ELEGY V: HIS PICTURE (THEMES/IMAGERY)

Question 1

What are the 4 main themes in Elegy V: His Picture?

Answer 1

1) Representation and subsitution.
2) The irreconcilable past and present.
3) Neo-platonic love vs superficial love.
4) Mortality and human fragility.

Question 2

How does the poetic voice explore representation and substition (art’s limitation)?

Answer 2

• The speaker acknowleges that the ‘picture’ is a representation for him (to be kept by his lover)
• But also highlights its limitation in capturing the totality of his experiences.
• The speaker values the truth/harshness of his experience over any static representation of himself.

“Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell”
“Tis like me now, But I dead, twill be more”

Question 3

How does the speaker explore the irreconcilable past and future?

Answer 3

• The speaker acknowleges that he cannot return to his younger, idealised, and unblemished self. Just as his lover cannot unsee the marks of time on him.
• However, he argues that true love should trancend this irreconcilability

(her love should be able to reach him at the crossroads between the past/ present/ future if true)

“If rival fools tax thee to’have lov’d a man
So foul and coarse as, oh, I may seem then” “doth my worth decay?”

Question 4

How does the poem explore neo-platonic love vs superfical love.

Answer 4

• By emphasing the enduring, spirtual bond between the lovers.
• which will be able to overcome the hardship and brutality of life/ as well as the superficiality of love built on physical desire.

Question 5

How does the poem explore mortality and human fragility?

Answer 5

• The speaker urges his lover to accept his transformed matured self (and his beauty wrecked by time)
• thus urging her to confront the reality of human fragility/ mortality.

Question 6

How does the line “Tis like me now, But I dead, twill be more” confront the reality of human mortality?

Answer 6

• The speaker suggests that the ‘picture’ is already meaningful but will hold greater signficance after his death (love and its mementos can immortalise a person after death)

theme- momento mori (embraces mans inevitable mortality)

Question 7

How does the line “When we are shadows both, than twas before” confront the reality of human mortality?

Answer 7

• ‘Shadows’= a future in which the lovers are dead and will only exist as shadows.
• Thus, the picture will ensure they will always exist ( no matter how insubstatially) like shadows.

Question 8

What does “face and breast of haircloth” refer to?

Answer 8

• Haircloth was worn by thoes seeking atonment.
• Thus, refers to penitence/asceticism.

Question 9

What is the speaker refering to here? ‘This shall say what I was, and thou shalt say/Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?’

Answer 9

• the speaker is imagining his beloved questioning whether he has lost his worth due to his marred looks, opening questions about beauty and intrinsic worth
• or the beloved is wondering if she too will lose her attractiveness one day like her lover and thus similarly loose her worth.

Question 10

What does this metaphor refer to? ‘but the milk which in love’s childish state/Did nurse it; who now is grown strong enough/To feed on that..’

Answer 10

• Donne invokes the Corinthians metaphor to illustrate the fragility of youthful attraction.
• Beauty and pleasure are merely the “milk” that initially sustains love.
• However, as time progresses, love must evolve into something more substantial, or it will decay along with physical beauty.