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Comparative analysis of Anguished Grief by Christine de Pisan and Grow Old Along With Me by John Lennon Christine de Pisan, the author of Anguished Grief, was a famous Renaissance French poet, prose writer, and humanist, born in Venice, Italy. Her childhood was spent at the court of the French king Charles V, and she later wrote his biography. After ten years of marriage to the court secretary, Etienne du Castel, she became a widow at the age of 25. Thereafter, she worked to support her family by writing.
Her first poems, ballades of lost love, were immediately popular. (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2002) The very title of the ballad, Anguished Grief, tells the reader about its theme, which is centered on sadness of loosing a loved person. The poem is set forth in a story-telling monologue form. The author tells readers about all the pains and losses of a widows life. The ballad expresses the everlasting devotion of the author to her husband; it is a manifest of a desperate love. Reading the lines of the poem gives a true understanding what a feeling of love is and how deep it can be. The mood of this ballad is pessimistic and calls for an analogy with a gloomy picture of a medieval artist.
The tone of Christine de Pisan in Anguished Grief is a tone of a person, who does not want to live because she cannot be cured, but also cannot die. There is an inconsolable grief with no way out of it for the author. The ballad moves from one emotion to the next. There is almost no action; the focus is on expressing emotions and feelings.
The structure of the ballad consists of four 8 -line stanzas of iambic tetrameter. There is a chorus at the end of each stanza. The ballad has an internal rhyme, where each line rhymes with itself. In the first stanza, however, second line rhymes with the fifth one, which produces the following rhyme scene for the ballad: ABCDBEF/ ABCDEFG/ ABCDEFG/ ABCDEFG. Such an irregular pattern of rhyme gives an impression of a great effort, made by the speaker to produce the ballad. This is a very appropriate style to emphasize the sad meaning of the poem.
The Anguished Grief can be divided into two parts, where the first part compose the first and the second stanza, and the second part consist of the third and the fourth stanzas. The first part sets out the mood for the whole ballad. It mainly uses adjectives (anguished, grievous, endless, etc. ) that describe nouns (grief, tears, fury, etc. ). Verbs, as one may notice, are almost absent, which makes an accent of the speakers grief and that she is not really living, but rather existing. There is not much movement in her life, and it all evolves around her loss. The second part of the ballad brings a bit more action into the scene.
There are more verbs in the third stanza: bitter waking, troubled sleep/ labor in vain/ with languid expression, but this does not change either the mood or the tone of the ballad. The last, fourth stanza sounds like a call for action the speaker asks God to grant death to her. It is probably logical end to all the sufferings, which would never stop for the speaker anyway. The second song Grow Old Along With Me by John Lennon has quite a different meaning. This song was intended to be a hymn to all loving soles, a song that would be played on wedding ceremonies. The idea of writing it first came to John Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, who offered him to write a song using Robert Browning lines.
It all happened over the phone when John was in Bermuda. As many other Lennon's songs, this song did not take long to write it was ready that same afternoon when Yoko gave John the idea. The poem is structured in a traditional for a song way, using 4 -lined stanzas of iambic tetrameter. Only the third stanza breaks the pattern there are only 2 lines followed by a repeating line. The rhyme scheme is as follows: AABB/AABB/ABCC/AABB. There is a chorus at the end of each stanza, which is not uncommon for songs.
The song sets a very optimistic, sentimental mood. Just like the Anguished Grief, this song is a love story. It is praise to the feeling between a man and a woman, and a declaration of it existing eternally. The author is proposing to his chosen one to grow along with him. This first line seems to be very simple, but it carries deep meaning. To grow along for Lennon is to be devoted to the loved person till the very end, to be two branches of one tree, to see how her hair turns to gray, and how new wrinkles appear on her face.
And whatever happens, whatever fate decrees, they will be together and will see it through. Different in styles, as well as in the way authors describe their feelings, separated by many years, poems Anguished Grief and Grow Along With Me are delightful examples of the faith in love. The ultimate love and faith in it is the central idea of both poems: for Christine de Pisan love is a great anguish locked in a weary heart, for Lennon it is the best yet to be. Despite their different mood, both ballads complete each other and show the reader love in all its glory and beauty. The poems discussed above are very useful for the upbringing of the literary tastes and are good examples of the ballad genre. However, experienced reader may notice that the authors have not tried to create one more example of poetry, but to express their feelings in the unique and beautiful way, the way of poem.
Works sited: Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2002 Article about Christine de Pisan Techniques for poetry analysis and discussion web Poetry Analysis: A quick reference web
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