Pathetic fallacy and personification are quite similar to each other. However, pathetic fallacy is a form of personification. Personification simply means giving human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects.
Pathetic fallacy, on the other hand, focuses on endowing human emotions to inanimate objects, especially in the context of nature. Let’s look at an example:
Yeats, “Wild Swans at Coole” (1917):
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
. . .
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
Here, Yeats is personifying swans as being more than just birds. The birds embody human companionship and love. Not just that. They are also portrayed as a mythic representation of human ambition and endeavor to create everlasting art.
In short, Yeats is giving human emotion to the birds. This makes it more than personification. It is a pathetic fallacy. The pathetic fallacy extends even to the landscape with the phrase “Companionable streams.”
In this article, we are going to look at the key differences between personification and pathetic fallacy. To do so, I mainly focus on two poems by Matthew Arnold — “Philomela” and "To Marguerite: Continued."
What is personification?
Personification is a literary device where human attributes are given to an object. It is rather common in literature and can be seen as a form of metaphor. It is used often in combination with imagery and vivid description. Here are a few examples.
Examples of personification
1. T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915):
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes.
In this excerpt, Eliot personifies the fog and smoke as a cat, describing them as having a "back" and "muzzle" that they rub against the window-panes.
This is a personification of the industrial pollution and lack of nature that typifies the modern urban setting of the poem. Industrial pollution are now so common and part of everyday life, that we are as accustomed to it as our pet cat.
2. Emily Dickinson, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" (1863):
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Dickinson personifies Death as a polite and courteous gentleman driving a carriage who "kindly stopped." It is ironic as the line “Because I could not stop for Death” suggests that the person has no desire to die. However, death comes for her anyway. Personification is used here to describe the inevitability of death, as well as the irony of death leading to eternity in the afterlife.
3. William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (1807):
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
In this excerpt, Wordsworth personifies the daffodils as if they are dancing happily with their "heads" bobbing in the breeze. This portrayal imbues the flowers with life and happiness. It reflects the poet's own emotional upliftment at seeing the flowers.
This is an example of personification extending into the realm of pathetic fallacy as nature is being imbued with human emotion.
What is pathetic fallacy?
Pathetic fallacy is a form of personification when objects or animals are endowed with human emotion. You can think of pathetic fallacy as being one step above mere personification.
This literary device works best when it is used to make nature or the environment reflect human emotion. Let’s look closer at the example of pathetic fallacy from Wordsworth's poem.
Example of pathetic fallacy: I wandered lonely as a cloud
Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (1807) is an example of pathetic fallacy where the poet imbues daffodils with human feelings:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,[3]
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.[6]
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line[9]
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.[12]
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,[15]
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:[18]
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye[21]
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.[24]
The pathetic fallacy begins in the first line of the poem, where the poet describes himself as “lonely as a cloud.” The daffodils are said to be “dancing in the breeze” (Line 6) and as being “jocund company” (Line 16).
The pathetic fallacy expressed throughout the first three stanzas prepares us for the culmination in the last stanza. The last stanza describes the scene as being one of constant joy and calm for the poet long after he experienced the scene. In the same way that human companionship brings solace and joy, the “jocund company” of the daffodils has done the same for him.
Matthew Arnold uses pathetic fallacy to endure nature with human emotion in “Philomela” and “To Marguerite: Continued. However, he is much more ambitious, and the emotions expressed are much more sophisticated than mere human happiness.
Philomela by Matthew Arnold: Poem summary and analysis
Philomela is a poem by Matthew Arnold that relies on a mixture of pathetic fallacy and allusion. It is based on the Ancient Greek myth of Philomela, which was recounted by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. It is a tale about a woman who was transformed into a nightingale.
The poem is a dramatic monologue styled as a one-sided conversation with a person named Eugenia and a nightingale. The poet is speaking about and to the nightingale as if it were “the nightingale” — that is, Philomela herself.
But first, to understand the poem, we should recap the myth of Philomela. The story of Philomela tells of her brutal assault by Tereus, her sister Procne’s husband. Tereus rapes Philomela and doesn’t stop there. He cuts out her tongue to keep his crime a secret.
Yeah. Pretty gruesome stuff. But it gets worse. She reveals the crime to Procne by weaving her story into a tapestry and gifting the tapestry to Procne. In revenge, Procne and Philomela successfully plot to kill Procne and Tereus’ son Itys. This is bad enough. But they don’t stop there. After killing him, they serve him as a meal to Tereus, his dad.
Tereus after finding out becomes insane with rage and grief and grabs an axe and chases the two women to kill them. The Gods transform the sisters into birds to enable their escape — Philomela becomes a nightingale, her song symbolizing grief and passion.
