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Alexander Pope

Epistle to Pope

“If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the truth and the sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous.” -Alexander Pope; (Advertisement) Epistle to Arbuthnot

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, who not only spoke his mind about his life’s work, but also those who criticized and ridiculed him all will speaking in satirical verse. This epistle, this letter, was written to his dear friend John Arbuthnot to commemorate their friendship but seemed to form a defensive stand against Pope’s work. Pope anonymously submitted his first piece in1734 and later on composed it with his footnotes in 1735. Pope’s allegoric writing style in the poem, Epistle to Arbuthnot, dramatized the tragedy of the life perceived through him, which could be diluted into six sections, but raise debate to the truthfulness of the narrator.

(Section One: overwhelmed by fake admires)

Pope’s elaborate cantos in this first section is focusing on his so-called “admires,” not even down playing that this is just overbearing and overwhelming for him. Here we can see the direct link between these “admirers” and the Bedlam, which used to be a mental institution and the Parnassus, which is the mountain of the Greeks. We already begin to see a contradiction in Pope’s writing about how he sees these people whom he is trying so desperately to avoid. The lines 15 – 26, Pope begins to list people who have attacked him in the past and those people have encourage their family to slander him. It’s a continuous battle back and forward between Pope and the people he is trying to avoid but at the same time seems as if he is trying to not only their approval but their praise as well. We finally see the first mention of Dr. Arbuthnot;

Alexander Pope, Epistle to Arbuthnot

Pope's Poem

“Friend to my Life, (which did not you prolong, The World had wanted many an idle Song) What Drop or Nostrum can this Plague remove? Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love? [30] A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped, If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.”

Here we can see the size of Pope’s ego at how, thanks to his dear friend Dr. Arbuthnot, now the world has the blessings to hear his “idle song,” his work. Then we see the other side of the last two cantos that represent how his “criticizers” are asking their friends to boycott and dislike Pope.

(Section Three: attempted summary of his writing life)

“Yet if many of the contradictions of the poem seem carefully controlled there are moments none the less in this supremely accomplished Epistle when conflicting elements and intentions appear to pull against each other, suggesting in turn the existence of larger contradictions in Pope’s thinking about his role as a poet, and about the ultimate aims of his work” (Donaldson). This entire Epistle is conveying that Pope does not care what the people who dislike his work think about it but then again, we see him compare himself to men who society does not question, and Pope tries to compare his work to that of a higher stature so that those people understand the mistake they made.