McKain Williams
Blog #3
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of John Clare’s “An Invite to Eternity” is its ambiguity. The poem lacks punctuation altogether, thus leaving the intent of the emotions expressed to the reader’s discretion. It is additionally interesting that for much of the poem the speaker is posing a question, but appropriate punctuation is never included, leaving us to wonder how much he truly is intending to urge the “maiden” he addresses to accept his proposition, or whether he is just imagining the possibility of this proposition without even expecting a response. As the lack of punctuation leaves the open possibility of multiple interpretations, I found myself interpreting the poem in two different ways with almost completely opposite meanings. One interpretation portrayed this eternity in which the speaker exists in a negative light as a place of darkness and alienation, but in the other I perceived the speaker as possibly enjoying this isolation and urging this maiden to join him in the comfort of this world in which you can be alone with your thoughts and simply exist beyond the human realm.
The first interpretation— of this eternal destination as a dark and desolate one— is the more obvious, and likely more common, one. The speaker uses diction such as “valley depths of shade of night and dark obscurity” (lines 3 and 4), “where the sun forgets the day” (line 6) and “land of shadows” (line 25) to describe this eternal realm, making it quite obviously a place of darkness. He makes it clear as well that this world is beyond the human realm and void of human life as he says, “where life will fade like visioned dreams” (line 11), calling this eternal existence a “strange death of life” (line 18). He also personalizes this aspect of isolation by referencing family members from which one will be removed as he says, “where parents live and are forgot and sisters live and know us not” (lines 15 and 16), as if there is a sort of physical distance placed between those in this existence and those in the human world— a possibility made threatening by the thought of being distanced from one’s loved ones. He additionally calls this existence a “sad non-identity” (line 14) where they will “join the living with the dead” (line 31). This seems to evoke hellish imagery and perhaps suggest that he is asking her to join him in another realm— likely hell— towards which he is already headed and would enjoy additionally company as he is to remain there for eternity. This may answer the question as to why question marks are avoided in a poem which basically consists of one large proposal; perhaps this is an empty question to which he expects no real reply, but only imagines the possibility of her joining him. In this reading his intentions are perhaps malicious, as the maiden appears to be an innocent and “sweet” (line 1) figure whom he is attempting to corrupt and selfishly bring with him into a darker realm.
Additionally, I found that this poem could be interpreted with slightly more optimism— although there is no denying the darkness in its tone— in that perhaps this is the realm in which the speaker chooses to live, free from the binds of human existence. Perhaps the speaker enjoys this anonymity of a “non-identity” (line 14), and the absence of time— “past, and present all as one” (line 28). In this eternal space it seems that he can simply exist without the binds of existence— “to live in death and be the same without this life, or home, or name” (lines 19 and 20)— and can “be” and “not be” all at once. Particularly the image in the 3rd stanza, of “things pass like shadows— and the sky above, below, around us lie” (lines 23 and 24) creates the sense of a dream like world in which one can float through existence. Here there almost seems to be a contrast from the numerous dark and hellish images. It seems that this perhaps may even just be a state of mind in which the speaker enjoys submerging himself, and is urging this maiden to open her mind and do the same.
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