The meaning of Philomela
The tale is gruesome to us, but in the classical world of Greece and Rome, Philomela grew to become a symbol of female purity and constancy, as well as righteous revenge. In Medieval and premodern Western literature, she became a symbol of Christian virtue and faithfulness. Imagine that. The woman who helped murder her innocent nephew and fed his flesh to his own dad symbolizing Christian virtue.
But here at EminentEdit, we don’t judge. In the 16th century, a style of poetry even developed comparing the nightingale with the cuckoo, where the nightingale represented good luck, skill in poetry, love, and faithfulness, and the cuckoo represented bad luck and being cheated on. This can be seen in a previous poem I analyzed by John Milton: Sonnet 1.
Matthew Arnold in his poem uses Philomela as a symbol of human passion and pain — the dichotomy of the human condition. This is closely related to the art of poetry. The poet is often seen as bearing the burden of eloquently expressing the human condition, even if that condition is tragic and painful. Let’s look at the text of the poem.
Arnold, “Philomela” (1853):
Hark! ah, the nightingale—
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!—what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain
That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain—
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm?
Dost thou to-night behold,
Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse
With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes
The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame?
Dost thou once more assay
Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive, the feathery change
Once more, and once more seem to make resound
With love and hate, triumph and agony,
Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?
Listen, Eugenia—
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again—thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!
In the first stanza, the poet first speaks to the woman accompanying him called Eugenia, whose name is revealed at the end of the poem. He melodramatically alerts his companion to the loud and startling singing of the nightingale. In the second stanza, he addresses the bird directly.
The nightingale in his poetic imagination is Philomela herself. It’s as if Philomela is trapped in her trauma and her response to it. The trauma is a reference to her rape, mutilation, and attempt to escape Tereus' chasing her with an axe. Despite being affixed in her trauma, she has escaped the lands of Ancient Greece and has now alighted in a cedar grove in Great Britain.
Matthew Arnold does not simply state that the nightingale is experiencing "eternal passion" and "eternal pain." He does an awesome job of demonstrating it through a range of literary devices, not just pathetic fallacy. Let’s look at how he does so in Stanza 3:
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm?
The poet supports the pathetic fallacy by using a combination of assonance and consonance to reflect the emotions of “eternal passion” and “eternal pain” being expressed here. The short "e" vowel sounds in combination with the "l" sound in "will,” "heal," and “tranquil” create a soothing effect.
This is appropriate as the poet here is talking about bringing comfort to a creature going through immense suffering. The long "o" sounds in "cool," "moon," and "dew" also have a similar calming effect.
The harsh and difficult-to-pronounce consonance and assonance in "rack'd heart" mirror the strange mixture of pain and passion. Arnold also uses polysyndeton — that is, overusing “and” in a list of items. The effect is to give a sense of excitement, urgency, and passion.
In the second stanza, the poet uses erotema or rhetorical questions to delineate the trauma that Philomela relives over and over again. They are classical rhetorical questions in that they don't seek answers, but instead reaffirm that Phiolmela indeed remains a victim even beyond the time and landscapes of Ancient Greece where she was traumatized.
The poet uses erotema with the pathetic fallacy to retell and relive the tragedy of Philomela. He asks if Philomela beholds "the unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild." This is a reference to the palace in which she was raped and mutilated. The poet is personifying the pain and trauma of Philomela into something universally human and eternal that transcends time and space.
The poet portrays the nightingale as a symbol of the conflicted and lonely human condition. From Line 4 of the poem, Arnold announces the thesis of the poem: “What triumph! hark!—what pain!” The triumph is Philomela's revenge against her abuser, her ability to tell her story through the art of weaving even after losing her tongue, and her gift of song as a nightingale after her transmutation. The pain is her rape, her mutilation, and her guilt in the death of the innocent Itys.
Philomela's dilemma represents the human ability to bear pain and loneliness and to create beautiful things such as art and poetry from this pain. Arnold expands on this theme in “To Marguerite: Continued” (1857). He does so by using a pathetic fallacy to describe the British Isles as lonely masses of land that long to be part of the continent of Europe once more:
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour—
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Here the nightingale shows up as a motif. However, the pathetic fallacy concerns singular islands. The islands are personified as metaphors for human loneliness. While solitude can be liberating as expressed in the lines: “The islands feel the enclasping flow, / And then their endless bounds they know.”
However on “starry nights,” when “the nightingales divinely sing,” they “feel a longing like despair.” The themes of “eternal passion” and “eternal pain” that feature in Phiomela are thus continued.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, December 5). Pathetic Fallacy vs. Personification. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/pathetic-fallacy-vs-personification |
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