slant Flashcards
certain Slant of light /Winter Afternoons
Connotations metaphorical setting
oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –
Ponderous dictionTrochaic pulse
internal differenceWhere the Meanings, are –No scarSharp /i/ assonanceUngrammatical commaimagery
→connot‘slant’ = obscurity of vision (X clarity) immediately evokes speaker’s psych. discomfort→setting ‘winter afternoons’ = the light may be slanted b/c it is retreating (day is dying) ∴speaker senses death in nature
→speaker’s intuition of death in nature triggers despair which ‘oppresses’ with its ‘heft’ / light is not airy but heavy →ED accentuates weight of speaker’s misery by referring to ‘Cath. Tunes’ which should bring comfort but instead intensify tactile ‘heft’ sp’sdespair→also accen. by trochaic pulse (note sim. diction + trochaic pulse in Funeral–treading/treading)
→assonance evokes despair’s painful sharpness, cutting through and affecting us @core ‘where the meanings, are’ / ungrammatical comma implies disturbance @ heart of identity.→image of ‘no scar’ →evokes isolating invisibility + alienation caused by despair
‘Heavenly Hurt it gives us’+ ‘Imperial Affliction.’
Oxymoron + diction of regalityIncl ‘us’
‘shadows -hold their breath -’
personification
‘we’ and ‘us’
Incl lang
→God sends desp. Through nature to all humanity (‘us’) / oxy + dictevokes speaker’s ambiv. re powerful ‘imperial’ God thought to be ‘heavenly’ but who deliberately ‘hurts’ humankind from distance / speaker seems to lament cruelty of a God who creates humanity only to make it suffer + die
→shadows hold breath b/c as light fades towards its death, they too will die ∴ poem ends on note of death with which it began
→h/winclusive pronouns in poem remind readers human pain + mortality = shared fate, making ED’s poetry an occasion for human connection even in midst of suffering
