Music & Mountains - The Personae of Piano by D.H. Lawrence and Mont Blanc by Percy Shelley

“The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part.”

Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

Piano by D.H. Lawrence

Piano by D. H. Lawrence says a lot with such simple words and short lines. It disguises itself as a narrative poem, telling the story of someone singing and playing at the piano only to reveal more about the poet's psyche than it sets out to. Music is a powerful thing. It's the closest thing to time travel humans have created. Any song could take you back to a memory, to see the past with new eyes. D. H. Lawrence depicts that sensation perfectly, tying it in to the persona's lost youth. The woman's song and the sound of the piano brings him childhood. He feels as if his youth has passed him by. Thus, Piano's theme is the longing for lost youth.

Even as a girl turning 20 this October, I can somewhat relate to the message of this poem. It always feels like the Earth never stops moving so how could I? I have so much I want to do in this life but I don't want to spend so much of my life working towards the future that I forget to enjoy the present. I don't want to hear a piano play and reminisce the 'better days'. I want every day to be better than the next. I want every day to be a new adventure but sometimes the day has a different plan.

Then again, some songs bring me back to my childhood. Simpler days where every little thing was exciting and new. I used to be so excited about being older, having agency in my choices, doing big girl things. There were many instances in my life where I had no choice but to grow up. Now that I'm older, I'm relearning to be a child again. I get excited over songs on the radio, I point to a butterfly whenever I see one, to cry when life is unfair and take up the space that I want in every room that I am in.

In fact, Lawrence's poem instantly reminded me of an old song, Piano Man by Billy Joel. Both pieces uses a narrative voice, describing the persona's surrounding to illustrate their loneliness and longing.

D. H. Lawrence reminds us to always appreciate the little things in life because if you don't you might just let your youth, music, love and life pass you by.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never.

Anna Jameson

Personally, I think that age is just a number, regret is a wasted emotion and youth is a feeling. No one can take a feeling away from you. Appreciate the little things now but it's never too late to start. There is a child in every person that is begging you to dance when there's music playing, to sing whenever you feel like it, to compliment yourself in the mirror, to play in the dirt, to have wild nights that last a lifetime and to enjoy all that the world has to offer.

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley describes the beauty and majesty of the Mont Blanc marvelously. Hiding in plain sight, the meaning of the poem is to achieve a higher level of spiritual connection to nature and the world around us. Mont Blanc is not just a poem about the mountain, Mont Blanc. Instead, Shelley uses the Mont Blanc as a way to question deeper things at play here. Shelley starts with lines illustrating the magnificence of Mont Blanc from its waterfalls and streams to its peaks and lows. However, little by little, we see Shelley include lines that revolve around human condition and existentialism. The beautiful descriptions of nature reel you in and gets you interested to read more but you stay for what the poet has to say.

It is when we are in solitude where we get to be truly in touch with our thoughts. Especially when looking at nature and all its grandeur, it reminds us of how small we are compared to the rest of the universe. This deep introspection of one's self is an interesting theme to explore because it speaks directly to all of us as humans. Just like Shelley, we interpret this world through lens of our own emotions, perspective and spiritual beliefs. Even so, we often question if the reality that we experience is real and if all the things we understand about it is true. Mont Blanc is depicting the process of realizing that and I think that is extremely beautiful. Hence, Mont Blanc's theme is existentialism, finding meaning in the seemingly meaningless.

Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.

Albert Einstein

The Two Personae

Lawrence uses visual and auditory imagery extensively in throughout the poem. He describes the sounds of the piano and singing that he hears accompanied by the people he sees. This hooks the reader it makes us question why the poet was so entranced by these seemingly random people at the piano.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

By the second stanza, we learn about the message of the poem. He is reminiscing the past which plays a big part in the message and theme of the poem. The poet uses personification to illustrate the pain of the poet. For example, the phrase, "the heart of me weeps to belong."

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

The last stanza reveals to the reader that the poet longs to feel like a child again. The stanza is slightly ironic. It is heartbreaking and nostalgic all at the same time.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Through the persona, we learn more about the poet's internal monologue while watching these seemingly mundane scenes. The persona acts as narrator and main character, perfect for the reader to feel the emotions in this poem as deeply as the persona. Hence, the persona's attitude to the poem is to be nostalgic and longing of the past.

Similarly, Mont Blanc begins with a beautiful and hyperbolic description of the mountains and nature. The mountains seem sublime and majestic, almost otherworldly. Shelley uses personification to make these nature elements seem more "alive". For example, the line, "Where waterfalls around it leap for ever." Stanza 1 includes a lot of visual and kinesthetic imagery. The poet uses imagery to draw a vivid scene of nature in the reader's head, honing in on the romantic and ethereal poem of the poem.

                                I

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters—with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

Then, in Stanza 2, the persona starts hinting at the poem's theme. He compares walking though Mont Blanc with "travelling through his thought." He explains how he finds it hard to separate the world from his perception of the world, distinguish fantasy from reality. This pattern spans throughout the poem. The persona explains how he has trouble separating fantasy from reality. This is because he feels as if physical and spiritual worlds are too aligned and too dependent on each other to be entirely separate.

To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

The last stanza unveils the poem's true purpose. This poem clearly shows how existential it is by ending with a rhetorical question. The last three lines specifically, present a philosophical debate. If nothing exists as vacancy and silence in one's mind, would that mean that nothing does exist? It leads to us questioning if we are even real or if anything in this world has meaning. It begs for its readers to think about the answers they ask themselves while admiring nature. Thus, the attitude of the persona is to always be curious and questioning.

      V

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Thus, these poems feature a persona that describes their surroundings, only to reveal the real message that it was leading up to. This technique makes the poem's message all the more impactful and powerful.

What do you think? Read the poems here.

Piano

Mont Blanc

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