“Still Falls the Rain” by Edith Sitwell contains vivid
imagery that is rather depressing but at the end it leaves you with a positive
outlook. The poem is composed of seven
stanzas, with the first six starting with the line “Still falls the rain—”. However the seventh stanza does not start
with that line which I think is a crucial aspect of the poem. The rain can be thought of as the bombs from
the air raids the German used against the British during WWII. The whole poem has a religious undertone
that’s slowly builds up to the end, where the last stanza gives the reader from
an escape from the rain / bombs that has been in every other stanza. The last stanza beings with “Then sounds the
voice of One who was like the heart of man / Was once a child who among beasts
was lain —”, which is a nice break from all of the imagery of war and
suffering. The “One” is Jesus, which can
be told from the capital O, and it is him that is heard as opposed to the awful
sounds of the bombs or the air raid sirens. Sitwell is saying that Jesus was once
an innocent baby that was born among all of the sinners who are these “beasts”
and he was send down from heaven to die for their sins. She is also saying that just like Jesus
everyone was also innocent, because everyone was once a child, but the beasts
can influence and change a person.
However the last line of the poem offers wraps up that last stanza by
giving the reader some hope amidst all of the gloom in the rest of the
poem. The last line shows that Jesus
still will die for out sins in order to make the world a better place.
One line of the poem I did not understand was in the first
stanza, “Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails / Upon the Cross”. I am confused of where Sitwell comes up with
the number nineteen hundred and forty. I
might be missing something because I was considering it the year that the poem
was written, but the Norton says it was written in 1942. I know the cross that Sitwell is walking
about is the cross that Jesus was crucified on but it almost always has three
nails in it, one for each wrist and one for the feet. I also do not know why Sitwell used the
simile blind to describe the nails in the cross either. Perhaps it is because bombs that the Germans
were dropping were blindly being dropped onto innocent civilians and that Jesus
was innocent but he died for out sins, just like the civilians died.
-Daniel Pietaro
I would agree, this poem offers another grim outlook on war. I would agree with your analysis of the line "Still falls the Rain" representing the German air raids over Britain. I would also agree with you saying has a positive outlook at the end. The last line provides hope in saying that Jesus still love all people and will shed blood for them again if need be. It could be suggesting that even those who die by the bombs shall be received in Heaven because they did unjustly, just as Jesus did. The only reference I could draw for the nineteen hundred and forty nails is that 1940 was the year Hitler laid the plans out to attack Britain. The Blitz was started in September 1940, so that could possibly be the reference.
ReplyDeleteI liked the way you pointed out that the last stanza did not start with "Still the Rain falls" because I initially did not notice this. I had originally thought that the entire poem created a kind of gloomy, dark outlook with no hope for mankind, but what you said about the last stanza changed my mind. As for the line that went “Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails / Upon the Cross” I thought that maybe Sitwell included it to compare the people who were dropping the bombs during World War II to the people who nailed Jesus to the cross. I thought she was kind of pointing out how in fighting wars, we are “blind” to the awful actions we commit and the consequences that occur because of them, just as the people who nailed Jesus to the cross didn’t know that he was the son of God and that they would suffer for it. As for why she used nineteen hundred and forty nails, I'm not really sure. I guess she was alluding to the time period during which World War II took place, but also maybe that was the exact year when the bomb dropping started? I'm not really sure and I think we would have to do some research to figure it out.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, I'm glad you pointed out this twist on the allusion to the nails in Christ's hands and feet on the cross. I tried to do some research to figure out what the nineteen hundred and forty nails meant, but the other girls pretty much covered what I saw. The only other thing that I read was that it had been 1,940 years since Jesus had been born, so he suffered for all the worldly sins both before and after his death. Like you suggested, there are many Biblical allusions in the poem that it would be hard not to catch at least one. I thought the repetition of the title of the poem was interesting and the fact that it occurs 6 times is an allusion to the creation story. The story goes on about what God made each day and that on the 6th day was human kind and on the 7th, he rested.
ReplyDeleteI think "1940" nails is in reference to the bombing, which took place in the Battle of Britain, starting in 1940, the Nazis bombed London every night, and many people died, and the city sustained a lot of damage. It was a way to break their morale and try to force them to surrender.
ReplyDeleteI also thought it was interesting that the seventh stanza did not begin with "Still falls the Rain." Maybe the rain has stopped.
I didn't realize that the black rain might represent the bombing itself, which I guess was stupid of me, but I was just thinking of how it rains all the time in London. Good catch.
Good one
ReplyDelete