemisphere between Pursues and Gemini to control Man’s fate, so it was believed.
The youth arrives at the poet’s home led by "Guess and God", an alliteration used to emphasize the major theme: the presumption of Man versus the wisdom of God. The poet reveals that the inner self, the ultimate truth of Life expressed within the poet’s soul is invited to invade the poet’s loneliness and mitigate his deep concern.
The eyes meet, the smiles exchanged and the ‘acquaintance’ of intimacy flows between the poet and the youth, the youth who shall embody the poet’s first thoughts of the day. This soliloquy is employed to reveal the oneness of both the poet and the youth. These lines allow the reader to appraise the inner thoughts of the poet, a flow of internal experience of the emotional psychological processes that explores the dormant subconscious ego. Jawdat Haydar builds a coherent structure, through the stream of consciousness technique, that might not seem to have a coherent structure or cohesion, but it intertwines in and out of time and place carrying the reader into the poet’s mind through the life span of the poet’s noble experience to encompass the lives from other ages and to explore the intricate labyrinth of the mind.
The youth has emerged from The Holy mystic Land to uncover his secret to his soul mate, the secret of watching the "star’s fate", the tiny brilliance of destiny (in astrology, stars and zodiacal constellation influence human fate and destiny). The poet here invokes the power of Astrology to predict Man’s destiny, a glimpse of subdued power that brings destruction of Man for the aching desires and affections hidden within, but, unfortunately, the whole scene carries its own seeds of disappointment and destruction, the stingy smell of blood drifted by the winds of hatred. Here the poet clearly expresses his belief of Man as a destructive element of himself and the world around.
The youth (inner conscience of the poet) feels the burden of thoughts caused by human’s destruction of the forest. The land rakes thoroughly into the heart increasing its beats and invading the soul within the eye of the mind with grand wishes to travel and seek the old teachers of humanity so as to allow the reader a glimpse into his troubled heart and the dilemma of existence as expressed in the concepts of heaven, hell, and paradise, the acumen of the philosophy of Life.
The youth takes a "leap into the dark", the poet describes his wishes and questions the meaning of Life as a sudden epiphany of having the chance to spread "little arrows" of hope that spin and toss along with the eternal movement of the Earth, exploding, scattering and delivering the pregnant seeds of "love and peace". The whole image is a metaphysical combination of death and resurrection of Life. This metaphysical conceit, so to speak, reiterates this important theme that life carries the seeds of death, and death itself, as symbolized by burying the seeds in the soil, carries hope of a new life to come.
The poet blends with the youth to observe Man who has refused God’s revelation and experience, yet Man’s innate wisdom, hidden deep inside, merges into harmony with Nature blended with Man’s hope in better days yet to come. "Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter" as earlier testified by the great English poet of the Romantic Age.
Yet the merciless sharp edge of "doubt" has gnashed into the heart of the world causing bloodshed and wreaking havoc and wasting the values and noble tenets and teachings of religion and beliefs, "baptized by a Nile of blood". Here the poet uses allusion to show the sacrifices that have been offered to the Nile to give the ancient Egyptians the hope for a new cycle of life. The poet reminds his reader of repeated sacrifices throughout ages of people such as Persians, Greeks, and Romans, of great men such as Lincoln and Kennedy. The whole world agitated now by hatred might reach the madness of using nuclear weapons to destroy the world as if meteors from outer space shall spread to feed the greedy ever burning sun.
Slowly, the youth fades away after having a keen look at the reality of life, and in the distance, he sings the songs of "courage and hope" while slowly disappearing; he struggles towards the shore of hope, leaves behind the fading lights of hatred to help bring to the land a new optimistic destiny, blessed by the prophets and their promised world of honesty, integrity and probity, a rebirth of Life itself.
The youth reaches the land where Christ was crucified to plow the soil of love watered with courage and to reap the fruits of love on branches that engulf the world with compassion and common sense.
The choice of words throughout the poem is of paramount importance, pregnant with allusions and at the same time revealing the universal culture of the poet. Jawdat Haydar "weaves his own thread" into the Persian carpet of time, negative and positive stimulation, to arouse the readers’ interest and keen eye to the reality of what had happened and shall happen today and in the future. Mythology and astrology are abundantly used to dissolve in the words of the poet, to ascend into beautified language, and to paint with the elegant brush of his diction these beautiful images; images that bring joy to the reader and leave him much wiser than before reading this remarkable poem that astounds Man’s senses and judgment.
In conclusion, the poem is nothing short of an image of resurrection, a Second Coming of the youth all over the world. The youth, who has mounted the dreams of Mankind, tries to reap what courage and faith that have been sown in the land of God, in the world of Man, in the universe of Humanity. Accordingly, Haydar, the poet, manages to free himself from the bondage of time and place and preconditioned ideas as well as to merge different ages in an aperture of reiterated wishes. He emphasizes the oneness of the universe, the local hope, the global theme and the universal outcome of the resurrection of people brought out by the youth and the expectations of tomorrow.
This theme still lives in the hearts of every human being and every youth who searches for the Truth of being existent wherever or whenever he lives.
A Lonely Youth
'T was December so bleak
With the pelting snow working treadle loom weaving
The fallin threads into a carpet white
On the highlands of our country.
The ground was bitter cold
And a mountain open gorge swallowed road
Along side towns into the distance deep,
Where our forefathers yesterday were children
Tracked gathered and joyfully played.
Now a lonely youth in the seed time of life
With a determined intention charioted
By the steeds of will and faith,
Cracking the whip of common sense, speeding
Across the risky domain of destiny
In a world tutored by dreadful images of doubt
And the syllogistic premises of sophistry.
By guess and God he made it to my home;
Our eyes met, our smiles repeated
Having been acquainted he said:
"Many thanks O friend for your hospitality;
I shall make a companion to the early plow of the day
En route to the remote land of revealed theology
So be not surprised, my dear, of a secret told
That since childhood so often I gazed at the stars of fate
And in every glance I have seen a shadow crucified
Ever since I smell the odor of blood
Wafted by the winds of hate.
From the burning forest of the so-called human kind
That’s why so many waves of weighty thoughts
By motion through to my heart,
Inflating the yearning beats into sallies of youth
Within a soul melting into a wish of travel
To the blessed land of those religious teachers,
Who gave the world true meaning
Of heaven, hell and paradis.
So I am taking a leap in the dark,
Trying to catch with the strings of chance.
And a strap of time to make a sling
Load it a missile of the Pope’s wishes for the world,
Whirl it about and hurl it round the earth
To explode and scatter seeds of love and peace,
To grow everywhere on our bleeding land
And how I stand looking at the world
Of those who denied that
The revelations were the word of God;
But wisdom processed to harmonize
With the environment and human behavior.
And since the blade of doubt
Was stuck in the heart of the world
And the world began bleeding its breath,
By losing partly the treasure of religion
Having been baptized by a Nile of blood
The which brings to memory
The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans
The First World War, the Second thus and plus
Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan who were shot;
The spheres then were cool but now they are hot,
And one nuclear missile may turn the earth
Into a burning meteorite to feed the sun."
Upon his footfall out of doors bearing the weight of fate
Was heard singing the song of courage and hope;
On his way south shrinking towards the shore
Looking at the dimming lights behind
And the blink of a new destiny ahead;
Speeding to the warm land,
The blessed land of the prophets, the land of probity
To plant and water the tree of love on Calvary
Just in the place where Christ was crucified;
Perhaps one day it will flourish to give fruit
And build branches to encompass the world.
11/1974 Jawdat Haydar