Judul : Jean-François Millet's The Gleaners and Poetry
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Jean-François Millet's The Gleaners and Poetry
The Wheat Fields
Lo, the drowsy heat of summer
Lo, the drowsy heat of summer
Hanging humid, low and near,
As peasants gleaning frail and humble
As peasants gleaning frail and humble
Thank the Lord whom they revere.
Lo, the wheat-line yon receding
Into gray obscurity—
How thankless greed absconds with nature
And her virgin purity …
-jwm
Poetic Parameters:
Stanza Type: Quatrain
Meter: Line 1 in each stanza is eight syllables; lines 2 and 4 in each stanza is seven syllables; and line 3 in each stanza is nine syllables
Rhyme Scheme: xaxa xbxb (where ‘x’ represents unrhymed lines)
Composition: May 19, 2019
This poem was inspired by an 1857 painting titled, The Gleaners; a work of art produced by Jean-FrançoisMillet (1814 – 1875). One of the founders of the Barbizon School, Millet’s realist style significantly helped usher in the modern period of art.
Millet had an empathetic eye for conditions surrounding the rural life of peasant farmers, as he himself grew up in these conditions. After having trained in Cherbourg and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and after the French Revolution, Millet moved to the village of Barbizon to paint the harsh life of rural peasantry.
The Gleanerswas first exhibited in Salon in 1857. It was initially received with criticism as it seemed to glorify the arduous existence of the impoverished- an implicit condemnation of the middle- and upper-class tiers of society. It did not help that the poor significantly outnumbered the rich, and that there was a palpable tension between the lower-class and those who were well off.
Lo, the drowsy heat of summer
Hanging humid, low and near,
As peasants gleaning frail and humble
Thank the Lord whom they revere.
Lo, the wheat-line yon receding
Into gray obscurity—
How thankless greed absconds with nature
And her virgin purity …
Wholescale farming is, of course, necessary, but the poem wants to do two things. It wants to magnify the rapacious indifference of the process- a sort of thankless, and even violent apathy with regard to what is being done, as if nature herself were being plundered.
The poem also wants to show the disparity between the poor and the rich: between the peasants who are both humble and thankful; and the overabundance achieved by insatiable greed (represented by the overseer on the horse).
In short, the second stanza is a diatribe aimed at greed- whose destructive proclivity wreaks havoc on both nature and humanity.
In short, the second stanza is a diatribe aimed at greed- whose destructive proclivity wreaks havoc on both nature and humanity.
The last element of the poem is the ellipsis at the end, an indicator that this marauding of nature is ceaseless.
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