Experimental form in Victorian poetryidealism must consequently surrender to the juxtaposition of irreconcilable
opposites. The speaker, for instance, apostrophizes the gypsy ("O born in
days when wits were fresh and clear" [201]), constructing a vision of
untainted delight (when "life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames" [202]),
only to shift immediately into its contemporary alternative: "this strange
disease of modern life." Here Arnold implicitly admits the fundamental
paradox of organic formalism where an emphasis on organic growth and
fulfillment has to allow for the inseparable counterpart of organic death.
Arnold, however, cannot conceive of the means of resolution, only the
discomforting irony of unresolved juxtaposition: the scholar-gypsy and
modern life must be kept separate, lest the second (the diseased real) will
destroy the first (the pastoral ideal). Hence his apostrophe quickly trans-
forms into admonition: "Fly hence, our contact fear!" (206).
Once, therefore, the poet-speaker reaches his moment of impasse (the
insoluble contrast between the scholar's "perennial youth" [229] and the
speaker's "mental strife" [222]), he has nowhere to go in order to achieve
formal unity. The pastoral imagery upon which the poem is initially
founded disallows resolution with the images of disease and infection that
characterize "modern life." Certainly, Arnold does not provide organic
metaphors that might produce such a settlement. Instead, the poem closes
with what is formally an epic simile: an extended image describing the
manner in which the scholar-gypsy should flee, like "some grave Tyrian
trader" (232) escaping the intruding "Grecian coaster" (237). Yet, as is
often the case with epic similes, the vehicle of the comparison (the trader)
becomes so elaborate that it becomes a separate aesthetic object, losing
touch with the source of the comparison (the scholar). Consequently, critics
have expended considerable energy in attempting to integrate the metaphor
of the trader with the imagery of the earlier sections of the poem. Some
commentators read this metaphor as an allegory for sustaining an alter-
native lifestyle; others relate it to the power of imagination. 14 But in
whatever way this epic simile is read, its imagery and formal devices
neither provide a unified closure for the poem nor present a solution for the
poet-speaker. He is left corrupted by disease, celebrating an unrealizable
dream-vision: the empty form of an outmoded literary convention. Thus
Arnold's mid-century experiment with pastoral, his attempt to repeat
Romantic formalism, transforms itself into the ironic experience of a
divided sensibility. 15
This sense of division or ambivalence has become a focus for discussions
of Victorian poetic form. In an important essay on the idealist legacy in
Victorian poetry, W. David Shaw refers to the way that "Victorian poets
experiment with genres in which the true subject of the poem is
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