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Summary Stephen Spender - "The Pylons" - Analysis
This is a summary and analysis of the poem "The Pylons" by Stephen Spender.
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The advent of pseudo-modernism onto a hitherto serene arena is thetheme of Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”. The poem was so famous that
it heralded a new school of poets, namely ‘the Pylon Poets’ to label
the work of Spender and his associates.
The literal meaning of ‘pylons’ point to tall metallic posts that
hold electric wires.Though they appear to be the harbinger of
electricity, he feels that they are an intrusion into the peaceful
countryside. The emblem of the pylons possess powerful symbolic
significance. Their being tall, they seem to have a ‘towering’ influence
on our lives.
Secondly, though they are static, their energy is kinetic and therefore
shown to be all-pervasive. Their being metallic, it projects a picture of
being frozen to human emotions. Besides, pylons are universal, just
as we cannot live without electricity and the most eloquent emblem of
modern technology. They seem to run into everywhere and
everything, as though they run the quick perspective of the future.
Wordsworth defined poetry as the impassioned expression in the
countenance of all science.
Yet the pylons are not presented as entirely unnatural: they are
likened to girls, albeit unnaturally giant ones, but the power they
contain is referred to as ‘lightning’s danger’, suggesting the natural
electricity of the earth that man has harnessed and conveyed via the
pylons. Similarly, the ‘quick perspective of the future’ which the pylons
embody suggests not only the speed with which the pylons pass along
their electricity but also that secondary meaning of ‘quick’, meaning
‘living’.
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STANZA ONE
, The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages
The poet begins by glorifying the hills and cottages that haunt our
imagination, as they possess an elusive quality. The secret about
these, says the poet, was their ‘stone’: the only natural thing about
them that nothing else could endow with. The crumbling roads rather
than appear decrepit come across as enchanting as they uncover
villages without prior notice, like rabbits from a magician’s hat.
STANZA TWO
Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.
The poet’s description comes across as black lines scribbled all over
the painting of a beautiful countryside. The colour black forebodes
‘gloom’. Spender also likens them to giant nude girls that have no
secret to hide. They are as vulgar as naked girls that deliberately
reveal. Further, these unclothed girls are not aesthetic as they are
giant-like. They are devoid of modesty, principles and values where
might is right.
STANZA THREE
The valley with its gilt and evening look
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